A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
At 2:40 a.m. the snow outside the great room stopped falling and started flying.
Inside, sixty-one people were dancing in their socks. The winter rave had taken over the whole lodge: red work lights strung along the timber beams, steam lifting off bare shoulders, every window gone white. Down the hall in the old ski-rental room, the techno ran one hypnotic loop for eleven minutes, folding into itself until nobody was thinking past the next bar.
Vesna counted heads anyway. Nine Januaries of throwing this party, and she still counted heads.
The mudroom door banged. Anselm, the caretaker, came in wearing the storm: snow in his eyebrows, snow packed in the ruff of his old dog, Moose. He bent to her ear.
"Pass is closed. Gates are down at the bottom of the road. Plows are saying Monday."
"It's Saturday."
"It's Sunday," he said gently. "Since three hours ago."
Then, under the kick drum, a long rising note came down off the ridge through the wind.
Lazlo cut the music. Sixty heads turned to the glass.
A second voice answered the first, farther up. Then a third. The whole dark mountainside was singing.
Only one person didn't turn. By the stone fireplace, a tall, quiet man in a black hooded cloak set a split log on the coals, and the firelight climbed his back: a black wolf rising out of crimson smoke, red-eyed, beneath a pale full moon.
Vesna looked down at her clipboard. Sixty names.
She counted the room again.
Sixty-one.
✦
The power went at noon. The fridge hummed, then didn't. The furnace sighed and went still.
Anselm was already in his parka. "Generator's in the shed. Runs the furnace and the kitchen. Not the sound system. Heat first, always."
By the door, a guy with a Monday shift was zipping his jacket, keys in his fist. Anselm stepped in front of him, mild as milk. "Nobody drives. The plows can't see you, and the road ends at a locked gate anyway. The mountain's keeping you, son. Let it."
So the lodge became a village. Noemi, who had come up alone on Friday knowing nobody's name, ended up at the hallway whiteboard with a marker, writing what sixty-one people had: forty pounds of rice, nine dozen eggs, three crates of clementines, a wheel of cheddar, one jar of pickles no one would claim. By dinner people were calling her Chef.
At dusk she hauled firewood in from the porch beside the man in the wolf cloak. The porch thermometer read −19°F. He worked bare-handed, unhurried, the drifts seeming to part around his boots.
"Aren't you cold?"
He considered it as if nobody had ever asked. "No."
"I'm Noemi. I didn't catch your—"
Up on the ridge, a howl. He turned his head toward it the way you turn when someone across a crowded room says your name. When he turned back, he only smiled and handed her another log.
Inside, Moose, who growled at the propane truck every single week, lay down across the man's boots by the hearth and sighed.
Later, in the pantry, Noemi pulled Vesna close. "Nobody remembers him arriving. There's no extra car in the lot. And every time he steps outside, the howling stops."
Through the pantry window, at the far edge of the floodlight where the spruce began, two green sparks hung in the dark. Held there. Winked out.
"Vesna," Noemi whispered. "Is one of them in here?"
✦
Night two, the snow came faster than anyone could shovel it.
Every two hours, Anselm's phone alarm went off and he waded out to clear the generator's exhaust vent before the drift could bury it. By midnight he was moving slower. He was sixty-seven. At one o'clock the man in the wolf cloak took the shovel out of his hands without a word and went out into the white.
The howling stopped.
Inside, Lazlo had thirty-eight percent laptop battery and a speaker the size of a lunchbox. His closing set had been cut when the headliners turned back at the pass. Vesna looked at the room, at sixty-one people in sweaters and socks, and held up one finger. "Give us an hour. Battery power. Dance the heat back into this house."
He played it stripped to the bone: a 909 kick at 128, a hi-hat like snow ticking on glass, a bassline you felt more than heard. Lazlo in a velvet tee, sweat already shining at his collar. Noemi with her hood up, arms bare, dancing barefoot on the pine boards. And Anselm, cheered on by the whole room, unbuttoned his flannel to reveal the velvet polo Vesna had mailed him in the fall, the one he'd been saving for an occasion.
"This," he announced, "is an occasion."
At 3:04 a.m., the generator went quiet.
The vent had drifted shut, and the machine had shut itself off, exactly as built. The furnace stopped. The lodge thermometer by the stairs began to fall: 62, 58, 55. Outside, the porch woodpile was down to a few armloads, and the rest lay under five feet of snow.
Vesna held the flashlight while Anselm and the quiet man dug out the shed, the wind pulling the beam sideways and filling every hole they made. Behind her, inside, everyone else was dragging mattresses in front of the fire, piling into one warm heap under coats and sleeping bags, passing clementines hand to hand.
The fourth pull caught. The generator coughed, then roared. Somewhere under the floor, the furnace sighed back to life.
Vesna stumbled in at five, numb to the elbows. The great room was asleep in the firelight, everyone tangled in everyone. Only the man in the cloak was awake, feeding the fire.
He stood, unzipped the cloak, and laid it around her shoulders. The fleece lining was soft as the inside of a mitten. She was asleep before she could thank him.
✦
She woke to blue.
The sky had been scraped clean. Sun blazed on the drifts, and down at the bottom of the drive, a plow's amber light was blinking up the road. The fire was embers. The cloak was still around her shoulders.
