By Kyle Wagner
Denver Post Travel Editor

When former Burton Snowboards sales rep David Helman and his wife, Laura Brewer, were looking to leave South Haven, Mich., for a ski town in Colorado last year, they asked Helman’s industry contacts for recommendations.

And then they moved to Steamboat Springs, sight unseen.

“We chose Steamboat on blind faith,” Brewer says. “Totally based on Steamboat’s reputation as a small town with a progressive attitude and, of course, the champagne powder snow conditions.”

So many of Helman’s buddies at Burton, as well as boarders he ran into at competitions and people Brewer talked with through her work as a professional photographer, mentioned Steamboat’s “laid-back lifestyle, ‘real town,’ as opposed to some of the faux ski towns you see, and killer powder days,” that they were sold.

“As snowboarders, we were seeking longer winters, better snow conditions and generally living the mountain lifestyle. And we love the scenery here,” says Brewer, who is trying to establish a photography business in town.

“Because we both work on the Internet now — David runs a surfing/eco-tour company in El Salvador — we can basically live anywhere. And now we’re really looking forward to checking out the mountain.”

With nearly 3,000 skiable acres and an average of 331 inches of snow, not to mention legendary tree skiing in sections such as Christmas Tree Bowl, smooth corduroy on runs such as Buddy’s and plenty of champagne powder pockets in the Chutes, there’s a lot to look forward to.

The champagne reference, trademarked by the ski area, points both to the way the snow drifts down, light and fluffy like bubbles in a glass, how it sparkles when it lands, and how, on a powder day, it makes skis and snowboards do magical things.

And it seems to make the people who live in Steamboat pretty happy to be there.

“Well, I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” says Kent Eriksen, who hitchhiked from Aspen to Steamboat on the last day of 1974 and never looked back. “I mean, where else can you ski to work?”

Eriksen’s office is in the back of Orange Peel Bicycle Service on Yampa Street, where the Mountain Bike Hall of Famer builds custom bikes. His wife, world champion mountain bike racer Katie Lindquist, handles the books. But in the winter, he skate- skis every time he can get a free moment.

That’s after he skis to work, of course. “I live about 7 miles north of town, right on the edge of full-on wilderness, and it’s about a 1,200-foot drop into town,” he says. “I can get a block away from the shop on my skis.”

When Eriksen first came to Steamboat, the Wisconsin native had planned to be a photographer, but then mountain biking came along, and he fell in love with the sport.

Steamboat “was a different town then,” he adds. “It’s really changing right now; you look at the corners downtown, there’s all these three-story to four-story buildings going up with retail on the bottom and luxury condos on top. But I think the people here will stay the same for a while.”

The word “unpretentious” is often applied to the town and its inhabitants.

Steamboat is at the center of some of Colorado’s most valuable ranch country, as much wrangled as wrangled-over in agricultural versus developmental disputes. This all infuses Steamboat with an authentic cowboy charm, and it influences the choices in the shops and restaurants. That means plenty of Western wear and top-notch local produce.

Improvements abound

Intrawest, which bought Steamboat Ski Resort in March, continues to pump money into the area, with $16 million invested this year and an unspecified commitment over the next five years, says Michael Lane, the resort’s public relations director.

New this year is the Christie Peak Express, a six-passenger high-speed detachable chairlift that was installed in response to complaints about Steamboat’s inability to handle early-morning, powder- day crowds.

Also look for the new Headwall redesign at the bottom of the mountain, scheduled to be done by opening day Nov. 22. “It had better be,” Lane says, laughing.

“It’s in the beginner area,” he adds. “Look for a couple of different fall lines, three new trails with consistent pitch from 9 to 20 percent. It will really be a great improvement in that area, especially when there are a lot of people coming down.”

