These Revelers Celebrate Their Own Traditions for New Year’s

As each year draws to a close, Karen Swirsky and Nils Eddy make their wayto a rustic cross-country ski lodge in a snow-lined canyon of the eastern Sierra. There, 9,400 feet above sea level, without running water and with only wood-burning stoves for heat, they celebrate New Year’s Eve with about 60 other revelers.

With as much as 6 feet of snow outside the door, guests at Rock Creek Winter Lodge usher in the new year with a party that includes dancing and elaborate skits performed in full costume. “It was really fun last year,” Swirsky says. “It got down to 16 or 17 below (zero).”

The New Year’s party-and-bar circuit is far from dead, but Swirsky, Eddy and many others prefer to skip traditional hangouts and forge their own traditions to mark the passing of the old and coming of the new.

For Santa Ana residents Swirsky and Eddy, the Sierra ski trek satisfies a love of the outdoors without sacrificing a chance to celebrate the arrival of the new year. They’re not alone: the lodge each year sells out its 14 cabins for the holiday by Oct. 1, and there is usually a waiting list. The price tag for three nights (the minimum for New Year’s)--including breakfasts, dinners and a ski lesson--is $200.

“I see the same people every year,” says Swirsky, who has spent nearly every New Year’s Eve at the lodge since the winter of 1980-81. During their days there, she and Eddy ski through the canyon’s forests and meadows and past the mountain lakes on the edge of the John Muir Wilderness Area.

“I think it’s one of the prettiest canyons in the Sierra,” Swirsky says, “especially in winter,” when the crowds are gone and the parking lots are covered with snow. Still, she and Eddy decided to try a new destination a few years back, a backcountry hut above the Yosemite Valley.

“We ended up at a hut with a bunch of Sierra Clubbers who didn’t want to stay up (for the new year),” Swirsky recalls. “Nils and I just looked at each other and said, ‘Why aren’t we at Rock Creek?’ ”

But for other Orange County residents, the ocean, with its 37 miles of coastline, often figures prominently in non-traditional New Year’s celebrations. There are parties in beach houses, on yachts and aboard harbor cruises. And a number of local revelers take their boats across the channel to Catalina Island to greet the new year in Avalon, says David Loesch, part owner and director of Aventura Sailing Assn. in Dana Point.

The association has organized group trips to Catalina in the past, but now the trips are organized independently by members. “Mostly, on our boats, it’s singles,” Loesch said.

Bill McNeely of Dana Point is a club member who made his first New Year’s trek to Avalon 2 years ago. A veteran of world-famous celebrations in New York’s Times Square and at State and Lake streets in Chicago, McNeely, who is single, said he plans to make the Catalina crossing his own tradition.

“Of all the things I’ve done, that’s been one of the nicest. You completely eliminate the drunk-driving problem over there since nobody’s driving. Avalon is such a small town you can walk everywhere.”

In Avalon, New Year’s Eve celebrations range from the annual black-tie event at the Casino to rock ‘n’ roll parties in seaside bars. “There’s a wide range of things to do,” McNeely says, but “if all you wanted to do was sit on your boat and look at the shore and the sky, you could do that, too.”

McNeely likes to sample the offerings on shore before heading back to the boat in time for midnight, when boat horns and bottle rockets herald the new year. “It’s kind of a laid-back Times Square on the water,” he says.

While McNeely involves just a few friends in his New Year’s Eve plans, some groups mark the holiday with a communal celebration. Each year, Pete Pederson of Buena Park packs up his RV and heads to the Hemet Fairgrounds, where he meets friends from the Landau Southwest Motor Home Club for a few days of boccie ball, cards and revelry.

Members of the Prospectors Club of Southern California, including many from Orange County, have spent the past 15 New Year’s Eves camping on local beaches. Huntington State Beach is the traditional destination, although this coming holiday the group will head to Shoreline Drive in Long Beach.

The informal gathering includes 10 to 15 RV rigs and involves singles, couples and families. “Basically, it’s the same group each year,” says club president Bob Glick.

The continuity of the event--the chance to celebrate with the same group of friends year after year--helps make it special, Glick says. A more practical reason the event is successful is that the participants can celebrate together into the night, then sleep in their RVs when the party’s over, he says.

“At least you stay off the streets. We’ve always considered it safer, with all the drunk drivers on the road.”

Some who choose to skip the party-bar circuit on New Year’s Eve prefer to leave the planning to someone else. Travel agent Lori Lightner of O’Donnell Tours & Travel Service in Fullerton says Hawaii is a popular destination, but cruises are her most popular New Year’s bookings.

Three- and 4-day cruises to Mexico and in the Caribbean, which generally cost from $400, are among the favorites, but one increasingly popular package is strictly a New Year’s phenomenon: the so-called “cruise to nowhere.” Travelers on these 2- to 3-day trips dispense with the pretense of having a place to go and simply see the cruise ship as one big floating party. The trips leave from a number of ports, including San Pedro.

“They just go out to sea, turn around and come back,” Lightner says. “There’s no destination.”

The trips are planned as much as a year in advance and often sell out within a week, Lightner said. Because the trips are short and there are no stops, the prices are generally lower than those for standard cruises.