The man was gone.
"Plow came up at five for the propane route," Anselm said, rubbing Moose's ears. "Maybe he rode down."
Noemi stood at the window, pointing. A single line of tracks ran from the porch steps across the meadow and into the spruce, uphill. The wind had softened every print into a shallow cup. They might have been boots.
Vesna went to the hallway whiteboard. Under the rice and the eggs and the unclaimed pickles, under the rule she wrote on every flyer, NOBODY SPENDS JANUARY ALONE, someone had added two words: HEAD COUNT.
Below them were sixty names in sixty different handwritings.
She had made that rule her first winter in the mountains, the January when the only person who said her name aloud in thirty-one days was a barista, and he'd spelled it wrong.
The sixty-first entry wasn't a name. It was a paw print, pressed in soot from the hearth.
Vesna laughed, and it broke in the middle, and she let it.
In the parking lot, sixty people dug out their cars together. Anselm waved from the porch with his parka open over the velvet polo. Lazlo wore his tee under a borrowed jacket. Noemi had her sleeveless hood pulled up over a beanie and sixty new numbers in her phone. Vesna zipped the cloak to her chin. The wolf on her back faced the ridge.
From high in the spruce, one long howl rolled down across the snow.
The lot went silent.
Then Noemi tipped back her head and howled back. Lazlo joined in, then Anselm, then sixty voices, ringing off the mountain.
Up on the ridge, something answered.
The cloak from the hearth
Crimson Fenrir is the newest Magus Fawn design: a black wolf rising out of crimson smoke beneath a pale moon, our Fenrir unbound, a protector who keeps watch over the pack. The cloak that kept the fire company is the Crimson Fenrir women's rave zipper cloak ($250), its red-eyed wolf filling the back under a full moon, with a unisex fit that suits the tall quiet type and the host he hands it to. Lazlo's battery set happened in the Crimson Fenrir crushed velvet T-shirt ($60), the wolf's amber-eyed face on the chest and crimson smoke curling down both sleeves. Anselm's occasion arrived in the Crimson Fenrir crushed velvet polo shirt ($65), collared and buttoned, the wolf and its smoke across the front. Noemi danced in the Crimson Fenrir sleeveless pullover hoodie ($75), a black hood over the wolf in a ring of red smoke, arms free for a hot room.
- Cloak: micro-mink outer · ultra-soft fluffy microfiber fleece lining in black or white faux fur · listed fabric weight 200 g/m² · double front zipper · heavy drawstrings · four pockets (two interior stash pockets, one zippered, plus two deep side pockets) · unisex fit, XS–5XL.
- Crushed velvet tee: crushed velvet · listed fabric weight 240 g/m² · dye-sublimated print · XS–5XL.
- Crushed velvet polo: crushed velvet · collar and short sleeves · S–5XL.
- Sleeveless hoodie: jersey, 95% polyester / 5% spandex · listed fabric weight 180 g/m² · hooded · S–2XL.
Join the pack by the fire: women's cloaks · men's cloaks · crushed velvet
What do you wear to a winter rave in the mountains?
Wear two outfits at once: a light layer for a packed, steamy dance floor and a warm hooded layer for the deck, the parking lot and the walk outside. At a mountain winter rave, rooms run hot while the air outside can sit below zero, so a velvet tee or sleeveless hoodie under a fleece-lined cloak covers the whole night.
- The techno dress code, mountain edition: dark, sleek and unisex. Black on black with one detail that catches the strobe, like a crimson wolf on velvet. Cargo pants, boots for the snow and good socks to dance in, because lodges usually keep the boots by the door.
- Warm rave outfits for the cold parts: a hooded cloak or winter coat sized up to fit a hoodie underneath, gloves, a beanie and dry socks in an interior pocket.
- Mountain-weather smarts: check the pass forecast before you drive up, carry a full tank and a blanket in the car, and when the roads close, stay put and enjoy the extra night. Altitude dries you out, so keep a water bottle going.
Snowbound techno weekends in ski country are usually small and word-of-mouth, so follow the lodge or the crew throwing it, and pack as if the party might run a day longer than planned.
Frequently asked questions
Are there wolves in Colorado?
Yes. Colorado voters approved bringing back gray wolves in 2020, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife released the first ten in Grand and Summit counties in December 2023, with more following in early 2025. Wolves also roam Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Wild wolves usually keep well away from people, so enjoy the howling from a distance.
What do you do if you get snowed in at a ski lodge?
Stay put. When a pass closes, the warmest place is indoors with heat, food and water, not on the road. Run any generator outside, never indoors, keep its exhaust clear of snow and test the carbon monoxide detectors. Check road closures with the state transportation department, such as COtrip in Colorado, and keep phones charged.
Can you wear a polo shirt to a rave?
Yes. A printed polo is a sharp, easy rave outfit for men, especially at techno, house and livetronica nights. A collar reads dressed up while a bold print fits the dance floor. Magus Fawn's crushed velvet polo has a collar, short sleeves and sizes S–5XL. For winter, add a hooded cloak for the queue.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 on Etsy (4.7★ from 144 reviews as of October 2026) and here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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