The Road to Steamboat

Sometimes the journey really is part of the adventure. Armed with an Ikon Pass, a hire car and a fairly loose plan, we headed out of Denver in search of snow, tree lined mountains, proper Colorado towns and whatever we happened to find along the way. First stop was Steamboat, and by the time we reluctantly loaded the skis back into the car a few days later, we’d fallen rather heavily for the place.

There’s something wonderfully liberating about landing in Colorado knowing you don’t have to spend the next week skiing the same mountain. We had an Ikon Pass each, a hire car waiting at Denver airport and a simple plan: ski our way around Colorado, starting with Steamboat before working our way back through Winter Park, Copper and Arapahoe Basin.

The Ikon Pass turned out to be a big part of what made the whole thing work. There’s no deciding whether today warrants a full day pass, no working out which ticket you need and no joining the queue at the ticket office when you’d rather be skiing. You arrive, pull on your boots, slip the pass into your pocket and head for the mountain. It’s slick, friction free and particularly brilliant when you’re moving between several resorts. The same little piece of plastic that gets you onto the lift at Steamboat will be coming out again when you arrive at the next mountain down the road.

But before any of that, there was Denver.

The road to Steamboat

Steamboat sits in northwest Colorado, around 267km from Denver, with the resort suggesting roughly three hours for the drive in normal conditions. The route heads west from Denver on I 70, through the mountains and the Eisenhower Tunnel before turning north at Silverthorne towards Kremmling. From there US 40 takes you towards one of my favourite parts of the whole journey, Rabbit Ears Pass.

Rabbit Ears is high, topping out at around 2,873 metres, but it wasn’t the altitude that struck me. It was the feeling of being properly out there.

For mile after mile there seemed to be almost nothing except snow. And not a polite covering of snow either. It was deep, piled up and stretching away into the landscape, with the road cutting a line through this enormous white wilderness. There were moments when you felt a very long way from anywhere.

Every so often we’d pass a truck pulled up at the side of the road with a couple of snowmobiles on the back and people unloading them, presumably about to disappear off into all that snow. You couldn’t help wondering where they were going and what sort of adventure they were about to have.

It looked unbelievably cool.

This was exactly what I’d wanted from a Colorado road trip. Not simply travelling between ski resorts, but those bits in between when you look out of the window and realise you’re somewhere completely different from home.

Then the road begins to drop away towards Steamboat Springs and eventually civilisation reappears.

It wasn’t until we actually arrived in Steamboat that the weather turned slightly disappointing. There was a light drizzle falling as we pulled in, which wasn’t quite the Champagne Powder welcome we’d been imagining.

We checked into The Steamboat Grand, looked hopefully at the forecast and decided there wasn’t much point worrying about something we couldn’t control.

What happened overnight was exactly why I’ve loved skiing for as long as I have.

The temperature dropped, the drizzle turned to snow and by morning the mountain we’d arrived at had been transformed. Roads were white, trees were carrying fresh snow and the grey, damp resort we’d driven into the previous afternoon had disappeared beneath winter.

Suddenly breakfast felt like an unnecessary delay between us and the lifts.

Now this is Steamboat

The scale of Steamboat isn’t immediately obvious from the base. The resort has 3,741 acres, around 1,514 hectares, of permitted terrain spread across six peaks, with 184 trails served by 23 lifts. The base sits at 2,103 metres, Mount Werner tops out at 3,224 metres and there’s 1,118 metres of vertical to play with. The longest run stretches for more than 4.8km and Steamboat quotes a ten year average of 797cm of snow at mid mountain.

All impressive numbers, but none of them really explains why we ended up loving skiing here quite as much as we did.

For that, you have to leave the piste and disappear into the trees.

Steamboat’s tree skiing has almost mythical status and I’d heard enough about it before arriving to wonder whether it had been slightly overhyped. It hadn’t.

There’s something about the spacing of the trees and the shape of the terrain that makes skiing them ridiculously addictive. You’re constantly spotting another little line, another untouched patch of snow, another bank to play on. One moment you’re cruising along a groomed run and the next you’ve slipped between the trees, following your mate through a completely different world, picking your line as you go before bursting back onto the piste further down.

