Steamboat 11/26/09

Thanksgiving Day takes on a different meaning when you live in a resort town and work for the mountain.  It’s a day that you spend working and generally spend the dinner with friends because getting time off to visit family is almost impossible.  I worked this morning and made time to get out for a couple runs with friends and opted out of dinner since I’ve been feeling sick (of course you can still snowboard when you are sick).

Currently Steamboat has two chairlifts open (Christie Peak Express and Preview) which means that Christie Peak is packed.  Tomorrow the gondola opens so it’ll be a lot less crowded but when I looked out the window this morning this is how the lines looked.

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The view of Steamboat’s lower mountain terrain park (Lil’ Rodeo)

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For the first run I met up with Stacia and Chad before they headed into Slopeside for apres lounge time.  The ride up to the top of Christie Peak Express was fun but the ride down was sketchy ice bumps and not as fun.

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After the first run, I met up with the Steamboat instructor crew including Philip, Jerry, Bec, Scott and Chris from Snowboarderguide to lap the terrain park.

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Yesterday I hit 3 of the 12 features in the terrain park and today I hit 5 of the 12 features in the terrain park so I was stoked!   I’m still 50-50’ing and I’m definitely going to start boardsliding the easier boxes to get better at them.  It’s all slow progression but I’m stoked doing it!

The features in the park have been exceptional and everytime I roll through the park it’s packed with a variety of skills trying each feature.   Chris was my model today for almost all of the park photos and he can do everything so it was perfect.

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Chris on the bonk features at the base of the terrain park

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Chris’ nose grab off the jump

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Tomorrow the gondola will open at Steamboat and more terrain so it’ll be a lot less crowded as people spread out.  I’ll be making my way down to Summit County this weekend to spend some time at other mountains before I stick to Steamboat for the next couple weeks.  I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and got in some turns!