5:09 p.m.
Kids and teens dressed up as ’80s icons including MC Hammer, Bill Cosby and ET Friday at the costume contest at Grassburger.
The contest was judged on creativity, theme and performance.
If there was an award for resilience, it would have gone to Mason Turner who recovered brilliantly after falling off the stage.
She even returned to the stage and performed the worm. Mason and her friends were dressed as though they had returned from a Blondie concert.
3 p.m.
A team of former Durangoans returned from Denver for a glorious beer-smattered win at the Waiter/Waitress Race Friday afternoon at Steamworks.
Members of the victorious team, #Slime-Life, all employees of the Limelight Supper Club and Lounge, practiced the skills needed to win at work.
So, they went ahead and got drunk in preparation for the race.
The test of food-service skills started with one person from each team donning a Pac-Man helmet while another team-member chucked beer-filled water balloons at them.
#Slime-Life team member Alicia Shiver took a beer-balloon to the face and planned to “bask in the maltiness of it.”
Competitors also tiptoed across a balance beam made of skis with a platter of glasses and wrestled a keg across the snow, all in pursuit of a keg of their own.
#Slime-Life team members will be taking their Steamworks keg back to Denver to enjoy.
“It’s riding in the middle,” Tyler Colle said.
12 p.m.
Above the eighties hairstyles and rock-god personas, another sign of Snowdown 2016 appeared Friday in the Animas Valley north of Durango with the assent of about 10 hot air balloons.
Clear blue skies and snow-covered mountains provided a picture-perfect backdrop for the colorful balloons that drifted south and then back north in the crisp morning breeze.
If you missed it Friday, you should have another chance to see them at 8 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, weather permitting.
Pilot Roger Hoppe of Albuquerque, N.M., said the Animas Valley presents a unique challenge; pilots want to go north or south, but never too far east or west over the valley ridges. He’s participated in the Snowdown Balloon Rally since about 1990 or 1995.
“It’s a challenge, it’s beautiful and the people are fantastic,” he said. “Balloons make us laugh. It’s good for us Americans to laugh.”
7 a.m. Hate the cold but love the Snowdown parade? You have an option this year to watch it from the comfort of your warm home. The Durango Herald, in partnership with the Durango Welcome Center, will stream the parade live on the Herald’s website. The parade will start at 6 p.m. Friday, preceded briefly by the Snowdown Firework (yes, that’s right, just a single firework). We’ll start our livestream about 5:45 p.m. Durango Herald Editor Amy Maestas will emcee the parade, providing live color and, she hopes, good jokes from the 1980s.