We’d arranged to ski with a guide and it proved an absolute masterstroke. On a mountain of this size, knowing where to go makes an enormous difference, particularly after fresh snow. Instead of staring at a trail map and trying to guess where the good stuff might be, we followed someone who knew exactly where to look, slipping into little pockets of snow and through sections of trees we’d almost certainly have skied straight past on our own.

The snow kept getting better and so did the day. By mid afternoon we’d completely forgotten that we’d arrived in drizzle less than 24 hours earlier. Legs were beginning to complain, but neither of us particularly wanted to stop.

Somewhere during all of this, I finally understood the fuss about Champagne Powder®.

The snow they trademarked

Champagne Powder isn’t simply a phrase Steamboat uses to describe a good dump of snow. Champagne Powder® is actually a registered trademark of Steamboat Ski & Resort Corporation, and the story behind it goes back to the early 1950s.

Local rancher Joe McElroy was skiing the mountain when he apparently remarked that the exceptionally light snow tickled his nose like champagne. The description stuck, and Steamboat says its snow averages around six per cent water content, helping give it that incredibly light, dry consistency.

You can talk about percentages and water content all you like, but skiing it is a rather more persuasive argument. Fresh snow between those trees is simply joyous. Your skis seem to move effortlessly through it, every turn sends up another cloud and you find yourself deliberately looking for places nobody else has been.

We’d come to Steamboat hoping to understand why people talked about its snow with such affection. After that day, we did.

The Grand makes everything easy

We were staying at The Steamboat Grand, which sits just paces from the mountain base and feels suitably impressive from the moment you walk into its huge sweeping reception.

It’s a substantial hotel, with 328 accommodation units ranging from hotel rooms and studios to large condos and penthouses, but despite its size it works remarkably well as a ski hotel because everything you actually need is close at hand.

There’s a good gym, an outdoor heated pool, hot tubs, sauna and steam room, and a useful little shop inside where you can grab a decent coffee and a breakfast burrito before heading out in the morning. It’s the sort of thing that sounds insignificant until you’re in ski gear with a mountain waiting outside and really don’t want breakfast to become a 45 minute production.

Then there’s the ski concierge down at the bottom of the slopes.

The hotel itself is only paces away, so carrying your skis back would hardly constitute an expedition, but that’s not really the point. At the end of the day you simply hand them over and walk back to the hotel without them, then collect them again when you’re ready to ski the following morning.

It’s another example of that frictionless American ski experience that you quickly start to take for granted. Everything has been thought through to remove one more bit of hassle from the day.

And if you’ve ever shepherded children back from the slopes while carrying their skis, poles, gloves, goggles and seemingly half the contents of your holiday accommodation, you’ll appreciate just how valuable that can be.

Into the hot springs

Later that afternoon we were picked up and driven out of Steamboat Springs and up into the forest towards Strawberry Park Hot Springs.

If you’re coming to Steamboat, put this on the list.

The journey itself adds to the experience as you gradually leave the lights of town behind and head up into the mountains. Then you arrive, step out into the cold and discover natural stone pools steaming away among the snow.

Within minutes we were sitting neck deep in hot water, surrounded by a snow covered Colorado landscape.

It’s difficult to adequately describe how good that feels after a full day skiing. The hottest pools are around 39 to 41°C, so while the air around you is freezing and there’s snow on the ground, you’re sitting in beautifully warm geothermal water with steam drifting around you.

We’d spent the day charging through trees and suddenly there was nowhere else either of us needed to be.

It was one of those moments when you look around and think: this is why we came.

Because ski trips aren’t really just about skiing. They’re the drive over Rabbit Ears Pass when there’s nothing around you for miles. They’re the snowfall you weren’t expecting. They’re the run you immediately want to ski again. They’re sitting in a hot spring in the middle of a snowy forest at the end of an amazing day with one of your best mates.

Steamboat seemed to keep delivering those moments.

Then there’s the town

There was one thing about Steamboat that I initially thought might bother me. The ski base and downtown Steamboat Springs are separate.

I’m used to European resorts where you ski back into the village and walk from the lift to the bar to the restaurant, so before arriving I wondered whether having downtown a few miles away would somehow detract from the experience.