The resort does expect a significant increase this season over the 1.02 million visits last year, in part because of the addition of Steamboat to the Rocky Mountain season-pass lineup. The Super Pass Plus to Winter Park/Mary Jane and Copper Mountain ($499) allows for six days of unrestricted skiing as well as free skiing after noon every Friday at Steamboat. The Rocky Mountain Ultimate Pass ($1,344) offers unrestricted skiing at all three resorts.

“We’ve had tremendous response to those passes,” Lane says. “No final numbers yet, of course, but definitely a noticeable amount of response.”

Not all of the locals applaud the influx of newcomers, but Eriksen says you have to take the increased traffic and construction noise in stride.

“It’s getting expensive, but luckily we got a home before it got out of our price range,” he says. “There are good people here, and if more come, well, I just hope it’s more good people.”

 By Alexis DeLaCruz

Steamboat Springs — Wednesday night’s storm could signal the beginning of a good ski season in Steamboat Springs.

Joe Ramey, a National Wea­ther Service meteorologist in Grand Junction, said Thursday that another storm is expected to dump more snow on the area this weekend. And although that snow will melt by early next week, Routt County residents should keep their shovels handy in the coming months.

Despite National Weather Service reports in September that predicted above-average temperatures and average precipitation for the Steamboat area through February, Ramey said Routt County could be in store for a winter similar to that of 2005-06.

“We are heading into a La Niña winter, which bodes well for Steamboat Springs. Our studies indicate that the area should get hit with lots of snow in December and early January like it did two years ago,” he said. “That’s what we’re hoping for.”

More than 400 inches of snow fell on the Steamboat Ski Area in the winter of 2005-06. It was the fourth snowiest winter on record for the ski area.

Winter could begin to settle in this weekend, Ramey said.

“The beginnings of the next system already is following on the storm’s heels,” Ramey said. “The clouds already are moving in.”

Ramey said a Pacific cold front should settle over the Yampa Valley on Saturday and drop temperatures into the low teens.

“This one packs a punch,” he said. “It looks like the first taste of winter.”

Steamboat Springs — Public construction projects at the base of Steamboat Ski Area are beginning to take their final form, relieving anxiety about what shape the ski base will be in by opening day Nov. 21.

“It’s starting to look like something,” said Joe Kracum, project coordinator for the multi-year, $23 million public redevelopment project at the base area. “We’re still planning on being out of here mid-November.”

On Ski Time Square Drive, which was very torn up just a few weeks ago, many improvements have become visible. A roundabout has been added to the road, sidewalks have been laid, curbside bus stops have been constructed and new lampposts line the street.

Kracum said crosswalks would be put in this week and an informational kiosk is on the way. Remaining asphalt work will be done the week of Oct. 22 and landscaping should be complete this season, Kracum said.

Construction crews spent weeks working underground during the summer, resulting in various inconveniences — including the periodic loss of utility service — for residents and businesses in the area. Kracum said he is thankful that part of the project is over.

“It was very frustrating for all of us to deal with all the problems underground,” he said.

In addition to being on schedule, Kracum said that “barring anything drastic,” this year’s work should also come in under budget.

Work being done by the developers of One Steamboat Place near the Gondola Transit Center also is expected to be complete come ski season. Jim Wells, project director for One Steamboat Place, said the work will result in an improved transit center, with longer islands for the buses, curbside bus stops and increased capacity for private, short-term drop-offs.

“We’re definitely planning on using it in its new configuration this winter,” said Jonathan Flint, operations manager for Steamboat Springs Transit. “It should be pretty similar to what was there last year.”

Snowmelt a hot topic

The city will likely abandon a plan to install a direct geothermal snowmelt system at the base area. The system would primarily have been used to melt snow on a promenade designed to span the bottom of the ski slope, roughly from One Steamboat Place to Slopeside Grill. Construction of the promenade is scheduled to begin in 2009.

Kracum said three 500-foot holes were drilled in locations around the base area in search of possible geothermal activity, such as hot water, that could have been used to melt snow. Kracum said only one of those holes showed any promise, with temperatures increasing more than usual at a depth of about 450 feet.

