It’s 9 p.m. on Saturday, January 15 and Christine Mundia can finally relax in her resort cabin. As the person in charge of organizing the 2011 GW Law Ski Trip, her job is now over. Everyone has been checked in, and she can enjoy the long weekend.

Every year, GW SBA hosts a ski trip over Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend. This year, over 170 students staying in twenty-two cabins made their way up to Slaty Fork, West Virginia to spend 3 nights at Snowshoe Mountain Resort. Some rode the bus provided by the school, others borrowed, rented, or drove their own vehicle, but all crossed two states just to get away.

While students pay for the trip in November, Mundia had been handling the logistics of this event since June of last year because that was when the first deposit was due. She has been making preparations and acting as the liaison between GW SBA and the resort. Even SBA President Theresa Bowman says that all credit goes to Mundia.

Bowman was also hard at work over the weekend helping with the event. To her, the hardest part of the planning was organizing the goodie bags. She had to divide boxes of popcorn, macaroni, and granola bars into bags for each cabin.

Bowman is not a skier, but she enjoyed her weekend and wishes she could have gone all three years of law school. In her 1L year, the ski trip fell on inauguration weekend, and as someone who grew up in DC, her “political sensibilities won out” and she stayed in the city. Last year was a great time for her, and this year she said that after helping plan the event she just had to go.

As a first-time attendee on the trip, my only plan has been to ski as much as my body will let me and hang out with great people before I close out my law school career. Every year, I’ve heard great things from numerous people.

On the one hand, attendees said amazing things about the skiing. I for one spent day one with Darren Sturges skiing in mild weather, light snow, on powdery runs. On the other hand, one of the most talked about parts of the trip is the highly active social scene. At least sixty students made their way to a party in one room on the second on Friday night, and on Saturday most students went to the resort bar, The Connection.

After only twenty-four hours, the participants were already giving rave reviews for Mundia’s efforts this year. Not only did Mundia greatly enjoy meeting a lot of new people, especially LLMs, others have been enjoying themselves as well. Sturges, Rushab Sanghvi and Samantha Dworken all enjoyed the opportunity the SBA has provided for students to interact and hang out in a nonacademic setting.

In Sanghvi’s opinion, the ski trip is the biggest event of the semester. While he enjoys Barrister’s Ball, the ball is only for one night. What makes this better is that this trip is for three nights.

Dworken, one of the few 1Ls that attended the ski trip last year, returned for another year because she had such a great time. She said she is thankful to her former mentor for encouraging her to attend.

As a former 1L who did not attend the ski trip because my closest friends were not interested in a long weekend in West Virginia, I give kudos to all of the 1Ls that attended this weekend.

“It’s well-timed during our year,” said Bowman, summing up the weekend. “You get back from winter break and it’s really nice to have a weekend before you get into the semester and get lost in all of the things you are doing and your friends are doing. It’s really nice to get together and have fun. We’re all on a mountain so it’s not like we could worry about work if we want to. So it’s good clean fun!”