It actually became one of the things I liked most about it.

Because Steamboat Springs feels gloriously American.

Not a sanitised version of America created for tourists, but the America you hope to find on a road trip through Colorado.

You have these wide roads running straight through town, sometimes with barely a car on them, traffic lights suspended high above the junctions and a jumble of timber buildings and irregular rooftops lining the streets. There are saloon style bars that look as though they belong exactly where they are and places where you push open the door and immediately get that wonderful smell of fresh popcorn coming from a machine behind the bar.

People sit along the counter chatting to the bartender. Someone further down strikes up a conversation with you. There’s beer being poured, sport on a screen somewhere and none of it feels particularly manufactured.

It has that unmistakable all American feel.

The mountain base gives you everything you need for skiing, but downtown gives Steamboat its personality.

Getting around is remarkably easy too. The local transport system includes an app based on demand service, so rather than worrying about driving everywhere, you can request a pickup and get around town easily, connecting into the wider free transit network for the mountain.

Which is particularly useful because one of the genuine highlights of our stay was the food.

Steamboat eats very well

We ate brilliantly in Steamboat.

Salt & Lime was a particular favourite, the sort of lively, relaxed place where tacos arrive and disappear almost as quickly, accompanied by margaritas that make staying for another round seem an entirely reasonable idea.

Then there was the Ore House at the Pine Grove, a proper Colorado steakhouse and exactly the sort of place you want to find yourself after a day on the mountain. I went for bison steak and can confirm that after several hours skiing through trees, a big steak and a decent glass of red feels about as good as dinner gets.

But it was the choice that surprised me. There are restaurants, cafés, breweries, bars and little drinking holes all over town. You could easily spend a week here, eat somewhere different every night and still leave with a list of places you wished you’d tried.

And because you’re eating in a genuine town rather than simply a resort base, every evening feels like another little part of the trip. You’re not just coming off the mountain, eating and going to bed. You’re going out in Steamboat Springs.

That distinction matters.

Maybe it’s the people

And then there were the people.

It’s one of the things both of us kept mentioning because it happened again and again.

People talked to us. Properly talked to us.

You’d get on a lift with somebody and within minutes you’d know where they were from, how long they’d been skiing Steamboat, where they’d been yesterday and which trees they thought we should try next.

The long gondola ride first thing in the morning was particularly brilliant for this. You’re in there together for a while, someone asks where you’re from and by the time you reach the top you’ve swapped half your life stories and been given recommendations for three runs, two restaurants and a bar.

You step out feeling as though you’ve made friends for life.

Maybe there’s something about the western character of Steamboat. Maybe it’s because this remains a genuine town rather than somewhere that exists purely for skiing. Maybe people are simply happier when they’ve woken up to fresh snow.

Whatever it is, it adds something.

By the end of our stay Steamboat didn’t really feel like somewhere we’d simply turned up to ski. We’d started to feel part of the place.

And that’s probably why leaving was harder than expected.

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Then occasionally you find one that gets under your skin, somewhere you feel you haven’t quite finished with when it’s time to leave.

We’ll be back

Our whole Colorado adventure had been designed around moving on. That’s the beauty of having an Ikon Pass and a car: another mountain is waiting, so you throw the skis in the back and go and discover it.

Winter Park was next and snow was already falling there, so we should have been desperate to get moving.

Except neither of us particularly wanted to leave.

A couple of days earlier we’d driven across a snow buried Rabbit Ears Pass, watching people unload snowmobiles and disappear off on adventures of their own, before dropping into Steamboat and arriving in drizzle. Since then we’d woken to fresh snow, chased each other through some of the best trees we’d skied, discovered what Champagne Powder actually feels like, soaked in steaming natural springs surrounded by snow, eaten exceptionally well and spent half the trip chatting to complete strangers.

We’d arrived with another three Colorado mountains waiting for us and no particular expectation that Steamboat would be the one we’d still be talking about on the drive away.

But that’s what happened.

There are ski resorts you enjoy, resorts you admire and resorts you’re pleased you’ve finally skied.

Then occasionally you find one that gets under your skin, somewhere you feel you haven’t quite finished with when it’s time to leave.

Steamboat was one of those.

And we’ll be back.