“If we wanted to keep investigating, we’d have to go down 3,000 feet,” Kracum said. “I don’t suspect we’re going to be recommending that direction.”

At $100 a foot, that project would cost the base area’s urban renewal authority $300,000, with no guarantee of success. The first three holes cost $110,000.

At a meeting of the authority’s advisory committee Friday, the committee voted unanimously to recommend to the Steamboat Springs City Council — which acts as the city’s redevelopment authority — that it abandon the search for a direct geothermal source of heating for a snowmelt system.

“We’ve chased this long enough,” committee member Bill Jameson said.

Kracum said another possibility would be to use ground-source heat pumps, which pump water through holes in the ground and absorb natural heat. But that prospect also has problems. Kracum said ground-source heat pumps would likely require about 1,000 holes at the base area, each 200-feet deep, again with no guarantee of success.

“The thing is you don’t get enough heat to melt snow,” Kracum said of ground-source methods.

As such, the system will likely have to be supplemented with a gas-fired boiler. Other options include a system totally powered by a gas boiler or abandoning the snowmelt system altogether in favor of traditional snow removal methods.

“It would tickle me not to see snowmelt here,” Dan Koelliker, a mechanical engineering consultant, told URAAC. “The carbon footprint is tremendous.”

Next year

Kracum said about $2.5 million will be available for public infrastructure projects in 2008. Those projects will likely include a roundabout — with an 80-foot radius — to replace the intersection at Mount Werner Circle and Après Ski Way, reconstruction of the intersection of Après Ski Way and Village Drive and pedestrian connections between Burgess Creek Road and Ski Time Square.

Brent Lloyd, a design consultant with Wenk Associates, said about 95 percent of the projects involve public right-of-ways.

Base area projects look to become even more intensive in two years, when as much as $14 million is expected to be available.

By Tom Ross 

Steamboat Springs — The developers of Wildhorse Meadows have formalized plans to link their multi-phase residential project with the base of Steamboat Ski Area via a new gondola.

Resort Ventures West President David Hill announced last week that Wildhorse Meadows has entered into an agreement with Leitner-Poma to engineer the public gondola that will ferry passengers from the new Trailhead Lodge to an upper terminal near the ski area’s gondola building.

“The gondola will come in two phases,” Hill said. “You’ve got to design it and then final price it.”

Resort Ventures West Vice President Brent Pearson said his company has provided Leitner-Poma with a $3 million letter of credit that assures owners in the development that the gondola will be completed.

Leitner-Poma also is building the ski area’s new Christy Peak Express chairlift. The company has a manufacturing plant in Grand Junction.

Construction on the Wildhorse gondola will begin next summer, but it will not be ready to carry passengers until the beginning of the 2009-10 ski season. Completion of the gondola must be timed with the construction of another project under separate ownership because its upper terminal will be located in a public plaza that will be part of the One Steamboat Place resort-style development.

“Initially, we’ll do the bottom terminal and the towers in Wildhorse Meadows and perhaps the towers on the knoll,” across Mount Werner Circle, Hill said. “The upper terminal can’t be built until the parking structure for One Steamboat Place is built. The city has to sign off on the plaza area for the gondola to be ready.”

Construction that takes place next summer will help to ensure completion of the gondola in time for the winter of 2009-10, Hill said.

“If all we have to do (the second summer) is that upper terminal, that’s great,” he said.

When the complex process is complete, it will dramatically change the appearance of the lower ski base, with groups of enclosed gondola cars rising out of a new resort village and spanning a public street on their way to the lifts that take skiers to the slopes.

“It’s a public lift,” Hill said. “But it will not handle the (passengers generated by) the whole Meadows Parking Lot. It’s not designed for that.”

Hill said ski area surveys reflect that the skiing public enjoys the convenience of having its shuttles meet them at their car in the parking lot. Members of the general public on foot in the Wildhorse plaza, or pedestrians wishing to travel to the lower ski base, are welcome to ride the gondola.

