Snowdown 2017 has now come and gone. Princess Leias and Darth Vaders have reverted back to their normal, everyday lives and selves. All that is left behind are wild, vivid memories and a hankering for next year.

“It was a lot more festive,” said Christian Ramos, Fort Lewis College senior and third-year attendee of snowdown. “You either committed to the whole intergalactic space theme or you tried, and I feel that a lot more people did it this year compared to last year’s ‘80s theme.”

It was a unique experience, said Caleb Barham, a junior at FLC and first time Snowdown attendee. Barham said he loved the intergalactic theme because he is a big fan of the Star Wars movies.

“I would give it a ten out of ten,” Natalie Keightley, senior at FLC attending her first Snowdown, said.  “I will definitely go again. It was a lot of fun.”

This year’s Snowdown had over 100 events.

“Well, first I went to the parade with my friends and we were expecting more fireworks so we were kind of disappointed in that but it was still a lot of fun,” Keightley said. “Then we went to the music trivia at the Pourhouse downtown on Main and there was a line, which I did not expect, but that was a lot of fun. I liked it.”

Ramos participated in a few events including the Mario Kart tournament and the bull riding competition.

“Mario Kart has been an annual thing for me. This is my third year doing it,” Ramos said. “I came in second place by two seconds. Yeah that was a tough loss.”

The three students did seem to unanimously agree that the parade was the best event of all.

“The parade was probably the biggest event because there were so many people there,” Ramos said.

The parade was great because it seemed like the whole town and the entire school came out for that one event, even though it was terrible to try to park downtown,

If next year they had more stuff on weekends and less during the week, that would fix a lot of issues with students not being able to go to week day events, said Ramos.

This year’s Snowdown seems to have captured some repeat attendees. Ramos, Keightley, and Barham all said they will definitely be attending next year.

The theme of Snowdown 2018 is Still Sporty at Forty and is the 40th anniversary of Durango’s winter festival.