The Steamboat Pilot & Today

Forty years of the Steamboat skiing experience are coming to a head this weekend and next week, marked by several events scheduled by the Steamboat Ski and Resort Corp.

Though I'm biased, I think Steamboat has been a benefit to all those who love to ski in Colorado.

I grew up doing I-70-corridor ski adventures. As children, six or seven times a year, the family would pack up our brown Buick Century station wagon at 4 a.m. and fight the Saturday ski traffic to spend a day in Keystone, Copper Mountain or Breckenridge. And for years, that's all we knew of skiing in the Rocky Mountains -- essentially, limited views, lack of community and lots of I-70 driving.

But it was skiing; my brother and I deemed it sacred. When we got older, we bought florescent yellow coats and purple gators to cover our stonewashed jeans so we "fit in." We declared ourselves kings of the ski commute from the Front Range.

That was all good until I moved to Steamboat Springs. That's when I realized that an actual town and community existed alongside a ski mountain.

And I'm not talking about a fake European village with high-end boutiques either.

When I went back to the I-70 resorts after being immersed in the Steamboat culture, their lack of character and abundance of hassle became apparent.

Steamboat Springs is a unique place. It was a cow town before it was a ski town. But it remained somewhat of a cow town even after skiing took over.

Most importantly, though, is the fact that Steamboat Springs indeed remained a town that one could identify apart from the ski resort.

While hiking on an Emerald Mountain trail late in the evening earlier this week, I stopped to study the lights of the community. From where I stood, I could follow the lights wrapping around Emerald, from the ski area to downtown. From there, I could really get a sense of what the area looks like, how the community truly is nestled in the valley. I thought of all the changes that have happened here through the years, many because of the ski resort, and it still remains a pretty cool place to live.