The new Wildhorse gondola will be distinctly different from the ski area’s gondola, which features cabins that detach from the haul cable as they come through the terminals.

Wildhorse’s “fixed-grip pulse gondola” will have four groups of three cabins, each cabin accommodating six people. Each group of three cabins will leave the terminals in a pulse and then slow down upon arriving at the next terminal. The two groups of cabins at the midway point when others reach the terminal also will slow down because they are fixed to the haul cable.

The gondola will travel at 1,000 feet per minute and produce trip times of about 4 minutes, 30 seconds, Hill said. A detachable gondola might make the same trip in 2 minutes, 30 seconds, he added.

The Steamboat Ski area is on target for the completion of over $16 million in mountain improvements by the November 21st opening. Base area work is moving at a fevered pitch as Ski Corp is more than halfway completed with a total re-grade of the Headwall area that feeds into the base area. Along with the re-grading project, the old Southface and Headwall chair lifts are being dismantled and the Preview lift is being realigned and increased in capacity from a double to a triple chair. In addition the five beginner area magic carpets will be upgraded, realigned and lengthened.

Construction on the new Christie Peak Express high speed chair is also progressing well. Foundations have been poured and tower installation will start this month, with helicopters being used as needed. The new lift will have an unload only station just above the top of Southface, before continuing on to the top of the Christie Peak. The new lift will cut ride time from 15 to 4.8 minutes. Additional improvements are being completed at the Thunderhead Cafeteria and Meadow Parking Facility, along with general improvements to the snowmaking system.

These exciting improvements will enhance your skiing experience at Steamboat. If you have questions about any of these projects at the ski area, please contact your Colorado Group Realty broker.

Mark your calendars for the Steamboat Springs Real Estate Roundup & Expo, November 8th at the Steamboat Grand. The event will bring together seasoned experts and provide the public with current information regarding the Yampa Valley’s dynamic real estate market.

 By Tom Ross

Steamboat Springs — The blue concrete pipe stacked around the base of the Steamboat Ski Area this week has to do with the push to make snow not only later this month, but also 50 years into the future.

Ski area spokesman Mike Lane said construction crews working on the re-grading of the Headwall trail are busy installing new snowmaking pipelines made by the North American division of an Austrian company, Tiroler Rohren.

Steamboat first installed the state-of-the-art blue piping last year on the Vogue ski run.

“It’s worked really well for us,” Lane said. “It’s supposed to last 50 years — twice as long as other products.”

Colorado Ski Country USA announced this week that Loveland and Arapahoe Basin ski areas already have begun snowmaking operations in the annual race to see who can open first in October. Steamboat is set to open Nov. 21 with the annual Scholarship Day to benefit the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club. The ski area typically begins making snow in late October when overnight temperatures consistently dip into the teens, Lane said. He added that construction on Headwall is on schedule to meet that timeframe, as part of $16 million in capital improvements at Steamboat this year.

“They’ll be working on the new pipe for another week to 10 days, and when they get that done, they’ll be ready to pressurize the system and get started,” weather permitting, Lane said.

In 2006, Steamboat began making snow Oct. 26, in the midst of a series of frigid snowstorms that swept across Northwest Colorado.

The installation of new snowmaking lines is just part of the work taking place at the base of the ski area this week.

Lane said crews are grading the site of the lower terminal for the new Christie Peak Express high-speed, six-person chairlift, before pouring concrete later this week or early next week.

Concrete for the Christie Express mid-station and upper terminal already has been poured.

A large earth scraper is pushing topsoil to the upper portion of Headwall this week while dirt is being piled around large concrete footers for the towers of the relocated Preview chairlift.

“They’re making a ton of progress this week,” Lane said. “We have really good people who have a lot of experience working together and a lot of knowledge.”

