Dartmouth's Winter Carnival is best in the nation

	The Walk-On Jacob Osterhout is a recent Dartmouth grad who was cut from the basketball team during the first week of his freshman year.

By Jacob Osterhout

While the eyes of the world are certain to be on the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino this weekend, there's an older winter tradition featuring fun and frolicking at a tiny college in New Hampshire.

Dartmouth College, the smallest school in the Ivy League -- but one that has produced such big-name athletes as Jets QB Jay Fiedler and Astros catcher Brad Ausmus -- kicks off its 96th annual Winter Carnival on Thursday. National Geographic has referred to it as "the Mardi Gras of the North." It has been the subject of movies, and is perennially listed on Web sites as a must-attend party weekend.

"I used to sit on benches around the Green [Dartmouth's quad] and watch the visitors from out of town try and cross on the ice and snow," recalls Ausmus ('91). "I'd see a dozen people slip and fall every hour."

Widely regarded as the oldest collegiate winter festival in the U.S., Winter Carnival remains a release for students from these long, dark, frozen months in New Hampshire. Dartmouth advertises it as a "celebration of winter, snow, and fun in the outdoors."

"It was always a great weekend that attracted a lot of people," says Fiedler ('94). "A lot of alumni came up there that weekend and there were always a lot of things happening around campus."

Dartmouth's skiing, basketball, hockey, squash and cross-country teams will compete over the weekend, but most of the revelers will focus on more creative activities. Students line up for the polar bear swim -- they wait on ice -- to jump into a hole in a frigid local pond. The human dog-sled race features teams of four winter-crazed students pulling a fifth on a sled.

Then there's the giant snow sculpture designed by students to reflect the Carnival's yearly theme. Built on the Green, this frozen monument to Old Man Winter has taken the form of everything from a dragon that spit actual fire to a saxophone-playing snowman heralded by the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the tallest ever built.