I drove up from El Paso, Tx to Steamboat Springs on Jan 1st and skied 3 1/2 days until Jan 5th spent the night at Breck and kept driving south to Santa Fe on the 6th. 33" of snow fell during my stay. Yes, it was good. Only on the 5th got really cold. The other days were in the 20's on the hill. The first 12-15" of snow was quite heavy at mid elevations but on the last day it was almost blower up top. Steamboat takes a long time to know it well since it has a LOT of nooks and crannies and it is not your obvious top to bottom ski hill. Lots of trees that are well spaced but get bumped up quickly. Hard to tell on the video but there were a lot of soft bumps almost everywhere. Some folks were having trouble skiing since it was mostly crud except at a few choice locations. Generally the best snow was on Morningside bowl but that place is basically flat after 3-4 turns unfortunately. I had the best runs under the Sundown chair and on the edge of the three o clock trees and also had an amazing run in Closets which I think was over 1200 ft vert easy. Unfortunately the battery on the GoPro is terrible and when I tried to record a lot of runs it just shut off. I still got a lot of footage skiing with my nephews on open runs and some trees. Overall Steamboat is a really unique mountain in Colorado. It is a snow machine compared to most i70 resorts. The upper mountain just gets gobs of snow too bad a lot of the terrain is low angle and there are a LOT of long flattish areas that you need to negotiate after short steep pitches. Rolex is a good run that has a good pitch and was excellent on this trip with great snow. For groomers the Thunderhead area was well maintained and fun and also the Sunshine is quite mellow and nice but felt more like green cruisers. Overall the terrain under and to either side a good bit from the Sundown and Stormpeak lifts was the best and Steamboat is a mountain to explore not just stick to trails. There are a lot of hidden drops and cliffs than one can huck if you are so inclined. Basically the entire mountain is fair game if the coverage is good.
Here is a Video I made (first time using iMovie...)
Here is a Video I made (first time using iMovie...)