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Fourth Annual Park City Shot Ski Brings 1,310 Shot Takers To Main Street

The Park City Sunrise Rotary broke the unofficial world record for most participants and longest ski at the Fourth Annual Shot Ski Saturday. 

Down the middle of Park City’s Main Street, more than 1,300 people stood around 515 skis—bolted together into one 2,610-foot-long ski—which held shot glasses filled with either High West whiskey or apple juice. They lifted the ski, counted down from 10 and shot the contents of the glasses down the hatch.

Magaji Edwards from Salt Lake City has done the shot ski a couple times. He shared a trick with beginners.

“Not standing next to a really tall person—that’s simply the answer," Edwards said. "Because then that just screws it up for everybody.”

Park City resident Kyra Parkhurst says there’s a bit more to it than that.

“First, you have to have a drink beforehand," Parkhurst said. "Then you have to...pick it up and coordinate, and tilt and dip.”

The shot ski started when some Park City Rotary Club members visited Breckenridge, Colorado, with the Park City Leadership program. Breckenridge’s local rotary club hosts its own shot ski event to fundraise for community programs, so in 2015, the Park City Rotary Club adopted it to support its community grants. Since then, Sunrise Rotary Fundraising Director Connie Nelson says there’s been a friendly rivalry between Park City and Breckenridge, where each town ups the ante by only a dozen or so participants each year.

“They did 1,299 in January, and last year in October, we did 1,275, so we’re just creeping along," Nelson said. "It's an unwritten rule that we're not going to, I mean, we could have sold many more spots, but we keep it to those numbers so that each year, as volunteer organizations, we’re making money for community grants, but we're still having fun in the community.”

Nelson says she doesn’t have the official numbers yet, but the club sold 1,310 tickets and was aiming to raise $40,000 for community grants, which fund a variety of programs throughout Park City. The grant application is available at Park City Sunrise Rotary Club’s website.

The shot ski world record is unofficial because in 1991, Guinness World Records banned alcohol consumption from its official record keeping.

Emily Means hadn’t intended to be a journalist, but after two years of studying chemistry at the University of Utah, she found her fit in the school’s communication program. Diving headfirst into student media opportunities, Means worked as a host, producer and programming director for K-UTE Radio as well as a news writer and copy editor at The Daily Utah Chronicle.