This past weekend was one for the ages. A weekend full of laughs, skiing, tricks, new friendships and most of all fun. The Gathering at Loon, now in it's third year, is something everybody in the New England area should attend if given the opportunity. A day full of skiing with pros, meeting people you just know from a username on the internet and getting the chance to win a ton of swag seems like the perfect day of skiing in my mind.

Here's what went down:

We all met outside of The Paul Bunyan Room on Saturday Morning and gathered up all the swag we planned to giveaway throughout the day, headed up The Seven Brothers Chair and started hot lapping Springboard. As the morning went on more and more NS'ers started joined up with every lap and before we knew it we had a whole gang of skiers running the park.

Due to insane lift lines we decided that it was time to stay in the park, pick a feature and hike it.

The crew // Photo: Ed Cavendish

After hiking the down tube for awhile we decided it was time to give away some prizes. Kevin Merchant aka Tweak started the madness with calling the first trick. Nose block tail grab on the flat rail. At least 20 stoked kids rushed over to the rail and tried to get the trick, many tried..few were successful but after about 5 minutes a grom walked away with a Ski Monster hoodie. The session then moved to the down tube and the give away rail jam was in session.

Ns'er killin the 50-50 game // Photo: Ed Cavendish

Lorin Daughton mid nose butter 270 on // Photo: Ed Cavendish

After the majority of the swag was tossed out to the kids, one big prize was left. The grand daddy of them all, a fresh pair of J skis All Play's. In typical Gathering fashion to win these skis you had to be the fastest in the park. A foot race to the bottom of springboard and back up.

Patrick Goss sprinted his way to victory, when asked about winning the skis his reply was:

"so stoked man it was definitely worth sliding down the bottom part to get a lead"

Gotta do what you gotta do when a fresh pair of skis are on the line.

A very stoked Patrick // Photo: Josh McIntire

After that we broke away and spun laps in the main park for the rest of the day. For more, check out the recap videos by Johnny Hayes and NS'er Ben_Collins.

http://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/817039/NS-Gathering---Loon-Mountain

NS Gathering Recap // Video: Johnny Hayes

This was sent to me just hours after I got off the hill. Huge props to Ben for putting this out insanely quickly!

http://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/816212/The-Gathering---NS-Meetup-2016-Recap?c=11

Gathering | NS meetup 2016 // Video: Ben Collins

A massive thank you goes out to everybody who made the trip up to Loon last weekend. We couldn't have had such a great time without any of you guys! Thank you to J skis, Revision and most of all Loon Mountain for making this all possible.