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RANCHO RESORT MAINTANANCE POSITION Administrative & Professional Jorgensen Brooks Group Counselor Mechanical Komatsu Equipment Co Resident Field Mechanic Administrative & Professional Tucson Urban League CEO/President Finance and Accounting Charles E. Gillman Company Accounting Specialist Sales and Marketing Everready Glass Sales Reps TravelSkiingSteamboat Springs
'Champagne powder,'
Billy Kidd's mystique
draw skiers
to Colorado
Special to the Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.12.2003
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. -
By January, the snow lies steep and deep on the slopes at Steamboat Ski Resort in northwest Colorado.
Which is just how former Olympian and silver medalist Billy Kidd likes it. The irony is that Kidd - everyone here calls him Billy - doesn't need snow to imagine the sound of skis scraping on ice and the feel of wind whipping his face.
There wasn't much snow in his yard on a sunny morning, certainly not enough for a lesson anyway. But that didn't keep him from jumping up from the table to give a demonstration to visitors invited for breakfast.
"I can improve your skiing right here in this room," said the expansive 61-year-old, reaching for a pair of imaginary ski poles. He moves his feet apart and bends his knees, balancing lightly, ready to power-carve through a feather-light drift.
"You don't believe me?" he asked, not waiting for an answer. "The secret is visualization."
The visitors had watched Kidd in action the day before at one of his "Ski With Billy" clinics, held on most winter days at the top of the Gondola. The free clinics, about 90 minutes long, are among the mountain's best-attended events.
By the time Kidd showed, wearing his signature cowboy hat with the pheasant-feather band, a couple of dozen skiers were waiting to meet the man whose face and career are virtually synonymous with Steamboat Ski Resort.
Some were serious skiers, hoping for that perfect tip. Others were fans, there to shake his hand and snap a picture or to gawk. But few could resist Kidd's high-energy enthusiasm. After the final ski-along back to the bottom, even skeptics were convinced that sliding on snow was as natural as a Sunday stroll.
Steamboat's so-called "champagne powder" - locals say the phrase was coined right here - was one reason Kidd hitched his star to Steamboat Ski Resort. If there's a flurry within 100 miles, flakes inevitably find their way to the slopes here in the Park Range, at the westernmost slope of the Rocky Mountains. Snowfall is so predictable, in fact, that climatologists come here to study it.
"It's our location that's so unique," said Mike Lane, formerly with Colorado Ski Country and now Steamboat Ski Resort's communications director. "We get the south end of northern storms and the north end of southern storms. And we're the first real barricade
Pacific storms hit after they cross the Wasatch Mountains."
Last year's total snowfall, 29 feet measured at mid-mountain, wasn't a record-breaker, he said. But that's OK. The snow fell frequently throughout the season, dumping anywhere from a few inches to more than a foot of powder and keeping the slopes white until the resort closed in mid-April.
Though Steamboat Ski Resort looks like a single hunk, its 2,939 skiable acres actually tumble over four connected summits - 10,372-foot Storm Peak, 10,384-foot Sunshine Peak, 10,565-foot Mount Werner and a hilltop called Thunderhead, with an elevation of 9,080 feet.
Twenty ski lifts access 150-odd trails following sloping ridge lines, plunging down gladed steeps, dropping through aspen groves and intersecting with long, dog-leg runouts into adjacent valleys.
Double-black-diamond verticals aren't really Steamboat's forte, and, with the relatively low elevation, always below tree line, you won't find those high, open bowls. But there's plenty of glade skiing through aspen and spruce forests and enough narrow plunges off Mount Werner to keep serious snow-smokers happy.
Steamboat's slopes are an intermediate skier's dream: More than half the skiable trails and terrain are rated from low-moderate to challenging. At least 12 percent of the trails are groomed for beginners. All of them are a good place to practice self-visualization.
Ahead of his time by 20 years, Kidd discovered the powers of visualization in Stowe, Vt., where his school offered skiing as an elective. While the rest of the kids were in study hall, Kidd was skiing. When he wasn't skiing, he was thinking about it.
"I realized I could sit in the classroom and build muscle memory by imagining how to turn," he said. "As I got older, I watched films and analyzed what the skiers were doing. Once you've got those mental images in your head, you just let it happen."
And happen it does, at the Billy Kidd Performance Center, where one-, two- and three-day performance camps offer Olympic-style coaching with a strong emphasis on what Kidd calls "building the basics."
The coaches start with a natural stance and emphasize positive attitudes and winning strategies. They also carry handheld video cams - a brutal way to show you what you really look like, but the first step toward helping you improve.
"I'm hoping to build on what I already know," said Stephen Roberts, 36, a self-described upper-intermediate skier who had just started the three-day camp. "From what I've seen so far," he said, "this is going to make a difference."
"I recommend the camps to people who want intensive coaching beyond the regular ski-school format," said Suzy Good, ticket manager. "Most of the coaches have either worked with Olympians or been ski racers themselves."
Steamboat's more traditional ski-school programs, designed for kids, recreational skiers, snowboarders and beginners, attract many repeaters. And snowboarding, at Bashor Terrain Park, is now bigger and the layout is better. As for the look of the base area, around Gondola Square, it gets mixed reviews.
This is the way they used to build them, fanning the lifts out from the center, crowding everyone and everything together, and putting up another building whenever space ran short. Still, it's a lot more approachable than some of the Intrawest-built, cookie-cutter ski villages that pop up everywhere and could be anywhere.
That's why folks like the town of Steamboat Springs, a ranching community that predates skiing. U.S. 40 runs down the middle, and cars park diagonally against both curbs, shades of the 1950s. The brick buildings are old-timers, as is the vintage house on Oak Street, now the home of the Tread of Pioneers Museum. With its velvet-upholstered chairs and old photos, it's worth a visit.
There's cowboy gear at F.M. Light, on Lincoln Avenue, 98 years in business and still selling hats, boots, overalls, belts and jackknives. Many visitors try on a Stetson like the one Kidd wears, a smooth felt with a slightly rolled brim.
Don't miss the Western BBQ dinner at the top of the gondola, an event billed as tourist fare but one that zooms to the top of many visitors' favorite-memory lists. They stagger arrival times so that diners move right through the buffet line, and the food - roast beef, chicken, pork ribs, a half-dozen vegetables, potatoes, rolls, salads and dessert - stays fresh and hot.
By the time you finish dinner, the entertainment is warming up. The Sundogs play and sing everything from Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline to genuine fast-paced bluegrass favorites, like "Rocky Top." Adults, teenagers and little kids jump up to dance, while the onlookers tap their toes.
The resort's Lane said official skier numbers topped the million mark last season. Maybe they came because getting here is easy. You can fly nonstop from several major cities or rent a car and drive from Denver. Or maybe they came because staying and skiing here is - or can be - affordable.
More likely it's the "champagne powder," an expression with a basis in fact, according to researchers at the weather station atop Mount Werner. When the last bits of moisture in Pacific storms reach the Park Range, they form feeder clouds made of tiny supercooled droplets. Whirled and swirled with ordinary clouds, they keep the West's best flakes drifting down - and skiers coming back for more.
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