In a town that averages 70 days of snowfall each year and takes pride in producing winter Olympians by the handful, a group of athletes will look to set their own course in the sport of rowing next month at the world renowned Head of the Charles Regatta.

“What makes this particularly notable is that Steamboat is not a town known for rowing,” said crew member Daniella Place. “Yet, despite the lack of local facilities, there’s a strong community of rowers here.”

Place will join teammates Hannah Will, Bobbie Franco, Kaylee Schnelle and Ron Krall at the Head of the Charles Regatta. The event draws competitors from around the world for a three-day rowing competition that will take place this year Oct. 17-19 on the Charles River in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts.  

The Steamboat-Springs based team will complete Oct. 18 in the 4+ Women’s Master/Senior Fours division. Other Steamboat athletes competing will include Lib Diamond and her husband, Peter Morrelli as well as Brendan Mulvey, who is the director of racing for the Head of the Charles.

This year marks the race’s 60th anniversary, which is expected to draw 12,000 athletes from 28 countries and nearly every U.S. state in addition to spectators from around the world. Mulvey said more than 863 clubs will be represented with athletes ranging from the high school to Olympic level.

The race has a large field of collegiate rowers and includes a senior class of rowers — some of whom are in their 90s.

“The head of the Charles is the world’s largest three-day rowing event,” Mulvey said. “The course is a three-mile race, and what makes it unique, and challenging is that we have several turns and bridges that the athletes need to navigate. That makes it a little more unique than the standard straight line 2000-meter rowing that you would see in the Olympics.”

Place, who rowed for Brown University in college, said despite the lack of local facilities, there’s a strong community of rowers in Steamboat Springs, which she discovered last fall while visiting the local post office.

“In November of 2024 I was at the post office buying stamps for holiday cards” Place recalled. “I was buying stamps that had rowers on them, which was just a style of stamps, and a woman next to me in line looked over and said, ‘Do you row?’ Twenty minutes later we had become good friends.”

Place said the new friendship with former Tufts rower Kaylee Schnelle led to the idea of creating a team to complete at the Head of the Charles. The group, whose collegiate roots are deep and include Tufts University, Brown and Exeter University, became inspired to start the Yampa River Rowing Club, which they hope will grow beyond this year’s entry in the Head of the Charles.

“There is lots of team bonding and connecting with super-early mornings getting out on the water when it’s still flat, first thing in the morning,” Schnelle said. “We get to row in some beautiful places here in Colorado, and it’s really cool that we got to row in Lake Dillon, which is unique and interesting. I’d love to get out on Catamount and Stagecoach in a rowing shell. At some point in the future — I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

Place calls Schnelle the instigator of the race effort and the club, which is still in its early formation stages, according to the team members. The team uses ergometers — indoor rowing machines — to train at Old Town Hot Springs, and has made several trips to Lake Dillon for practices with the Frisco Rowing Club.

For Krall, who is 78, the Head of the Charles is an opportunity to return the sport of rowing at a level he has not enjoyed since he was in high school.

“This such a crazy opportunity for me,” Krall said. “When I was in high school, I was a coxswain, but I didn’t do anything in rowing again until about 10 years ago when I started rowing a single skull on Lake Catamount.”

Krall said this will be his first time he will take part in the Head of the Charles, but he is aware of the significance of the race and its importance to the sport.  

“The course is a very complicated. There are seven bridges where you must get through the correct arches of the bridges. There are some wicked turns, and it’s a very crowded racecourse,” Krall said. “While I’ve never done it, I have now been studying it closely for the last six weeks. To say that I have had some trepidation is an understatement, but I’m also very excited.”

Mulvey said last year a cell phone survey of the race estimated that more than 300,000 people lined the banks of the race course to watch the events unfold on the waters of the Charles River.

The Yampa River Rowing Club may be a new endeavor in the Yampa Valley, but the sport of rowing has a long history in the area. One of the most notable rowers is Anne Kakela, who grew up in Steamboat Springs before going on to have successful collegiate and national team careers.

Kakela placed fourth in the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 as a member of the U.S. Rowing Team’s women’s eight team.

She also rowed at the World Championships in 1993-95, winning five medals in the four and eight team races. She won a gold in the eight in 1995, and silvers in the four and eight in both 1993 and 1994. She is married to former University of California and Olympic Team rower Fred Honebein.

“That’s what’s really cool about the event,” Mulvey said. “It’s a large-scale event where your club rower, and the rowers coming from Steamboat, are going to have the same experience as a world champion that is rowing in the event — that’s what makes it very exciting. There’s a lot of opportunity to watch, and there is a ton of energy.”

The members of the Yampa River Rowing Club are hoping they can bring some of that energy back to Steamboat Springs to help their new club to help overcome the challenges of a sport that can be restrictive.

“There are a large barriers to entry including the high cost of equipment,” Mayrkrantz said. “It would be wonderful to get a group of people together that’s interested in chipping in to form a team together to buy equipment, buy boats and kind of grow from there. I know it’s kind of unique that we happen to have decent options for practicing on lakes, since we have Stagecoach and Catamount, which is a little smaller, but it’s an option.”