Yesterday, April 11th, Steamboat Mountain closed its access to the public. The 2009/2010 season is now officially over and snowboarding/skiing will no longer be an activity participated by CMC students.... Or so you think? Me and my buds contemplated that exact question. With that being said, I managed to give my friend a call today to see if he wanted to go snowboarding. Not at a resort but somewhere in the back country forests. He equally thought it was a great idea so we met with my friend and his 4-Wheeling club in Summit County. 2 Steamboat bound college students with 2 Boulder bound college students piled into our friends 4-Runner and set off up a favorite trail we have been driving up for years. I will not disclose the trail name for it is almost a well kept secrete me and my friends have been keeping for quite some time. Anyway, we have gone up this trail in past spring seasons for some great muddy 4 wheeling and some slushy snowboarding!
We were leaving summit county at about 7:00 a.m. Our boards were packed up into the car and our lunches were ready to go. My buds and I were excited to get back into the wheeling season so we will not miss snowboarding for a while. When we hit trailhead entrance, it was about 8:30. The trail was covered in packed slushy snow. We had to drive to higher ground where the better snow still exists. The further we drove my friends off road vehicle, the harsher the roads became. more mud, more snow, more water. The car got exponentially dirtier the higher up we went. We knew going up the western face of the mountain would be the muddiest and we chose that for a reason. Driving through mud and snow is my favorite 4-Wheeling conditions.
As we approached the summit of the mountain, we got our boards and headed to the northern facing part of the mountain. We were incredibly bummed out to see that the place where the mountain gets the most snow, didn't even have enough to snowboard down. Everything was rocky, muddy and crappy. The only kind of vehicle that could make it down the slushy snow was our cars, and this crazy snow tractor contraption. We have never seen this mountain like this before. Although all the pictures show snow on the mountain, there was definitely not enough to to be able to pull it off safely. So for the first time in 3 years, we have been unable to ride at our spot. So much for it being lucky..
Instead of snowboarding, we parked the vehicles in a nice spot to get lunch. Enjoying the spring sun, we celebrated the coming of spring and the leaving of winter. Even though we didn't get to snowboard, it was still a great sun. After hanging out in the area for an hour, we knew it would be time to head back to the boat. We packed up our stuff, and said our goodbyes.
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