Old snow out, new season in at Steamboat Bike Park
New season set to begin at Steamboat Bike Park

Joel Reichenberger
If you go
What: Routt County Riders Sponsorship Day
Where: Steamboat Bike Park, Steamboat Ski Area
When: 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday
Cost: $15
Steamboat Bike Park will open for the summer with a sponsorship day for local nonprofit Routt County Riders. Season passes won’t be accepted. Bike rentals will be discounted 50 percent, and $15 from every rental will also benefit the club.
Steamboat Ski Area summer prices
Second price reflects amount for users with 2015-16 winter Steamboat Season Pass, Unlimited Pass, Steamboat 15 and 6 day pass, Steamboat Silver Medallion
Gondola ride (no bicycle): $23/Free
One-day adult bike lift ticket: $39/$29
One-day child (12 and under) bike lift ticket: $29/$19
Season adult bike lift ticket: $269/$239
Season child bike lift ticket: $179/$139
Twilight adult bike lift ticket (Thursday and Friday, 4 p.m. to 7): $28/$20
Twilight child bike lift ticket: $22/$14
Summer programs on tap
Youth camp expanding
Gravity Groms has been a two-day option for young riders, between 10 and 18 years old in the past. This summer, it will stick to a more regular schedule, meeting all day Tuesday and Wednesday starting in July and running through August. The camp will cost $199, which includes everything except a rental bike, which will be available for a small extra fee.
Captain of the Boat returning
Steamboat Ski Area’s summer downhill mountain bike race series will hit the dirt starting July 1. It will run every other Friday evening through August.
Thursday nights, girls nights
Gravity Girls is back to ride Thursday nights. The two-hour camp costs $59 and includes a lift ticket, bike and equipment rentals and a post-riding drink.
For more information, check out http://bike.steamboat.com/
Steamboat Springs — Building a downhill mountain bike trail, with its smooth track, wide berms and intricate wooden jumps, is a labor-intensive process.
Preparing a downhill mountain bike trail for the summer season, especially after a strong winter of snow, takes plenty of work, too, and as the aspen leaves popped and the Yampa River roared this spring, trail crews at Steamboat Ski Area found themselves shoulder deep in that task.
If you go
What: Routt County Riders Sponsorship Day
Where: Steamboat Bike Park, Steamboat Ski Area
When: 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday
Cost: $15
Steamboat Bike Park will open for the summer with a sponsorship day for local nonprofit Routt County Riders. Season passes won’t be accepted. Bike rentals will be discounted 50 percent, and $15 from every rental will also benefit the club.
Summer programs on tap
Youth camp expanding
Gravity Groms has been a two-day option for young riders, between 10 and 18 years old in the past. This summer, it will stick to a more regular schedule, meeting all day Tuesday and Wednesday starting in July and running through August. The camp will cost $199, which includes everything except a rental bike, which will be available for a small extra fee.
Captain of the Boat returning
Steamboat Ski Area’s summer downhill mountain bike race series will hit the dirt starting July 1. It will run every other Friday evening through August.
Thursday nights, girls nights
Gravity Girls is back to ride Thursday nights. The two-hour camp costs $59 and includes a lift ticket, bike and equipment rentals and a post-riding drink.
For more information, check out http://bike.steamboat.com/
As opening day for the 2016 summer Steamboat Bike Park season approached, plenty of snow melted, but not quite enough, at least on Tenderfoot, one of the park’s beginner trails, and thus, for Thursday — the first day of biking — a must-have avenue for riders. So, crews found themselves digging through an eight-foot drift that covered the trail.
“We’re excited for the season,” bike park director Trevyn Newpher said. “Things are drying out, and we’re ready to get rolling.”
The way is clear on Tenderfoot and elsewhere, Newpher said, and the riding is set to start at 3 p.m. Thursday.
The first day won’t actually be available to summer season pass holders; the $15, 3-to-7 p.m. session will instead serve as Routt County Riders Sponsorship Day. All the collected ticket funds and a portion of bike rental income will benefit RCR.
The park will then open for normal operations and for season pass holders Friday, running from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Only a fraction of the park’s completed trails will be available, including, thanks to the shoveling, Tenderfoot, as well as Rustlers, Gunsmoke, Cow Poke and Lickity Split, among several other lower-mountain courses.
“We’re still a bit wet on our north-facing slopes up top, so we won’t have 100-percent open,” Newpher said.
The process of opening those trails will continue, and there’s quite a bit more too it than shoveling snow. Crews resurface jumps and berms, clean up vegetation and debris and rebuild wooden features removed for the winter.
After that, work will continue to progress on several new trails that should open this summer.
The new trails include several highlights. One will wrap around Thunderhead and into the area of winter’s Pony Express chairlift, stretching about 5 miles from the top of the Creekside trail to the Rainbow saddle. It will be a multi-use, multi-directional trail replacing the Zig Zag trail, which formerly offered similar access both up and down the mountain. Sections of that trail were carved up and designed into the downhill bike park trails.
A new beginner trail is set to come online this summer low on the mountain that will separate beginner riders from expert riders in an area in which they previously have been lumped in together. It will be named Lasso.
“We have a lot of traffic feeding into a green trail, and that created some potential user conflicts, so we decided to build Lasso,” Newpher said. “It’s going to give green riders an option, and it has some really cool bridge work and features that could be build on it. It’s not super challenging, but for our green riders, it’ll be pretty exciting.”
That, Newpher said, is a sign of how the park is developing. Steamboat Ski Area is still building out Phase 1 of the park, and more big trails are in the blueprints. At the same time, work is being vectored toward smaller additions and refinements that can make what already exists better for riders of all skill levels.
“There are a lot of projects going on,” he said.
To reach Joel Reichenberger, call 970-871-4253, email jreichenberger@SteamboatToday.com or follow him on Twitter @JReich9

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