Steamboat Springs, CO Real Estate and Community Blog

My brother Chick and his friend Dave spent today on Buffalo Pass skiing the bottomless powder with the Steamboat Powdercats. They are high school friends who lived as ski bums at Jackson Hole during college, and this trip was the first one they’ve skied together for a couple decades. They’ve come back to our house all week raving about the great snow conditions, but none of their days on the mountain compared to their day on Buffalo Pass.

The snow, they say, is “crazy deep up there”.

Powdercats are permitted for 2200 customers. The forest service gave them 15% greater capacity this year (or over 2500 skiers). Chick and Dave booked in November, and couldn’t get an Expert opening this week. So they went in the Advanced group, and skied advanced terrain in the morning and expert terrain in the afternoon.

Incredibly, out of eleven skiers, ten of them were repeat Steamboat Powdercat skiers. Dave was the only one who hadn’t done it before. Jim from Florida has skied with the Powdercats nine days this year! It was an international mix in the ‘cat with five Americans, four Brazilians, and two Scots.

Although nobody would say it was the best day ever, all the guides agreed that “it doesn’t get any better than this. It was a top five day, but we’ve had a lot of top five days this year.”

Dave and the guides needed some major math formulas to figure out where his skis and poles after a major wipe-out. The skis were implanted four feet under the snow and took 20 minutes of searching to locate them. The snow was so light and fluffy he skied away (after finding the skis) laughing. The steeps were “so easy to ski” because they’re piled with so much snow.

Dave raved about flying over the unexpected drop offs and blowing through tree wells. Every 4-5 turns they had to stop and breathe because their mouths were stuffed with snow.

For all the fun, Steamboat Powdercats will lend you big, fat powder skis, pick you up at your door, serve breakfast and a gourmet lunch with linens in a cabin, serve after-ski cocktails during the slide show of hundreds of photos they take during the day, and send home a CD full of face shots to load on their work computers back in Pennsylvania.

Chick and Dave say the $400 price tag for the day is worth every cent.

Click here to see photos of Dave and Chick with the Steamboat Powdercats.