STRAIGHT LINE DAPPER DAN Dapper Dan preparing his dinner in 1987, sometime after the Utah liquor laws permitted the purchase of fifths of Jack Daniels rather than a handful of minis. Words and Photo LEE COHEN DURING Utah’s record-breaking winter of 83/84, we had a roommate we called Dapper Dan—Dapper for short. We’d met him the previous winter, when Duff, Doug and I got stuck in Alta for a three-day interlodge. About 100 inches of snow fell, and after spending the first night at the Goldminer’s Daughter, we decided to spend the second and third nights at the Rustler—after calling and finding out they were serving shrimp scampi for dinner. We became acquaintance with Dapper in the bar downstairs, amid a cloud of Stoli or Finlandia—or probably both. Multiday interlodges tend to deplete reserves. Dan Sheridan was originally from Chicago, a loner staying in a cheap motel downtown where he got a monthly rate. He came down from the North Slope, Prudhoe Bay, a place fraught with hard-nosed, hardworking guys drawn to Alaska by the good wages. To say he was a grizzly character was to nail it on the head—long, messy hair, not concerned at all with the regular world—just here to go skiing like the rest of us. The thing was, he hadn’t actually started skiing until well into his 30s. Dapper lived a life of structure—you might even call it discipline were it not for his bizarre habits. He was 35 when we met—a full 10 years older than me—but was a dedicated ski bum. The thing was, he had a way different of acting that out than those of us who’d come to Utah frothing for powder. Every day he would drive his F-250 to the mouth of the canyon and take the bus, usually showing up at 2 p.m. We joked that Dapper skied at Alta but had never skied untracked pow. That wasn’t entirely true, but almost. He loved moguls, ripping zipper lines on 204cm slalom boards. We did too, but bumps were Dapper’s raison d’être. On a big snow day, you’d run into him late in the afternoon on his first laps, or at the bar after the lifts closed. When asked about the skiing, his pat response was, “There’s some pretty good bumps on Wildcat Face.” In 84/85 he got hired at Alta as a snow-maker. He had to cut all his hair off, but the day he got hired it started dumping and snowmaking ended for the season. He never had to work a single day. They let him keep his employee pass anyway. Dapper was always on his program, and what a program it was. He’d start cooking his dinner every night at about 10 or 11 p.m., imbibing heartily from many minis of Jack Daniels (Utah only sold hard liquor in tiny bottles at the time) and his 12-pack of Bud. He cooked the same thing every night—chewy gristle steak, mushrooms and brussels sprouts, chased with his potent potables. When I woke up at 5:30 or 6 a.m. I’d find Dapper asleep with the lights on, his bong and an empty yogurt container next to him, his head propped up against the wall. I would say, “Dapper! Snowed a foot, come ski some pow with us!” And every time he’d say, “Hey, can you close the door and turn off the lights?” Still, later that afternoon he’d show up ready to throw down— like clockwork. Dapper loved skiing just as much as we did, he just had a differ-ent way of going about it. A few years later when he ended up work-ing with the mogul team at Snowbird, we didn’t see him around anymore. One day my buddy Garrett and I were driving around in my ’59 CJ and saw him walking down the street. I downshifted to a 5.38 second gear crawl and hung a right into a parking lot. We yelled to Dapper to hop in as we looped around to the other entrance. “Dapper, what the hell? You’re still alive!” As we headed back to the house to have dinner and regale our-selves with stories of time gone by, I turned to Dapper, and asked, “How’s the skiing been for ya?” Jammed on top of the wheel well in back of the roll bar, Dapper Dan shot me his trademark grin, “There’s some real good bumps on Silver Fox over at the Bird.” 102 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 2: Page 102
