Whitey
Member
We are skiing Steamboat for the next couple of days. Got our 1st day there on Tuesday. Relatively uncrowded, never waited on liftlines. I can see why it is known as a family mountain. Tons of kids and ski school all over the place. Not a bad thing - got to get the next generation of skiers and snowboarders going. The condo area is basically a small city & that feeds the families onto the slopes.
They've gone thru a bit of their own thaw/freeze cycle out here recently. So in the AM there were a couple of runs where I was thinking to myself "if I wanted to ski this I would have stayed back east". But there was still a lot of interesting terrain to ski. Spent some time in the Morningside area. While it was good I was a bit underwhelmed. Some steeps/trees at top but then very low angle below. I had more fun with the trails on the frontside of where Morningside is, Xmas Tree bowl, the Ridge, etc. I followed a good skier thru a section of The Ridge and ended up faced with a cliff and a pretty steep runout. Not going to be sending any videos of me skiing that to Warren Miller but I navigated it OK.
My boys and their friend took off in the AM and we never saw them again. They disappeared into the woods and rarely came out. One of the great things about raising them as eastern skiers - they don't know (or care) that the locals thought Tuesday's conditions were sub-prime. Ice, frozen hard, whatever - they were in the trees and having a blast.
By the afternoon things really started to soften up. I skied with my wife and basically lapped mashed potatoes runs. It was fun mostly just for being able to ski with my wife and skiing spring conditions. Fortunately she recognized the anguish in my face after about our 5th groomed run in a row and looked at me and said "go ahead, go have some fun. I'll see you back in the condo". Love her. I immediately found some bump runs that had softened up on the mountain. Vertigo was the best of the lot. Just soft spring snow, sun, and big bumps. The crazy thing was there was literally no one skiing these. Had them to myself. I was thinking that 90% of the time I am skiing the east I'd give my left nut for a run like this - and yet no one was on them.
Morningside Park area:
The Ridge:
Looking back at the cliff I had to navigate:
Spring snow bump run (Vertigo) at the end of the day:
They've gone thru a bit of their own thaw/freeze cycle out here recently. So in the AM there were a couple of runs where I was thinking to myself "if I wanted to ski this I would have stayed back east". But there was still a lot of interesting terrain to ski. Spent some time in the Morningside area. While it was good I was a bit underwhelmed. Some steeps/trees at top but then very low angle below. I had more fun with the trails on the frontside of where Morningside is, Xmas Tree bowl, the Ridge, etc. I followed a good skier thru a section of The Ridge and ended up faced with a cliff and a pretty steep runout. Not going to be sending any videos of me skiing that to Warren Miller but I navigated it OK.
My boys and their friend took off in the AM and we never saw them again. They disappeared into the woods and rarely came out. One of the great things about raising them as eastern skiers - they don't know (or care) that the locals thought Tuesday's conditions were sub-prime. Ice, frozen hard, whatever - they were in the trees and having a blast.
By the afternoon things really started to soften up. I skied with my wife and basically lapped mashed potatoes runs. It was fun mostly just for being able to ski with my wife and skiing spring conditions. Fortunately she recognized the anguish in my face after about our 5th groomed run in a row and looked at me and said "go ahead, go have some fun. I'll see you back in the condo". Love her. I immediately found some bump runs that had softened up on the mountain. Vertigo was the best of the lot. Just soft spring snow, sun, and big bumps. The crazy thing was there was literally no one skiing these. Had them to myself. I was thinking that 90% of the time I am skiing the east I'd give my left nut for a run like this - and yet no one was on them.
Morningside Park area:
The Ridge:
Looking back at the cliff I had to navigate:
Spring snow bump run (Vertigo) at the end of the day:
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