Skiing and River Sports
Steamboat Springs offers excellent skiing opportunities (also see history section) and has been the locale of world-class skiing competitions, including competitions for the 1989 and 1990 Alpine Skiing World Cup. The Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club has brought forth many successful skiers, and the Steamboat Ski Resort attracts a large number of visiting snow aficionados.
The Yampa river is a popular conduit for water sports like fishing, rafting, tubing, and kayaking (playboating). The 4-mile grade II-III whitewater run through town ends with two surfable holes. One is called D-Hole; the other one—near the library, close to the Steamboat Spring—is named Charlie's Hole or C-Hole for short, after local kayaker Charlie Beavers (1981–2002). Beavers started kayaking at age 12, was the first to explore a number of rivers ("first descents"), and successfully contended in playboating competitions. He died in a non-boating accident in 2002. The hole and some kayaking events were dedicated to him.
Every year on the first weekend of June, Steamboat Springs organizes the Yampa River Festival. It includes a kayak rodeo (i.e. a playboating competition) which attracts national and international world class playboaters. Additional events include but are not limited to a downriver race which is Colorado's only upstream slalom race, and The Crazy River Dog Contest, in which dogs retrieve sticks from the river and may pass a whitewater section.
The defunct ski area Stagecoach is about twenty miles (32 km) south of Steamboat. It lasted two ski seasons, closing in 1974
Read more about this topic: Steamboat Springs, Colorado
Famous quotes containing the words river and/or sports:
“We are bare. We are stripped to the bone
and we swim in tandem and go up and up
the river, the identical river called Mine
and we enter together. No one’s alone.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“In the end, I think you really only get as far as you’re allowed to get.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)