STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Everybody was a winner in Saturday’s 53rd annual Zions Bank Boulder Mountain Tour, no matter whether they finished first or 823rd.

How could they not feel like a winner on a sun-kissed day when skiers were ferrying skis in open convertibles and even downhill skiers were skiing in T-shirts as temperature climbed from a low of 32 degrees into the 50s.

Smiles were plentiful, even from the Bridger Ski Foundation racer who crossed the finish line a minute behind the winners.

“Somebody said this was all downhill!” he gasped.

Sun Valley Suns hockey players unloaded a marble counter tiki bar that took nine men to carry at the aid station near Cathedral Pines, setting up six tiki stools with comfy pillow seats around it.

Angie and Eric Grove and Erin Hess set up wooden stools next to it to cheer on a nephew, his girlfriend and the other thousand skiers set to ski past.

“We always sit here,” said Angie, as she watched the hockey players set up a barbecue for brats and burgers and put beer on ice. “They always have fun commentary—and burgers.”

Often the hockey players offer beers to friends who go by, added Eric.

“One year a female racer downed a beer in no time so she could get back to racing. It was pretty impressive,” added Angie.

Chelan Pauly Oldemeyer raced dressed in a red string flapper outfit, a feather sticking out of the braid around her head, then picked up her infant Sage, who was born last April, at the finish line.

“I dressed up because I was in Wave Three, which is the not-too-serious wave,” said Oldemeyer, who manages Galena Lodge. “This is Sage’s second Boulder. She was in my belly last year while I worked the soup station.”

Thirteen-year-old Jed Schmidt skied the full Boulder with his mother Anne Marie Schmidt, after having done the Half-Boulder with his family last year. And he was elated to learn he had come in 231st even though, he said, it was tiring.

Benjamin Maloney is just 8 and a half months, but he beamed as Zions Bank volunteers draped a Boulder Mountain medal around his neck Saturday. Ben did the 15km Charley Course Half Boulder with his parents Rob and Maddie Maloney in a chariot his father towed down the track.

“We come here every year from Minnesota to do the Boulder,” said Rob. “We came for a week the first time and now we stay for a month. It’s so fun--the trail, the view… and it’s something we can do as a family.”