Growing up a Minnesota boy, grits were not often on the breakfast menu. In fact, my first experience with cheesy grits wasn’t actually the traditional southern breakfast dish at all.  

No, the grits I encountered came in the form of the intermediate or blue run “Cheesy Grits.” The moguled-out piles of snow on the slope actually resembled what I believed quality cheesy grits to look like.

It was an April morning on the second to last weekend at Steamboat Ski Resort — the first time I made it to the mountain since moving to Ski Town USA.

---

---

I was skiing with some friends who had been enjoying the late season snow for several days before I was able to get up on the mountain with them. They were also far better skiers than me, a Midwesterner who grew up spending handfuls of days on the sloped skating rinks that we call ski hills.

Not having skied in weeks, and never on a mountain that big, I was slightly nervous. But there wasn’t much time to indulge anxiety as my friends took off, leaving me little opportunity to proverbially dip my toes in to test the wa— well, grits.

---

---

It was better than any Georgia mom-made side dish could have been. 

We gathered at the Morningside lift and started what would become a day on the backside of Mt. Werner. The snow was deep — almost shockingly deep for April. 

A fall would set off a five-minute battle to get back on my feet, but a successful hop off a slight drop gave me flashes of professional skiers dropping into steep mountain lines. It was a day to remember, the same as every day I have been to Morningside Park since. 

With the mounds of snow Steamboat Resort has gotten this year — just before Christmas the mountain recorded more than 150 inches — Morningside is better than ever. 

One tumble off a roughly three-foot drop left me fully submerged in powder with an ice beard like no other.  

A trip down the advanced Morningside Lift Line Run allows a novice skier like myself to feel like a big mountain athlete with every boulder scrape on my aging skis.

A detour off the main runs into the trees transports me away from the busy, Texan-filled slopes to an idyllic snow globe where I seemingly have the mountain to myself.

Until the second leg of Steamboat’s new gondola opens next year, the path I have found best to get there is taking Steamboat Gondola, then scooting down to Storm Peak Express, which will put you a dozen yards from Cheesy Grits. 

Since my first day on the mountain, there is no place I would rather go. 

I’ve always been a morning person, but now I think it is safe to say I am a Morningside person, too.