HSE Snow Fest 2019: How Students, Alumni and Staff Spent the Weekend

© Evgenia Gorobets/ HSE

On February 10, 2019, HSE Snow Fest – a winter sports festival, organized by HSE Extreme Sports Club and HSE Student Development Office – was held at the ‘Kant’ skiing complex.

This cheerful, popular and dynamic event energized all participants. Professional skiers and snowboarders as well as beginners, who had an opportunity to learn the basics of these winter sports with Extreme Sports Club instructors, could ride the slopes. Many visitors to the festival tried snowboarding and skiing for the first time.

This year, the theme of the event was a traditional Russian folk festival. By tradition, the HSE mascot – a Crow – opened the festival by going down the slope in the Russian traditional headdress – kokoshnik.

In addition to skiing, guests of the festival participated in workshops on wooden whistle and spoon painting, which they could take home as souvenirs.

The costume contest inspired by Russian folk tales was one of the most creative and memorable competitions of the event. The winners received snowboards and backpacks from the ‘Kant’ chain of shops. Gleb Borisov, student of the Faculty of Law, took first place for his costume of Koshhei the Immortal. Nina Tamarkina, student of the programme in Business Informatics, took second place for her costume of Baba Yaga.

The festival platform was decorated in a traditional Russian style, with a golden matryoshka from the students of HSE School of Art and Design, and with a graffiti wall, on which everyone could make an inscription or a drawing. At tea and pancake stations, guests could enjoy hot pancakes and warm up.

The organizers paid special attention to the festival design, but they did not forget that HSE Snow Fest is, first and foremost, a sporting festival. The main event of the day was a Slalom competition in skiing and snowboarding, open to all. The winners received certificates and gifts from HSE.

The winners of the competition are:

Skiing (slalom), men:

1st place – Alexey Buchnev, New Economic School

2nd place – Alexey Makarov, Professor of the Department of Higher Mathematics;

3rd place – Evgeny Konkov.

Skiing (slalom), women:

1st place – Ekaterina Vorobyova, Faculty of Communications, Media and Design;

2nd place – Olga Varskaya, Faculty of Business and Management;

3rd place – Maria Shepshelevich, Faculty of Humanities.

Snowboarding (slalom), men:

1st place – Maxim Zhikharevich;

2nd place – Vladimir Fedorov, New Economic School

3rd place – Evgeny Teplitsky, Faculty of Business and Management;

Snowboarding (slalom), women:

1st place – Daria Tarashkevich, New Economic School

2nd place – Vlada Fioshkina, ICEF;

3rd place – Ksenia Savanina, Faculty of Communications, Media and Design.

The competition details have been published in the festival VK group. We would like to thank all the participants and winners for their enthusiasm and energy during the competition.

This year 573 participants, including students, alumni, and staff, took part in HSE Snow Fest.

The event has become a great tradition for HSE. We look forward to seeing you at other HSE events, as well as at HSE Extreme Sports Club expeditions.

All of us who organised the event are happy with the results. This year everyone has made even more effort, aiming to organize an event of a larger scale. Primarily, we thought about the safety, comfort and good mood of the participants. I would like to thank everyone who participated in the organization of HSE Snow Fest, and helped to implement our plans and ideas. Thanks to HSE and the Extreme Sports Club for endless support for our extracurricular activity. I’d also like to thank our wonderful volunteers, athletic and cheerful guests, who like dancing and slope riding, delicious pancakes and new acquaintances, they are the most important people, without whom none of this would have happened. See you at HSE Snow Fest 2020!

Varvara Sukhanova,

first-year student of the programme in Applied Economics

HSE Snow Fest is a great opportunity to spend time with HSE students, lecturers and alumni in an informal atmosphere — to ride the slopes, drink hot tea with pancakes, and paint a wooden spoon at the workshop. The winter holiday traditionally brings a series of large HSE events for students with great outdoor festivities. In my opinion, such events create heartwarming memories of student life and help us to take a fresh look at our classmates and teachers, and to find like-minded people. This year was a particularly bright start, let it last the whole academic year.

Alena Makshanchikova,

Project Head at the Student Development Office