After a one-year hiatus, the women of Dartmouth Ski Patrol brought back International Women’s Day at the Dartmouth Skiway on March 8 with a renewed focus on community, mentorship and access to the outdoors. Originally launched in 2024 as a celebration of women in skiing, the event has grown into a full-day experience featuring a Junior Girls Patrol Day, hands-on skill stations and community-wide festivities.
Organized by Eleanor Neu ’27 and Suzy Magill ’27, this year’s International Women’s Day programming expanded on the 2024 event by providing opportunities for girls ages 7 to 15 to learn more about ski patrolling. Magill, Neu and their team paired hands-on opportunities with celebration through live music, food and a large raffle supported by local and national sponsors, all of which was aimed at empowering the next generation of women on the mountain.
Magill sat down with The Dartmouth to talk about this year’s International Women’s Day event, her experiences on ski patrol and the impact of mentoring young girls in the outdoors.
What made you decide that 2026 was the year to bring back International Women’s Day to the Skiway?
SM: We were ready to have it again, and we had the energy behind it. The really cool thing about this year was that it is 50 years after 1976, which was the graduation of the first four-year class of women at Dartmouth and the first women patrollers at Dartmouth.
How were you able to get this event running?
SM: There are three big players on the Skiway adult leadership side. The first one is Liesel Robbins, who’s a PhD student in the earth science department. She’s a female community patroller and she’s been such an awesome example to all of us girls on patrol. She’s one of the most kind and empathetic people that I’ve ever met, and seeing her patrol with empathy has been really inspiring. Liesel was super behind us bringing International Women’s Day back.
I also talked to Matt Fulton ’96, who’s our director of ski patrol, and then to Mark Adamczyk, who is the general manager at the Skiway. They were both completely gung-ho. Mark helped us book out the dates, make sure that there were buses running and get the lodge all set up. And Fulton was super behind us using all the patrol resources and teaching the girls. Eleanor, Liesel and I and the rest of the student patrol who were kind of the movers behind it, but we absolutely had support from the Skiway management.
You mentioned that one of the people on College President Sian Leah Beilock’s team helped you coordinate the event. What does it mean to have direct support from the administration?
SM: It was so awesome to have support from Beilock. Bruce Sacerdote ’90 is an economics professor, and he was how we connected with Beilock. That support was really what made it all happen, especially financially. They were able to fund things like a huge Lou’s cake, a bunch of charcuterie and the band. Those kinds of things are really what pulls the community together.
It was also obviously super meaningful to have President Beilock involved and attend the event. It’s cool that she was recognizing our work and our organization and being part of the community.
Beyond the logistics, what did International Women’s Day personally mean to you?
SM: It was a really special celebration of being a girl in the outdoors, being a girl at Dartmouth and a female leader within ski patrol and on the mountains. I’ve always been super inspired by women in the outdoors,and had great role models growing up. For me, it felt like a really full circle moment to be in front of these little girls and telling them ‘patrolling is so fun,’ ‘skiing is so fun,’ and ‘This is something that you can do; it’s not something you should shy away from.’
How did your upbringing influence the way you organized the community aspect of this event?
SM: I’m from Steamboat Springs, Co., which is a small ski town in northwest Colorado. I’ve grown up with a really strong outdoor community, and a really strong outdoor community of women. I’m very used to having big community-oriented events, whether that’s a junior ski day or barbecues at our smaller hill downtown or big tailgates at the mountain. The outdoors and skiing in particular is such a fun thing to rally the community around. Being outdoors and having that connection with nature is really special to me, too. I was very much surrounded by that growing up, and it felt really cool to pay it forward by connecting with more of the community here at Dartmouth, and feel that sense of people rallying around loving skiing, the outdoors and mountains.
Which female trailblazers inspired you during event planning?
SM: We actually got to talk to a ’76 who was on patrol. Her name is Martha Beattie, and it was so cool to talk to her because I feel like I hadn’t heard firsthand about being one of the first women at Dartmouth before. She was awesome — she spoke about how it was so cool to be one of the first women and be trailblazers at Dartmouth.
What was the most rewarding moment that you witnessed during Junior Girls Patrol Day?
SM: At the end of the stations, three women gave speeches to all the girls. They were Izzy Washburn ’27, who is on Dartmouth’s alpine ski team; Lauren Jacobs ’27, who is the captain of Dartmouth's club alpine ski team; and Avery Kalafatas ’27, who is on ski patrol and an EMT with Upper Valley EMS. It’s so rewarding to just see friends of mine and peers of mine talking about how much having female role models and being passionate about skiing growing up contributed to their confidence and their belief in themselves. Seeing these 30 little girls looking up at them with the biggest eyes, so excited and so enraptured by what they were saying — it felt like such a cool moment to witness those girls being so inspired in real time.
Do you think International Women’s Day is going to be a permanent annual fixture?
SM: Having Women’s Day is a way to just recognize how important it is to continue encouraging each other and being there for each other. It definitely will become an annual event. We’re hoping to make it even bigger next year with more sponsors, bigger prizes, more student attendance and more Junior Girls Patrol Day attendance. Eleanor and I really hope that beyond us, this event will continue to grow and remind the whole community how important it is to have girls and women on the skiway, on the mountains and out there patrolling.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Gabriella Messina ’27 is a sports writer. She is from Rye, N.Y. and is majoring in Engineering and minoring in French. On campus, Gabriella is on the club lacrosse and taekwondo teams. She is also a member of the 2027 class council.
