44 Winter 2019 LOCALadk Magazine
LOCALadk
sicians and commented, "I hope nobody gets sick out there
today." More recently, since 1990, the Adirondack Ski Tour-
ing Council (now Barkeater Trails Alliance [BETA]) has—snow
conditions permitting— organized an annual key swap.
The exact logistics of this organized key swap have varied
depending on where participants were coming from. If pos-
sible, for instance, we would tr y to accommodate a southern
start for those who would be driving from the south. What
has remained a constant is that the final meeting place has
been Cascade Cross- Countr y Ski Center, where whichever
group finishes first has a warm
and relaxing place to wait followed by a re-exchange of keys
and, of course, an exchange of stories over a beverage.
On one of the key swaps, the group nearly doubled in size
enroute. As we were exchanging keys at the Henderson Mon-
ument, another group of skiers that had started from the
south overheard our conversation and remarked that they
had always wanted to arrange such a swap. After a short
conference, we determined that we had enough seats at the
north end for the additional passengers as well as enough
drivers to add one more car to the drive back. The only ele-
ment missing was that the driv-
er of that car hadn't yet
