By Jacob Osterhout

This year's sculpture of Calvin and Hobbes bobsledding down a large D will seek to invoke the theme of, "The Stupendous Games: Mischief in the Snow."

"There were a couple years that it didn't really snow that much," says Fiedler. "It was tough for them to get the sculpture going."

A warm winter doesn't seem to dampen Dartmouth's festive mood. After all, there are always the parties.

"Most people spent Winter Carnival on Frat Row," Ausmus says. "I remember coming back late in the night, or early in the morning, from the parties and there was snow and ice all over the campus. I was walking back to the dorm and there was a hill covered in a sheet of ice. I surfed down the entire hill without falling -- that wasn't easy to do -- and at the very bottom I gave out a breath of air like I made it. Right then my feet went out from under me. Boom. I landed on my ass."

Conceived in 1910, Winter Carnival was initially a recreational sports day to get students out of their dorms. In 1914, the college expanded the festival to four days and introduced more competitive athletic events as well as social activities like the Carnival Ball. The ice sculpture contest started 13 years later with fraternities competing for best on campus.

Not every tradition has survived. During the all-male Dartmouth days, students would ship in dates from all over the East Coast. Thousands of women took special Snow Trains up to the Hanover area to celebrate the weekend. There was even the crowning of a Winter Carnival Queen -- a practice that ended when the school went co-ed in 1973.

The most famous event of Winter Carnival no longer exists. During the 1980s and 90s, Psi U fraternity turned their front lawn into an ice skating rink and held the annual keg jump where participants strapped on hockey skates and jumped over as many kegs as possible. In 2000, Dartmouth withdrew insurance coverage of the event, effectively ending the jump.

While known as an inclusive and jovial event, Winter Carnival has also been a forum for student discontent. In the past, snow sculptures have been designed to protest issues from the first Gulf War to an alcohol ban in the dorms. In 1999, the fraternities and sororities went so far as to cancel all 21 of their parties scheduled for the weekend to protest the administration's long-term goal to "end the Greek system as we know it."

But even under protest and without the Snow Trains and Keg Jump, there's always fun to be had at Dartmouth's Winter Carnival. Someone will put those kegs to good use.