By Elizabeth Aguilera
The Denver Post

The arrival of ski-giant Intrawest in this already bustling ski town was like adding gasoline to the fire of furious development already underway.

Intrawest, the world’s second-largest ski company, purchased the Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp. in March. The move has been described by many as a validation of all the backhoes, cranes and construction workers overrunning the town.

But the development has also come with a load of headaches for local business owners who say traffic and increased prices are changing their town.

Steamboat is preparing for more than 4,000 new beds across the town and more than $600 million in development over the next five years, ski-resort officials estimate.

Add to that the $16 million Intrawest is pumping into mountain improvements that include the installation of the new Christie Peak Express, a high-speed detachable six-passenger chairlift, and headwall slope regrading. The Urban Renewal Authority is overseeing $23 million in public improvements, and developers are in various stages of construction on the mountain and throughout downtown Steamboat.

Most of the ongoing projects were moving down the pipeline pre-Intrawest, said Chris Diamond, president and chief executive of Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp.

“These visions were created several years ago,” he said. “It’s not that Intrawest got here and all of this happened; the horse was out of the barn long before.”

Two years ago the city created a master plan for new infrastructure that seemed to pave the way for new development, said Tom Leeson, Steamboat Springs’ planning director.

Early developments include the Porches, high-end condos near the base of the mountain, One Steamboat Place with about 100 units right at the base and Steamboat 700, a 700-acre parcel of county land to the west that the city is annexing as a developer plans to build 2,000 units.

The Steamboat 700 project alone will increase the town’s population by 15 percent, Leeson said. According to 2006 census data Steamboat’s population is 9,315.

Potential growth drew developers

The city has dubbed all the new development and improvements “Steamboat Unbridled” to represent the towns’ renaissance, which includes more than a dozen residential, multi-family and mixed-use developments.

Local real estate experts said the developers’ arrival was a given because of the availability of property and the potential growth because of the ski resort. Last season Steamboat had 1,071,755 skier visits.

The average home price in Steamboat is $550,000 to $600,000. Land and home sales topped $1 billion in 2006, according to Routt County records. The number has already reached $1.2 billion this year and sales are expected to continue to rise in 2008, said Pam Vanatta, broker/associate and co-owner of Prudential Steamboat Realty.

“Our prices are far below most of the ski areas in Colorado so we look like a bargain and that is what drove the developers to come here,” said Vanatta.

The proposed and ongoing developments in town were included in the presentations executives at the resort gave to prospective buyers, including Intrawest, said Andy Wirth, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Intrawest.

The convergence of real-estate development, infrastructure improvements and investments in the airport and on-mountain experiences are key to what is happening in Steamboat, he said.

“Any one of these elements doesn’t mean that much,” said Wirth. “But in this case you have all four of these really critical elements purposefully and with a great deal of effort being choreographed and hitting at the same time.”

The resort has been working with local officials to improve the airport in nearby Hayden for six years, Wirth said. This year the airport completed an $18 million upgrade and will continue upgrading next year.

The resort has also been working with the airport, which is 22 miles away, on bringing in more direct flights from large cities. This year the city has direct flights from 10 hubs including New York, Chicago and Dallas.

“Infancy to adulthood overnight”

But there have been concerns about growing pains including traffic congestion, parking and affordability.

“The biggest challenge is managing change and maintaining our community character,” Leeson said. “It’s all happening so quickly. The rate of change is hard for the community.”

Some business owners said they’re feeling overwhelmed.

“It’s like throwing a blanket over a baby that was cold and now we are being smothered,” said Jay Baverstock, owner of the Shack Café. “I just don’t like our town changing so much. Let it grow up slowly. It’s going from infancy to adulthood overnight.”

City manager Alan Lanning said the development will bring benefits to the town, but first it must ride out the pace of the new construction and infill.

“Steamboat will always be Steamboat,” Wirth said. “This is not a place that was contrived on an architect’s drawing board.”