Top Shack

Title: Top Shack

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

The informant is Benjamin Cape. He is 21 years old. He is from Seattle, Washington. He attends Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. He is currently a sophomore or a ‘22. He studies computer science. He joined Ski Patrol his freshmen year after a lengthy application process and enjoys his time on the patrol.

Contextual Data:

Patrollers use the name Top Shack to refer to their cabin on top of the mountain. Their cabin was rebuilt to be bigger, and their old cabin has become the lift cabin. When they got the new cabin, they called it Top Shack. This is a slang term used for the cabin that represents home base for the patrollers.

Item:

Patrollers call the ski patrol cabin at the top of the mountain “Top Shack.” They recently rebuilt the ski patrol cabin to be larger, and their old cabin became the lift cabin.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

“There are some stories about what used to be the ski patrol cabin at the top of the mountain and how that has changed over time. I can’t think of any like horror stories or like stereotypical type stories they might have, I mean we do patrol a pretty small mountain…It is a pretty simple story from what I can remember. I mean they did tell it to us like a year ago probably. Basically we have two mountains that we patrol on, and one of the cabins on the main mountain is a little bit larger. Obviously it didn’t always used to be this cabin. It used to be an older one and it actually used to be a little bit higher up and then they rebuilt it and that older cabin that we used to use is now the lift cabin, so they are both still there but we use the bigger one and the lift guys use the smaller one…We call our cabin Top Shack since it is on top of the mountain.”

Informant’s Comments:

“It is just kind of one of the stories that we talk about on the mountain. The type of cabin we use and its name.”

Collector’s Comments:

The name “Top Shack” represents the cabin or shack at the top of the mountain, but I think this name has additional meaning. The name “Top Shack” is pretty informal, which is symbolic of the informal relationship that many of the patrollers have with each other. Top Shack is the place where the patrollers hang out with each other, bonding, playing games, joking around, and forming lifelong friendships. This laid back and simple bonding that takes place in Top Shack translates into an informal name for their home base. I also think that the name is very endearing. It gives me a warm feeling when I hear it, which is symbolic of how the patrollers feel about the Ski Patrol team and the work that they do.

Collector’s Name: Rachel Mashal

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive