At Home in Steamboat Springs, winter 2011-12

THE HOLIDAY EDITIOn

winter 2011-12

The return of La Niña Snow predictions from caterpillars, beavers and bees

PLUS

BAckyArD fUN Jiu-Jitsu comes to Steamboat NEW SEcTIoN

Artist profile INSIDE: HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

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DESSE DESSErT BAkE-off!

W WInnInG HOLIDAY rEcIpEs r

’TIS THE SEASON TO BUY LOCALLY | PAGE 42

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lity Q ua

You Can Fee l

THE

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“Your touch is so sensitive and relaxing.”

“I can already tell that my body is changing.”

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john f. russell

contents

Departments

Features

10 Quick Hits

26 Backyard Fun

Return of La Niña, offseason cardio accomplishments, the Tredways tackle Kilimanjaro and more.

16 Real Estate: The Year of the Powder Room Last year was the year of powder, and now it’s the year of the powder room when it comes to remodels.

32 Road Trip: It’s the Little Things, Mon A family sea kayaking and snorkeling trip to Belize’s Halfmoon Cay.

36 Cooking With: Carl’s Tavern For Carl’s Tavern’s Collin Kelley, it’s all about keeping things fresh.

38 Staying Fit: Jiu-Jitsu Nate Daughenbaugh establishes Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Steamboat.

41 Ross Remembers Leif Hovelsen: The son of the “Flying Norseman.”

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A growing number of locals keep winter recreation close to home with ski slopes, tubing courses, ice rinks, rails and more in their own backyards.

40 Bronze ambition Steamboat Springs sculptor Sandy Graves brings animal emotion into the abstract with her bronze art.

42 Holiday Gift Guide Keep it local this year with this assortment of gift ideas from companies based right here in Routt County.

Special section 19 Holiday Dessert Bake-Off Wonder who makes the best treats in town? Steamboat cooks face off in our annual holiday baking competition.

On the cover: Manuela Berchtold gets an early wake-up call on Alarm Clock at Steamboat Ski Area. (Photo by Larry Pierce)

froM the EDITor

Suzanne Schlicht Chief operating officer Scott Stanford General manager Brent Boyer editor in chief Eugene Buchanan Magazine editor BriAn MontGoMery

Nicole miller Assistant editor meg Boyer Advertising director Elevator Going Up: Editor Eugene Buchanan earns his turns on a not-quite backyard bootpack.

Backyard Fun I still remember it sitting under the Christmas tree: a Snurfer complete with a grab rope on its tip and metal staples for traction. Once our unwrapping decimation was complete, my five siblings and I raced it outside to the hilly yard of our home in Boulder and started schussing down the hill.

Sometimes we’d land in the juniper bush, other times we’d biff on the sidewalk, and occasionally we’d make it all the way into the street. When we tired of the Snurfer, we’d pack the same hill out and build jumps, banks and more to saucer, tube and toboggan down. We rode that hill on pretty much everything but the backboards we should have had on hand.

In short, we had more fun in our backyard than we did at most resorts and other locations catering to kids, able to entertain ourselves for hours on end just a snowball’s throw from our cupboard’s Swiss Miss hot chocolate packets with mini-marshmallows.

Here in Steamboat Springs — coincidentally the home of Snurfer inventor Sherman Poppen, whose snowboard predecessor is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution — this wintertime backyard fun is even easier. More hills, more snow and a colder clime mean locals can build rails, ice rinks and even waterfalls for ice climbing all within a few steps of their slippers waiting in the mudroom.

Whether Steamboat locals pursue this passion more than people in other towns,

I’m not sure. All I know is that come winter, on a typical Sunday afternoon or even weekday night, you’ll find as many people enjoying ramped-up amenities in their own backyards as you will at other more-traditional locations.

And it’s not just sledding, rosy-cheeked practitioners of which can be found in winter towns the world over. We’re talking rails, ramps, jumps, boxes and more on homemade ski hills (one of which even has its own rope tow); backyard ice rinks, complete with homemade Zambonis, that are dialed-in enough to host bantam practices; multi-neighbor bobsled courses that careen across five property lines; and even a frozen water tower with a top rope anchor for ice climbing.

Maybe it’s something in our water.

Maybe it’s just the breed of person who decides to call the Yampa Valley home.

Maybe it’s the need to have recreation even closer at all times than it already is in this winter wonderland of ours. Whatever the reason, we herald these homespun antics on page 26.

So when driving through Backyard Fun Town USA (sorry, no marketing committee yet), don’t be surprised to see somersaulting sledders, skiers throwing mute grabs and the occasional hockey puck flying over makeshift boards as you pass from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a Snurfer rail to grind ...

— Eugene Buchanan

Suzanne Becker Creative services manager Steve Balgenorth Circulation manager Photographers john f. russell, Matt stensland Writers scott franz, nicole inglis, tom ross, Matt stensland Advertising design and production seve DeMarco, rachel Girard, jessica lobeck, todd wilson Advertising sales Kathy Coates, Karen Gilchrist, Deb Proper, emma scherer, Kathy wichelhaus

At home in steamboat springs is published three times a year, in March, july and november by the steamboat Pilot & today.

At home magazines are free. for advertising information, call erich strotbeck at 970-871-4225. to get a copy mailed to your home, call steve Balgenorth at 970-871-4232. email letters to the editor to ebuchanan@steamboattoday.com, or call eugene Buchanan at 970-870-1376 WINTEr 2011-12 | At HomE

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LETTErS to the eDitor Locals Praise

The Summer 2011 At Home issue includes a wonderful interview and photograph of my daughter, Mary Langer Bowman. I appreciate the work you did on this story. I’d like to buy several prints of the photograph. My compliments to you all — we always enjoy the paper and magazine whenever we’re in Steamboat.

— Jo Langer Reichardt, Colorado Springs The summer At Home magazine you produced is spectacular. The personal stories and the way you told them moved me to tears multiple times. Amidst the craziness around us every day, it was such a refreshing hour of goodness. Thanks and keep up the good work.

— Mark E. Scully, Steamboat Springs

Socks for Seniors

I know your town has two major sock companies, SmartWool and Point 6, and the locals are friendly and caring. For 10 years, my wife and I have organized an annual community project during the holidays called “Socks For Seniors” where we collect new socks to distribute to elderly in nursing homes. We’re looking for community

john f. russell

Delicious Issue

partners to help us expand the program in Steamboat. Those interested in helping can visit www.socksforseniors.com.

— Jamie Coyne, Denver

fairview fans

Thanks for the story on the Fairview Fiesta. This year’s event was a success as always, with the theme of No Taxation without Misrepresentation. Throughout the Fiesta, we discussed establishing a “Tour de Fairview” to support the city’s Bike Town

USA Initiative (including a century ride totally within the Fairview community limits); a seasonal stream-naming contest; an annual Fairview “Goats do Roam” Wine Festival; a minimum noise permissible by residents for parties at 100 decibels (anything less is just not a party); a new Fairview 700 Project for local infill; and a “Fly Fairview” program, including a 0.3789 percent tax surcharge on beer to promote more winter visitors. Long live Fairview Nation!

— Irene Nelson, Steamboat Springs

Holiday Headquarters HOUSEWARES

TOOLS

HOLIDAY TRIM

GIFTS

candles, seasonal dishware, mugs, mixers, gloves, ornaments, dog beds, gas grills, coffee makers, gift cards, giftwrap and much more!

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A Steamboat dining tradition for over 40 years.

This historic barn was converted into a restaurant in 1971.

Our steaks are hand cut Certified Angus Beef® and the Prime Rib is slow roasted daily.

Serving jet-fresh seafood, chicken, ribs and lighter fare. Our famous cinnamon rolls and endless salad bar included with every dinner.

Reservations Recommended • 970-879-1190 On the bus line at the corner of Pine Grove Road & Hwy 40 1465 Pine Grove Rd. • www.orehouse.com

Fine Consignment Clothing, Jewelry & Accessories, Fun Atmosphere!

OPEN: Mon. - Sat 11:00 to 6:00 CLOSED: Sundays 624 Lincoln Avenue • Located in the north walkway between 6th & 7th Street 970.879.9056 • www.dejavusteamboat.com • iderpaiei

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DinosAur nAtionAl MonuMent

DinosaUr naTional MonUMEnT

DinosAur nAtionAl MonuMent

quick hits

Gateway to the Past: The newly reopened visitor center includes life-size skeletons and bones as they were deposited nearly 150 million years ago.

Wilma!

Dinosaur National Monument visitor center reopens after 5-year closure Now we can all channel our inner Fred Flintstone again. On Oct. 4, Dinosaur National Monument celebrated the opening of its new Quarry Visitor Center and Quarry Exhibit Hall, which has been closed because of structural issues since 2006. The opening coincides with the 96th anniversary of the creation of the original 80-acre Dinosaur National Monument.

“It was a great way to celebrate the original opening of the park,” says park superintendent Mary Risser, adding that funding for the project was provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “We’re excited to be able to provide access again for the public to this amazing resource.”

Making a perfect day outing from Steamboat Springs, the museum — in Jensen, Utah, off U.S. Highway 40 — features two new buildings: the 10,000-square-foot exhibit hall and the 7,000-squarefoot visitor center. The visitor center offers a movie auditorium and exhibits designed to introduce visitors to the area’s natural resources, 10 | At HomE | WINTEr 2011-12

homesteading history, petroglyphs, geology, paleontology and rivers.

Located over the site of the worldfamous Carnegie Dinosaur Quarry, the new exhibit hall provides public access to more than 1,500 dinosaur bones found on the cliff face as they were deposited 149 million years ago. The hall also features exhibits and displays about the Jurassic environment and its inhabitants.

Before the reopening, the center’s most recent exhibits dated back to the mid-1980s. But during the past 25 years, new discoveries have resulted in even more exhibits, including three-dimensional, life-size skeletons of dinosaurs like a juvenile camarasaurus, a life-size allosaurus and the fossilized bones of a stegosaurus.

“It’s great to finally have it open again so people can step back in time,” says 30-year Dinosaur National Monument paleontologist Brooks Britt.

Info: www.nps.gov/dino, 435781-7700 — Eugene Buchanan

Ammonite Town USA?

Kremmling harbors world’s largest ammonite field You don’t have to head all the way to Dinosaur to get a glimpse of the prehistoric past. Just outside Kremmling lies the Kremmling Cretaceous Ammonite Locality, the world’s largest ammonite field. Marine predators that became extinct 72 million years ago, ammonites were half-giant snail, half-squid creatures that lived in a primeval sea covering today’s Rockies. The Kremmling site has the world’s highest concentration of the fossils. To get there, turn east off U.S. Highway 40, 10 miles north of Kremmling (mile marker 174) onto Colorado Highway 25. After crossing Muddy Creek, bear left (northeast) on County Road 26 and go 3.5 miles to an unmarked dirt road. Park at the gate marked by a Kremmling Cretaceous Ammonite Research Area sign and hike up the hill.

Info: 970-724-3000

To the Snows of Kilimanjaro

Local mountaineer Matt Tredway has taken college graduation presents to new heights.

As a gift for his daughter, Ariel, who graduated in May from Chicago’s Columbia University, Tredway took her up Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro in September, with the fatherdaughter duo topping out at 5:30 a.m. Sept. 15.

“It was awesome,” says Ariel, whose father is a veteran of several mountaineering expeditions in the Himalayas and Andes. “We started our summit push at 11 p.m., and before I knew it, we were at the top.”

She adds that it was surprisingly easy, especially because she never had been higher than 14,000 feet before. “He said I got his genes for it, which is lucky,” she says. “I didn’t feel any altitude sickness or anything.”

To prepare for the sevenday climb, which saw the Tredways trudge from 4,000

feet to the 19,341-foot top of the fourth-highest peak of the Seven Summits, Ariel did what she could to train in Chicago.

“It was pretty spur of the moment — I only had two months to get ready,” she says. “So I broke in my hiking boots on a treadmill at the gym, setting it at the highest elevation I could.

People looked at me pretty weird.”

Ariel, who grew up in the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club’s Nordic program, now lives in Nashville, Tenn., where she is launching a new clothing line. But the climb also has launched her on a quest to go even higher. “I’m definitely ready to try something else,” she says. “I want to see how high I can go before I bonk.”

As for the gift itself, she adds that she’d expect nothing else from her dad. “It’s such a typical Tredway present,” she says.

— Eugene Buchanan

MaTT TrEDway

Local Matt Tredway, daughter ascend Africa’s highest peak

all(titude) in the Family: ariel Tredway and her dad, Matt, standing atop africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro.

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Hopefully La Niña brings more knee-deep nirvana. Skier: Tom Barr. Location: “Inbetweens” at Steamboat Ski Area.

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larry PiErcE

quick hits

She’s Baaack ...

Return of La Niña could spell copious snowfall for Steamboat as old wives’ tales portend dumpage If you liked what you saw — and skied — last winter (i.e. a 433-inch ski season), wax your boards for more of the white stuff this year.

Forecasters are predicting a return, albeit milder, of La Niña, a weather phenomenon involving the periodic cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, which usually bodes well for Steamboat.

“Experts are predicting a return of La Niña again,” says Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp.

President and Chief Operating Officer Chris Diamond. “And that means another great ski season.”

Last year, Steamboat received 433 inches of snow during the regular season, including a 90inch record November en route to a year that saw Buff Pass set a water content record for the entire state (in May, one snow stake read 772 percent of average, storing a whopping 72.6 inches of water). According to Jon Gottschalck, of the federal Climate Prediction Center, the break-out-your-snorkel pattern is expected to continue this year.

But don’t just take his word for it. Those heeding local superstitions also portend another three-wire winter. “There are all sorts of wives’ tales about snow predictions,” Ski Corp. spokesman Mike Lane says. “And it seems like most of those signs are pointing to a good year.”

Still a skeptic? The following indicators show we’re due for some shoveling:

Woolly caterpillars

Sure, there were more of these little buggers out than usual this year. But more important than their sighting is the number of black hairs at each end — the more the merrier for powder buffs. More orange means a milder winter. Some believe that each of the caterpillar’s 13 segments represents one week of winter. Orange segments predict mild weeks, and black ones predict snowy weeks. Also pay attention to

the direction it’s traveling: If it’s heading north, it’ll be mild; south, break out the shovel. “All I know is that usually I don’t see too many of them, and this year I saw them all over the place,” Lane says.

Skunk cabbage height

According to Native Americans, the height of skunk cabbage leaves predicts the season’s snowfall. And while not Jack-and-the-Beanstalk high, this year’s crop in Routt County seemed to trend skyward. “It got pretty big this fall along Steamboat Boulevard,” Lane says. “I noticed it every day driving home.”

Birds and the bees

Steamboat sages also look skyward. Rumor has it that an early blackbird migration signifies a strong winter (locals report seeing them heading south in September). The height of beehives also can predict snowfall. The lower the hive the less snow, and the higher the hive the more snow. “This year, they’re about saddle-horn high,” says Marsha Daughenbaugh, of the Community Agriculture Alliance. “That means the snowfall should be about medium, which is still pretty good.”

Skunk Cabbage: The Inside Story Skunk cabbage is far more than a snowfall soothsayer. Native Americans ground its roots to treat wounds and draw out splinters; used its root hairs to soothe toothaches, colds and headaches; and mixed its powder with vegetable pigments to be used as prevention tattoos. It’s also well-adapted to Steamboat’s winters. It can live for 100 years and has winter shoots that morph into reddishbrown, slippery sheaths called spathes, which protect the blooms and whisk unsuspecting insects down to the pollen-filled bottom. It also has its own heating system, trapping heat generated by the flower spike and using it to melt the snow around it (its inside is as much as 36 degrees warmer than the outside air). The heat also attracts insects, which come for the warmth and pollinate in the process. As for its skunklike smell? It protects the plant from grazing animals and fools such insects as carrion beetles into thinking they’ve found a carcass while they’re in fact distributing pollen.

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more wives’ tales

Even beavers have insight into Old Man Winter. Oldtimers maintain that the height of a beaver dam indicates how cold the winter will be (they seem about average this year). The same holds true for cobwebs. Bigger than normal or more in your house means a bigger-than-normal winter. And don’t ignore the old persimmon seed. Cut a persimmon fruit in half: A knife-shaped seed spells cold, spoon-shaped means heavy snow and fork-shaped means mild. Other indicators of a big winter include pigs gathering sticks, insects marching in a straight line and more mice than usual inside your home.

— Eugene Buchanan

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quick hits

Coaching for a Cause

If Jazzel Gardea, 8, has a varied skiing style, don’t blame her. Last winter, the never-ever skier was the recipient of ski lessons provided by 15 volunteer coaches from the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club.

“She made a request via the United Way’s Christmas wish list to learn how to ski,” Winter Sports Club Alpine youth program director Blair Seymour says.

“That’s all she wanted.”

The club was contacted by Millie Beall, volunteering on behalf of Integrated Community, who got the city to donate a pass to Howelsen, Christy Sports to donate a season rental package and SmartWool to kick in long underwear. “When Jazzel’s mother made that wish, I jumped on it and immediately called the sports club,” Beall says. “She was super excited about it.”

That’s when the coaches came into play. Winter Sports Club

sswsc

Winter Sports Club coaches volunteer to teach local youth to ski

Jazzed on skiing: Jazzel Gardea during a lesson with steamboat springs winter sports club volunteer coaches.

coaches volunteered to take a two-hour shift every Sunday for 15 weeks.

“Once she learned how to ski, she found out she could do a lot more than she thought she could,” Seymour says.

And no one was more proud

than her parents, who came to Howelsen to witness every single session. “They were super supportive,” Beall says. “Everyone was all beaming by the end of it.”

No one more so than Jazzel’s mom, Lucy. “Jazzel loved it,” she says. “And she is especially

excited that she got good enough so she can now ski with her friends this year.”

While the Winter Sports Club regularly provides scholarships to underprivileged youths and those with special needs, this marks the first time it’s reached out to help facilitate a United Way Christmas wish. “It’s a really big deal for a family like Jazzel’s to be able to benefit from an opportunity like this,” says Sheila Henderson, who works with Jazzel and her family at Integrated Community.

Hopefully, it might lead to more such efforts in the future — depending, of course, on how the Jazzel experiment pans out. “She has a lot of joy and such a love of learning; it helps the instructor remember how much fun it is to ski,” says Winter Sports Club volunteer Cindy Arnis, who helped coach Jazzel.

— Eugene Buchanan

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Cardio Accomplishments Steamboat certainly has its share of closet hard guys and gals — those people who punish themselves with wacky cardio challenges that no one knows about except themselves. We managed to chase down a few (gasp) and got them to share some of their accomplishments, which might just entice you to get off the couch.

sheilA fArny

mike farny: Skin to thin air Nestle can have its 100 Grand bar. Local Mike Farny will take a hundred grand hiking.

Last winter, Farny skinned up to Thunderhead Lodge 50 times, for a total of 100,000 vertical feet. After that, he gladly went right into kayaking season — where he didn’t have to use his legs.

“Skinning is the best-kept secret in town,” he maintains. “You work up a sweat on the way up and then get to enjoy the mountain to yourself on the way down. And it’s always different.”

To achieve the feat, Farny knocked off Thunderhead three times a week for the

entire ski season, typically starting at 6:30 a.m. and getting back down by 7:30 or 8 a.m. Climbing times, he says, varied from a heart-pounding 27 minutes to 45.

He kept to his pledge even when Mother Nature threw him monkey wrenches. “I went out one morning when it was 40 below out,” he says. “The car had a hard time starting, but once I got skinning, my own engine was fine.”

And the reward always comes on the descent. “Some mornings, I’ll have amazing powder all to myself and then run into people hustling to get in the gondola line,” he says. “If they only knew about skinning.”

MorGAn Peterson

Nate Bird: mountain bike marathon So some guy named Cadel and the Schleck brothers rode through town in the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. Big whoop.

Let’s see them keep up with local mountain biker extraordinaire Nate Bird.

In September, Bird embarked on a nine-hour (for him) ride that even he called epic. The route: up Spring Creek, up BTR, up to the Continental Divide Trail, left at the four-way, around Percy Lake, circumnavigating Rabbit Ears to Dumont Lake, back on the Divide Trail to Mountain View, and finally down the mountain to a well-deserved butt cushion and beer.

All this came after taking fourth-place

Garmin stats: Super Divide Miles: 61.92 Time: 9:04:02 Average speed: 6.8 mph Maximum speed: 36.5 mph Elevation gain: 8,051 feet Calories burned: 3,329 Maximum heart rate: 187 beats per minute overall in the 224-mile TransRockies race, which climbed 39,400 feet, and a few “shorter” local races. “My GPS pegged it at about 62 miles,” he says. “What it didn’t account for was one really hard wreck. I did it all with a couple of cracked ribs.”

Allen BelshAw

Allen Belshaw: running on empty Feeling good about that jog on the bike path? Not to burst your bubble, but local doctor Allen Belshaw ran not one but two 100-mile races in the summer. And he wanted to do more.

The chance came after Belshaw won a lottery spot to run the Western States 100, which also earned him the ability to complete the grand slam by racing the Leadville 100, Wasatch 100 and Vermont Trail 100.

“I’m kind of winding down, but I couldn’t pass up that opportunity,” he says.

Alas, he had to settle for just completing two of them. “I was hoping for the grand slam, but I dropped out at 50 miles in Vermont, so I didn’t even bother with the Wasatch,” he says.

No matter. After reaching his goal of an under-24-hour finish in the Western, he did

the same in Leadville. “I felt pretty good afterward,” he says. “I’m not sure why.”

And he’s showing no signs of slowing down. Next year, as well as planning to race the new 100-mile category in the local Run Rabbit Run event, he also hopes to race the 100-plus-mile Ultra Marathon Tour of Mount Blanc in France. “We’ll see if I come around,” he says. “It’s always interesting to train for those sorts of things.”

Meanwhile, he remains an inspiration to the rest of us on the bike path. “Running two 100-milers in the same summer is pretty hard to do,” says Cara Marrs, organizer of the Steamboat Springs Running Series.

“It’s a pretty big toll on the body, especially when you live in Steamboat with such a short training window.”

— Eugene Buchanan WINTEr 2011-12 | At HomE

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Real estate

an easy way to dress up a bathroom is with up-to-date tubs, faucets, cabinets and light fixtures.

the yeAr of the

I

Powder room

n these tight economic times, even financially sound households in the Yampa Valley are having to defer longtime plans to sell their homes and instead are undertaking remodels of their existing abodes.

And at the foundation of that trend is the most attainable of all remodels: refurbishing a bathroom.

Transforming the smallest room in the house easily and effectively can bring it up to contemporary standards. A bathroom is also the one place where homeowners can make the greatest, most cost-effective impression on guests by using high-end fixtures that become more affordable on a smaller scale.

So call 2011 the year of the powder room. And because bathroom remodels are relatively economical, homeowners can borrow ideas and finishes from some of the most luxurious homes in the Yampa Valley.

over the Edge House One of the best examples of bathroom ideas to borrow comes from the Over the Edge House, overlooking the Why Not ski trail from the top of Burgess Creek Road, which rents for as much as $32,000 a week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Developer Don Redlinger worked with two Steamboat architectural firms — Laura Frey and Keith Kelly, of KSA — to design the large home, which is for sale and colisted by Cam Boyd and Pam Vanatta, and retained another consultant to make certain its interior lived up to the qualities of the Ritz Carlton Club.

For one of its powder rooms, Redlinger asked the cabinetmakers at Ski Country Kitchens to create a simple yet elegant countertop that appears to be a block of walnut. It’s something that every homeowner could afford. The small vanity, where no Story by Tom ross ❘ Photos by John F. Russell

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storage is really needed, keeps the bathroom from appearing cramped and small.

In the master bath, designers created a feeling of open space with a large mirror behind the tub. Instead of the traditional faucet, this one protrudes from the mirror — a dramatic effect that didn’t cost much to achieve.

Redlinger even took it a step further by installing a deep infinity tub rimmed with a tray; when fully filled and the water is left on, it pours over the rim. If that sounds wasteful, the plumbing includes a quiet pump that recycles the water until the bather is finished.

The luxury in the master bath is bumped up by a heated toilet seat — not necessarily important but affordable at $85 (or $215 for the Kohler brand).

Redlinger also understands the impact an upgraded lighting fixture can make in a bathroom. Over the Edge’s master has

This home in Boulder ridge features the latest in home designs and gives the bathroom a unique, modern feel.

a small, three-lamp chandelier over the tub and another upgraded fixture over the double vanity. The master also has a body jet-lined steam shower, another item becoming increasingly popular in the luxuryhousing industry.

“I think some people install a Jacuzzi just because they think they need to for resale value,” Redlinger says. “But they rarely use them. I have a steam shower in my home, and I use it everyday.” He adds that steam showers are a great way to restore a cold, weary body after a day of skiing.

Expect to pay about $1,500 for a steam generator and $500 for the control device.

You may find a package, including jets, in the range of $2,800. If you don’t have room in a cabinet for the box-like steam generator, you can get a row of three body jets for your shower for about $600. You’ll use more water, but perhaps you can conserve by taking a quicker shower.

covered Bridge House

Another Vanatta listing is the 11,000square-foot Covered Bridge House in Catamount Ranch, which includes eight or 10 bathrooms, depending on how you count several his-and-hers rooms, which are essentially two bathrooms in one.

A guest suite is notable for the 24-karat gold hardware fixtures in the vanity.

Even if you have no desire to live up to this home’s gold standard, you can borrow

tips and tricks from this grand scale home to make your own bathroom upgrade more elegant.

One way is to use custom accent tiles.

Covered Bridge uses tiles made by local artist Jan Willman in vanity back splashes and showers.

The home also features brass European towel warmers. If you want to impress houseguests or have a bathroom near the door to an outside hot tub, you can pick up an electrically warmed rack for less than $100.

Boulder ridge

Alicia Josfan, interior designer of a new home in Boulder Ridge, says many homebuilders and remodelers are moving away from the look of the large tub boxed in by massive surroundings to the elegance of a freestanding tub. The open space around the tub contributes to the feeling of size, and space in a bathroom, and depending on the tub, it can add sculptural qualities to the room.

The tub in the master bath at a recently completed $2 million home in Boulder Ridge is elliptical. To complement the tub, Josfan has installed slim-profile Porcher toilets. They have a subtle European look for a modest price — less than $300 for some models.

Like Redlinger, Josfan advocates steam showers over jetted tubs — they’re more practical and more luxurious. “A steam shower and a simple, free standing tub is the

More bathroom beta One of the best ways for home remodelers to research the latest trends in mountain contemporary bathrooms is to watch for open houses hosted by Realtors. In particular, the home tours hosted by nonprofits like Strings Music Festival and leading real estate brokerages provide a wealth of ideas on how to spruce up bathrooms and more. way to go,” she says.

She also advocates for mountain contemporary interiors, but emphasizes that shouldn’t be confused with trendy design elements or stark modernism. “Ask yourself what will still look good in 10 years,” she says.

For bathroom countertops at Boulder Ridge, she chose amber honey onyx that reinforces the warm glow of the room made possible by strategically placed windows and a bright color scheme on the walls.

Josfan selected oil-rubbed bronze plumbing fixtures for the home, but she says bathroom remodelers on a tight budget can get the same look with non-bronze fixtures. She also recommends brushed nickel hardware as an elegant, easy-to-care-for look.

For accents in shower surrounds, she has turned to panels of sliced pebbles that have a flat surface, instead of the trendier rough pebbles. ■ WINTEr 2011-12 | At HomE

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Steamboat

Style

Find it at

since 1995

1707 Lincoln Ave. • 870-8807 West of downtown Monday-Friday, 10-6 • Saturday 10-4

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Decadence shared It’s not a good time to squeeze into last year’s ski pants. On Nov. 4, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, Ace at the Curve and Steamboat Moxie Home Consignments and Design held the third annual Holiday Dessert Bake-Off, letting locals strut their pies, cakes, cookies and more in front of an esteemed panel of seven judges. In all, the open house hosted 45 entries with nearly 200 community members on hand to sample the waistline-increasing wares in one of the most popular food-related events in the Yampa Valley. And the fruits of the festivities (thankfully, not the fruitcakes) live on through the recipes shared by Steamboat’s best bakers. So brace your taste buds for the following look at the winners and their recipes from this year’s bake-off.

Download the complete recipe book at ExploreSteamboat.com Photos by John F. Russell

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BEST MISCEL LANEO

US DE

SSERT Kristi Lear & L ore Marvin’s white chocola te strawberry Former roomm squares ates Kris

ti Lear Marvin tag team ed their winni and Lore “We like to ba ng entry. ke bake together , and it’s more fun to ,” M white chocolat arvin says about their e has become on strawberry squares. “This e of our favorit to make.” e desserts Their entry st arts with a tw almond/white ic chocolate batte e-baked folded with st r, which is raw any sort of jam berry jam. “You can use you like,” she says.

Lear, a teache Elementary Sc r at Strawberry Park ho works at Yam ol, and Marvin, who pa Valley Ban k, entered their molassesba cookies as wel sed sugar and spice kiss l, but it was th eir squares that took the cake.

The only dow adds, is that no nfall about winning, she w her cohorts (and Lear) can kn bake. “Everyon ow she is now asking e me to bring so at work mething in,” she says.

Lore Marvin

berry squares w a tr s te la o c o h White c Ingredients 1/2 cup butter chocolate chips 1 3/4 cups white 2 large eggs

1/2 cup sugar ond extract 1 teaspoon alm urpose flour 1 1/2 cups all-p

preserves or jam 1 cup strawberry ral almonds tu na d, 1/3 cup slice

opposite es above pan on ch in 2 nd te ex it letting are pan with foil, curDirections Line a 9-inch-squ s. ee gr (mixture will look de 0 35 an over low heat ep 1. Heat oven to uc sa y. m ra iu sp ed k m tic nons s in a hite chip sides. Coat with te chocolate chip colored. Stir in w cup batd 1 1/2 cups whi an r tte bu elt M 2 eed until lemon 1/ 2. sp e h rv ig se -h re m d iu an ed mixer on m ded. Remove ith en w l bl w til dled). bo un ge st ju lar d the flour d sugar in a bat3. Beat eggs an d extract until combined, then ad llops of reserved on alm d crust. Spoon do n. an er pa ov ed ly ar mixture en ep ev pr s in ve preser aining batter . Gently spread ter. Spread rem until light golden or es ut in m 20 .

4. Bake ire rack. cts. Scrape into kle with almonds ol in pan on a w as package dire in ter over top; sprin inutes until lightly browned. Co 1/4 cup white chocolate chips es. Let set. Cut m back-and-forth lin remaining ith elt w M p to d.

5. Bake 30 to 35 ar le bo izz dr ng and ds to a cutti off tip of a corner 6. Lift by foil en zip-top bag. Snip tic as pl dy ur st , a small ove from foil.

36 squares; rem

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OICE H C Y T I N U M COM

pumpkin ’s a r a m a N c M Meghan se frosting e e h c m a e r c cake with

dma Rita Kelly If only her gran now. could see her ke me how to ba Mcht ug ta “She n ha eg M tle,” says when I was lit se pumpkin cake ho Namara, 22, w tegory. le’s Choice ca won the Peop ed in Steamboat, Born and rais tor teen coordina McNamara, a ices, rv Se ed liz ia ec for Horizons Sp she downloaded pe tweaked a reci rncooking.com by he ut .so w w w from and vanilla. coadding spices an almond co riSince entering pe ex d an , last year nut date cake nberry ra /c ge an or an ry menting with dn’t turn out ve cake “which di to have stumbled ad well,” she’s gl ning recipe. upon her win for some holi“I was looking it e says. “I knew day flavors,” sh wasn’t confident I t was good, bu nt It was a pleasa it would win. surprise.”

frosting Cream cheese Ingredients 1/4 cup butter cheese 8 ounces cream sugar d re 1 pound powde lla ni va s on 2 teaspo

Directions vanilla eam cheese and Mix the butter, cr d the powdered sugar. ad together. Slowly

Pumpkin cake

Ingredients 2 cups sugar 1 cup vegetable oil 4 eggs 1 teaspoon vani lla 2 cups flour 2 teaspoons bakin g soda

1 teaspoon bakin g 2 1/2 teaspoons powder cin 1 teaspoon ging namon er 1/4 teaspoon nu tm 1/2 teaspoon sa eg lt 2 cups pumpkin

Directions Grease and flour two 9-inch bakin g vanilla, and mix together well. Ad pans. Combine sugar, oil, eggs d and baking soda, ba king powder, cin pumpkin and stir. Sift together the flour, namon, ginger, stir together the nutm wet 40 minutes at 35 and dry ingredients. Pour into eg and salt. Slowly 0 degrees. pans and bake fo r 30 to

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| 21

TATION N E S E R P T S E B

rberg’s Chelsea Sode pcakes u c s y e il a B d an hot chocolate t

g’s ho elsea Soderber One look at Ch ys cupcakes, complete Baile chocolate and uettes sticking into a liro Pi make your with vanilla is all it takes to queur frosting, ot chocolate and Baileys “H mouth drool. drinks, so vorite winter fa y m of cupcake?” is one a in it not put I thought why who created the treats g, says Soderber r the contest. specifically fo e ski resort’s retail departWorking in th oved to Steamboat gm ment, Soderber years ago. She says she’s x si r ve en D from king/caterget into the ba nnamon just starting to ci specializing in nd she’ll ing business, A . es ak and cupc inning rolls, muffins to make her w ue in nt co y how fun likel e lik st ju well. “I concoction, as e says. “Everyone loves ” sh cupcakes are, a cupcake.”

s aileys cupcake B d n a te la o c o Hot ch Ingredients 3/4 cup butter 3 eggs 2 cups flour g soda 1 teaspoon bakin d cocoa power ne te 3/4 cup unswee

king power 3/4 teaspoon ba lt 1/2 teaspoon sa 2 cups sugar lla 3 teaspoons vani 1 1/2 cups milk

. Line least 30 minutes mperature for at en to 350. te om Directions ro at d an eggs to st Preheat ov t aside. In a Allow butter and foil liners and grease the cups. wer and salt; se ating at po g ith kin w ba , ns da pa so e cupcak sugar, be r, baking r. Gradually add ur, cocoa powde Stir together flo beat butter with an electric mixe a time, beating after each egg. wl, e at large mixing bo ned. Add eggs on ilk to butter mixture, beating on until well combi dm an e ur ixt m medium speed ur ternately add flo g Beat in vanilla. Al of the fudge fillin ch addition. ea Add a spoonful r te ll. fu ay w e th low speed af of cups about 2/3 Spoon batter into ow it to sit on top. all d an fore frosting. to each cup minutes. Cool be 25 to 20 r fo Bake

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Fudge filling

Ingredients 3 tablespoons bu tter 6 semisweet ch ocolate squares 1/2 cup milk

1 teaspoon vani lla 2 teaspoons Baile ys Irish Cream 3 cups sugar

Directions Melt the butter an d heat. Stir once m chocolate together in a saucep an over low elted. Move the ch bowl. Add milk, vanilla and Baile ocolate mixture to a mixing ys well mixed. Sift the sugar. Slow to the chocolate. Blend until ly add the sugar mixture. Mix un to til smooth. The chocolate fudge the chocolate until ready to ad can be set aside d as a filling.

Frosting Ingredients ture) r (room tempera 2 sticks of butte gar su 3 cups powered lla 3 teaspoons vani ys Irish Cream ile Ba s on po es bl 4 ta ) ed milk (if need Directions d sugar, vanilla butter, powdere Cream together ilk if it is too thick. m and Baileys. Add

BEST CAKE

Debbie Edger ton’s toasted cocon ut rum cake Cake category winner Debbi Edgerton e

Glaze

Ingredients 1/4 cup butter gar 1/4 cup brown su rk rum da ’s er ey M p cu 4 1/ rum 1/4 cup Malibu d. mix until dissolve til Directions own sugar and un br es d ut ad in d m an e r fiv t tte Melt bu Boil for abou il. bo a to g e. in br uc a caramel sa Add rum and ens and becomes the mixture thick

admits failed” with he that she “totally r cranberry fig last year. The bars sales executiv e at One Steambo at Place made up for it this go-aroun d toasted coconu with her winning t rum cake.

“We’re going Thanksgiving to Mexico over ,w ing about rum hich got me thinkand the tropics says. ,” she She based he r concoction on original Bacar an di rum cake re cipe, experimenting w and rums, incl ith different spices uding Meyer’s dark and Malibu co conut. “It has ru the cake, the sauce and the m in gl she says. “It’s not really a br aze,” eakfast cake.”

Coconut rum ca ke

Ingredients 1 box yellow ca ke mix 1 small box inst ant nut cream pudd vanilla or cocoing 1/2 cup vegetabl e oil 1/2 cup water

1/2 cup Meyer’s da 2 tablespoons M rk rum alibu rum 4 eggs 2 tablespoons flo ur

Directions Preheat oven to 35 large bowl, beat 0 degrees and grease and flour the cake mix, pu Bundt cake pan. dd In a smooth. Add flo ur and mix until ing mix, rum, water, oil and eg gs until bl at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. ended. Pour into prepared pan and bake After removing cake from oven , poke holes into half of rum sauc cake in the pan e over cake to so and po ak. Invert cake on pastry brush, pa int to platter and, w ur ith a Paint glaze onto the remaining rum sauce over ca warm cake, and top with toasted ke. coconut.

Rum sauce

Ingredients 1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup water rum 1/2 cup Malibu tter and water Directions g one stick of bu in elt se to m by e uc dissolved. Increa Make rum sa gar and mix until out 90 seconds. su d Ad . at he w over lo ure for ab at and boil mixt medium-high he

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| 23

E BEST COOKI

mon basil le ’s ll a H h a n n Ha okies e o c te la o c o h c mboat from th and white Moving to Stea ge of Art in

itute Colle Maryland Inst had been nah Hall, 22, an H e, Baltimor before ks ly two wee in town for on ning the coveted Best win entering and ad in the ry. “I saw the go te ca ie ok Co she says. r,” te en to cided ere were paper and de Th . in pect to w ex ’t dn di I ut “B tries.” basil some great en as her lemon None as good e chip cookies, olat and white choc ired by the herbs she sp which were in tment. “I usually pick a ar grew in her ap nt and see what I can ie random ingred ys Hall, who works sa ” it, ith w make “I had a cation Center. at the Kids’ Va d thought it would go l an bunch of basi on.” ie busigood with lem an online cook ar d te ar st l Hal ye a ) m co akbakes. erate ness (www.ste op to s ue in nt e co rs will to ago, which sh si vi , te On the si in Steamboat. cookies, including such of find 12 types n/chocolate mbos as baco other flavor co erry/balsamic vinegar. ch that I like chip and dark c cookie recipe “I have a basi says. e to convert,” sh

Apple pie

Ingredients Stir-N-Roll Past ry (double crust) 2 cups sifted all -purpose flour 1 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon sa 2 tablespoons flo lt ur 1/2 cup Mazola 1/2 teaspoon cin oil namon 1/4 cup cold who 1/ le 4 teaspoon nutm 6 cups Jonathan milk 1/8 teaspoon sa eg apples, pared, th lt inly sliced Dots of butter Directions 1. Pour oil and co ld milk into sam e 2. Stir lightly to mix. Dough look measuring cup and pour all at once into flour s moist but isn’t 3. Roll pie crust stick be 4. Pastry clings tween two 12-inch squares of w y to bottom paper. ax paper. Peel of f top paper.

Center over pan. press together.

Peel it off carefu lly. If dough tear 5. Prepare apples s, simply . Combine dry in gred pie pan. Dot with butter. Cover with ients; mix with apples to coat . Pu rim. top crust; cut sli ts for steam to es t into pastry-lined 9-inch s 6. cape. Make high Ba ie k ke o 35 o c to 45 minutes un -fluted til nicely browne White chocolate d and juice begi ns to bubble thro ugh slits in crus 1 egg Ingredients t. vanilla on ur po flo as p te cu 1 2 4 r 3/ 1 ped basil (o da op so ch g , sh kin ba fre p on cu 1/4 3/4 teaspo ) tablespoons dried juice 1 teaspoon salt on lem s on r po es tte bl bu 3 ta 1/2 cup ate chips r ol ga oc su ch ed te 1 cup whi 1/3 cup granulat r ga n su 1/4 cup light brow egg, r together. Add butter and suga m Directions te ea ra Cr pa s. se a ee gr In utes.

365 de wet nd for 1 to 2 min Preheat oven to juice. Beat by ha together. Add bit by bit into the on lem d an lla a ni lt va on sa e d ac an Pl da s. so ip baking te chocolate ch hi w in bowl, mix flour, ld Fo ly. ing constant 11 minutes. ingredients, stirr eet. Bake for 8 to sh g kin ba greased

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BEST PIE

apple pie ’s e n ti s e p m o Grace C at the

ve thought th Who would ha ould have been ry w Best Pie catego ’ apple? ol r la ce won by regu of winner Gra n re ild ch The . at’s who Compestine, th n and told him I so y m d lle “I ca surprise id, ‘It doesn’t won and he sa stine, who has lived pe me,’” says Com 1944. “But Springs since in Steamboat ” old apple pie. en spicit’s just a plain be s ha stine Hardly. Compe Wesson oil recipe iginal ing up her or apples ing Jonathan us s, for 20 year s made e’ Sh t. us cr il -o and a milk-and r husband, Melvin, he born it that way for n children, all long ow gr e re th and as r fo , at Steambo and raised in ent’s ember. The ev d it, m re n ca e re as sh be em m mplers re judges and sa ing, too. got to the tast “By the time I stine pe m all gone,” Co .” ng it was already hi et m so that says says. “I guess

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Backyard Growing number of locals keep winter recreation close to home You don’t have to go to the ski resort, Howelsen Hill or even the ice rink to get your winter sports fix. With a little creativity, local homeowners are taking matters into their own hands — and yards — creating everything from backyard rails to rinks just a snowball’s throw from the fridge.

Skiing in your own backyard hen 10th Mountain Division veteran William A. Bowes moved to Steamboat Springs in the early 1960s, he was torn between buying a blue, turn-of-the-century Victorian house on Pine Street and a more rustic, one-bedroom abode at the mouth of Strawberry Park. The potential for a ski hill in the backyard sealed the deal.

“There was no question,” says grandson Cedar Beauregard. “He wanted a ski hill in his backyard.”

Purchasing the property in 1962 and eventually raising seven kids there, one of the first things on his honey-do list was installing a rope tow, which he did in 1965 thanks to a Norwegian engine and gear box ordered by Dennis Lodwick, father of Olympian Todd.

With a 200-vertical-foot slope cut through a forest of subalpine fir, the run is no slouch, serving up terrain for everything from gates to groomers.

“It’s perfect,” says Beauregard.

sUE riFE

W

siblings on a Homespun slope: cactus Beauregard, from left, Jim Bowes, Jenny Bowes, John Beauregard, cedar Beauregard and robert Bowes getting ready to hit the hill circa the early 1990s.

“It’s steep enough for powder and bumps, but also great for gates. It actually kicks a lot of people’s butts.”

So does the lift, which benefitted from a new, fivehorsepower motor last year but whose rope — still the original — is on its last legs. “It’s almost

as hard going up as it is down,” says Sue Rife, the oldest of the seven children. “It’s a pretty good arm workout.”

Forearm pump aside, the seven Bowes children used it as regularly as today’s kids do electronic gadgetry, side-stepping up it every November to

Story by Eugene Buchanan 26 | At HomE | WINTEr 2011-12

pack it out and skiing it almost daily. The backyard run helped daughter Heidi spend 12 years on the U.S. Ski Team and son Mike make the NorAm team.

“We skied it every chance we got and still do,” says Rife, adding that her dad often would take photos of his kids on the run to analyze their form. “You can set up a 20-gate slalom course on it. We used to hold huge slalom parties there until 2 a.m.” Adds Beauregard: “We used to hold ski-keggers there in high school under the lights.”

The Bowes still use it for ski parties at Christmas, birthdays and any other reason to celebrate they can find, keeping the backyard tradition still very much alive. Bowes’ grandson, Cactus Beauregard, lives at the home with his wife, Chula, and their two sons, marking the fourth generation to schuss the backyard hill. “Cactus still skis it pretty much every day after work,” Cedar says. “And his kids are getting out on it also.”

JoE riFE

fun

former U.S. Ski Team member Heidi Bowes, front, and her sister Sue rife make tracks in their backyard stash, within earshot of the dinner bell.

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john f. russell

rail yard: Penn lukens slides across a rail in the backyard of his family’s steamboat springs home. He uses the rails year-round.

Sure, the rails might be bigger at the Bashor Terrain Park at Steamboat Ski Area, but they’re certainly not as accessible for local park skier Penn Lukens.

Lukens has taken the liberty of creating his own rail course in his backyard off Telemark Court. In all, he sets up two 10foot rails and one eight-foot rail year-round in his yard, drawing kids from throughout the neighborhood. In the summer, the glide is provided by AstroTurf.

In the winter, snow provides the speed “I bought one used rail from the Winter Sports Club, and got the other from friends in Aspen,” Lukens says. “It was the old support beam from their house, so we strapped it onto our roof and drove home with it after a hockey game.”

The homespun rail-grinding before and after dinner time is paying off. Lukens is the cur28 | At HomE | WINTEr 2011-12

rent Nor-Am URTUR half-pipe Grand Prix national champion, with last year’s tour win earning him an invitation to March’s World Cup finals in France, where he finished 10th.

Fighting off other neighborhood kids for rail time likely also helped him win last year’s United States Ski and Snowboard Association ski cross national championships.

He says the course has hosted as many as 15 kids at once, with four flood lights ensuring they can rail slide till the cows come home (at least when they don’t have any homework).

“We use it all the time,” Lukens says. “It’s great to have something like that at your home. You can just be hanging out and then go outside for a quick session.”

The rails also enable him to use skills picked up in math class; since his backyard doesn’t have much gradient, he had to

shAnnon luKens

home on the railS

Penn lukens, center, has created a rail-grinding masterpiece in his backyard that draws skiers from throughout the neighborhood such as fellow grinders, from left, Tucker olson, Peter white and wesley Park.

engineer a solution, building a ramp attached to his shed to provide the needed pitch. And thanks to its coating of AstroTurf, they can even use it on

the Fourth of July.

“The only problem with summer is that there are a bunch of prickly bushes in the landing,” he says.

JoHn F. rUssEll

communal choo-choo: Katie lake, from left, Katy Jones, cassidy Martinez and Jodi Maccini link legs on their neighborhood tubing hill.

You don’t have to go to Howelsen Hill to fill your winter tubing jones. Some people make do quite well in their backyards. And the more neighbors involved the merrier.

Such is the case with the annual tubing hill created by neighbors off Blue Sage Drive. Every winter, as many as five households chip in their backyards for a communal tubing route even Disney would relish. Complete with arterial paths feeding in from different backyards like river tributaries, tube-spilling bank turns and a massive wall blocking riders from careening into the cul-de-sac at the finish, it’s a labor of love, with the neighborhood kids the primary beneficiaries.

The mastermind — and lead snow blower, clearing the track after every storm — is Bill Kruger, who first rallies neighbors to weed-whack the area before the snow falls. “Once a couple of feet fall, we get out on snowshoes to pack it down,” he says. “Then we start making the banks. It definitely takes a little work.”

Kruger and company can pack down or shovel small storms, but when bigger ones come, it’s time for the snowblower.

“I hate to think about how many man-

hours we put into it each year,” says Kruger, adding that the key is to blow it early while the snow is still fluffy.

Once completed, the trail winds through five backyards, encompassing more than a quarter-mile of high-flying fun. “There’s no written agreement between us or anything,” Kruger says. “But everyone pitches in to help build it.”

While some parents shuttle their kids back to the top in cars, most riders grab their tubes and hike back up the track, keeping a wary eye out for careenersby, who force would-be bowling pins to hightail it up the sides. The neighborhood hosts pot-luck, full-moon tubing parties throughout the year, complete with signs posted around the neighborhood and hot dogs at the finish. “It’s a great little neighborhood thing to do,” Kruger says.

“And it’s a great testament to living in Steamboat.”

Kruger, of course, is always one of the first to test the spoils of his snow blowing.

“A lot of adults in the neighborhood have found that they’ve never quite grown up,” says neighbor Tammy Lake, whose house marks the finish. “My kids often show up at Bill’s door and ask his wife, Carolyn, if Bill can come out and play.”

john f. russell

tubing off the terrace

Jeff lake, from left, Michael lake (on shoulders), Katy Jones and cassidy Martinez hike back up the course.

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ice climbing out the kitchen

The ice Man climbeth: John Beaupre reaches the top of his homemade ice-climbing wall.

Ten years ago, John Beaupre looked out in his backyard and had a brainstorm.

“It was a big snow year, and this big icicle was hanging out of a cottonwood,” says Beaupre, an avid ice climber who has ascended routes across the country. “So I thought I could improve it.”

That he did. He rigged up a system of insulated hose, ran it up the back of the tree, affixed a spray nozzle to it, and let it spray onto a chain he hung down from the branch. Voila! An ice-climbing tower was born, complete with I-bolts for protection.

Of course, it also took a bit of trial and error.

“The first time the ice got way too heavy and the whole thing fell down,” he says. “Then the branch broke, so I had to put in an artificial one. It took a few years of experimenting.”

Now that he’s refined his technique, utilizing multiple chains and a hose with a series of valves, the result is, if not Eiger-like, at least a fair alternative to

nearby Fish Creek Falls. During his best year in 2007, he created a 50-foot-high vertical column that measured nearly 40 feet around its base.

“It forms itself pretty vertically,” he says.

“Now, once it’s up, it never falls down.”

To create his mega-cicle, he usually turns the water on around Thanksgiving, with the ice becoming climbable just before Christmas. Because it’s facing north in the shade, he says he usually can climb it from January into April. “It usually takes about a month to get climbable,” he says.

“But once you turn the hose on, you have to leave it on.”

While he’s rigged it with static lines and a chest ascender so he can climb it solo (“Honey, I’ll get to the trash after a quick climb”), he’s also keen on sharing his icicle. “We used to have Wednesday night climbing parties where we’d turn on the lights, crank some Beethoven, cook up some hot cider and climb until it got too cold,” he says. “It’s great because you can go right back inside.”

That Jonathan, 17, and Patrick Milne, 15, are playing hockey for Massachusetts boarding school Middlesex owes itself largely to a rink in their backyard.

For the past eight years, their father, Bob Milne, has built a homemade rink at his house off Clubhouse Drive, providing local kids with ice time even when the Howelsen rink is closed.

“One of the main reasons they’re playing at the level they are is because they spent so much time on our rink at home,” says Milne, who coached the 2008-09 and 2009-10 bantam teams to back-to-back state championships. “Plus, it’s a great way to bond with your kids.”

While the rink-side bonding might be easy, building the rink isn’t. To procure three months of skateable ice a year, Milne spends about two hours per day to maintain it — especially during snow years like we had last winter. Like being solid on your feet on the ice, it comes down to having a solid foundation underfoot.

To build his annual 40-by-60-foot rink, Milne has to outsmart Mother Nature by getting the boards up and liner down and filled with water during the first week of November before the first snow comes. A key, he adds, is not using too much water — six to eight inches is perfect, any more makes it too hard to freeze.

“The ideal conditions are an early cold snap before Thanksgiving without any snow,” he says. “If you can get four to five nights of 15-degree temperatures before it snows, you’re golden, and your base will be set for the season. But if you don’t get a good base and you get a big snow, you’re fighting slush.”

30 | At HomE | WINTEr 2011-12

BoB Milne

rink around the roSe buSh

rink rats: Patrick Milne, right, and other local bantams take advantage of the Milnes’ home-side hockey rink.

While countless other locals fall prey to this preoccupation — Milne estimates that on any given year there are five or six other backyard rinks in town — many end up scrapping their plans before getting a chance to set blade to ice. But not the master, Milne, who has yet to lose the battle.

Of course, he also pays the price. He’s oftentimes out on his rink at midnight with a piece of PVC pipe littered with holes

attached to a hot water-fed garden hose to serve as a primitive Zamboni. But it all pays off.

“It’s one of the better backyard rinks in town,” he says. “A lot of people come up to use it. We even set up the lights and have neighborhood tourneys at night. I often even had the bantams practice up here when they couldn’t get ice time at Howelsen.” ■

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Photos: Corey Kopischke

DEL’S D T

136 Lincoln Avenue ~ Downtown

| 31

islanD ExPEDiTions

anchors away: when sea kayaking Belize, sometimes it’s best to give your boat a tow.

It’s the Little Things, Mon A sea kayaking and snorkeling trip to Belize’s Halfmoon Cay

M

y daughter Brooke and I glide to a stop and tie off our tandem Necky Amaruk to the long string of sea kayaks anchored to the motorboat in front of us. We’ve paddled three miles off Belize’s Halfmoon Cay to get here; now come the spoils of our strokes.

We pull snorkels and fins from the deck rigging, cinch them on and then swing our legs over the side. Soon we’re swimming in the aquamarine waters of the Caribbean, gliding effortlessly over forests of coral and an oasis of marine

life. It’s the first time either of us have snorkeled via sea kayak, and we’re officially addicted.

Our guide, James, points out queen angels, barracuda, nurse sharks and more as well as a cluster of columnar pillar coral. “You have to get close to see its beauty,” he says as we catch our breath back on the surface.

His statement is a metaphor to follow in life: Look closely to see things’ inner beauty. Back under, Brooke grasps the concept immediately. While I cover as much Story by Eugene Buchanan

32 | At HomE | WINTEr 2011-12

ground as possible, flutter-kicking from reef to reef, she sticks her fingers into every sea anemone in sight and takes in small details I miss. James, too, goes slowly, arms folded across his chest, seeing more because of it.

I decide to follow his advice, studying details I soared past before — the tiny gobi fish, darting damsels and “gang of tangs” that ride in a herd like the mafia.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson: Go slow, mon — it’s the small things in life that make it whole.

Road trip

islanD ExPEDiTions

Halfmoon Cay is the outermost atoll in Belize, a two-hour boat ride from the mainland. It sits in the heart of Lighthouse Reef National Park, one of the crown jewels of the Belize Barrier Reef, the second largest reef in the world.

We’re here — my wife, Denise, and daughters Brooke, 12, and Casey, 8 — during April spring break with Island Expeditions, an outfitter specializing in sea kayak trips in Belize.

When we arrive at the 45-acre island, guide Andi Shluker leads us down a sandy path to a camp composed of wall tents, hammocks and a large, canvas-walled dining hall, which doubles as a living room, bar and library. There’s no electricity on the island. Oil lamps provide lighting in our tents, and the Caribbean breeze is our air conditioning. Facing the oncoming wind, our tent door leads to a raised wooden floor supporting a double bed and nightstand. A canvas-and-wood clothes shelf hangs in the corner, not that we’ll need anything more than T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops.

Adjacent to camp is a research center for the Belize Audubon Society, here to help protect and study the 10,000-acre Lighthouse Reef bio-preserve, the first protected marine area in the Caribbean, and also the red-footed booby, which nests on the island.

After settling in, we select kayaks from a multicolored lineup on the beach for an afternoon paddle to the far end of the island.

We beach on a rocky shore and quickly put on our snorkel gear.

Soon, we’re in a world-class aquarium, as blue as the Colorado sky. We see nurse sharks, rays, lion fish, octopus and more, the kids poking me in the side with every new creature. A lobster scurries out of a cave, sending them flutter-kicking away in fright.

Back on the beach, Brooke announces to everyone that she wants to be an underwater photographer when she grows up — two hours on the island and she has her career mapped out.

After paddling back to camp, Casey ogles a hermit crab on the path to the dining tent.

There’s little reason for the fanfare. That night, the path crawls with them, like a scene from “Night of the Living Dead.” James draws concentric circles in the sand for crab races; the first crab out wins. Casey’s, which she names Pinchy, takes top honors.

In the morning, all signs of them are gone, save for their tell-tale, bike-tire-like tracks crisscrossing the sand. Casey already is awake and following Shamrock, the 9-year-old son of a local fisherman, down the beach. “Hey, dad,” she says proudly. “I hired him to get me a coconut!”

Breakfast is in the dining hall where old, gold ship rope wraps around three giant beams supporting a canvas roof. A raised wooden floor keeps sand at bay.

A few kids play Jenga at the coffee table.

Next to this is the bar, above which “cocktails” is written on a wooden fish. To the left is a bookshelf filled with games, novels

Boats of a Feather: if fish travel in schools, so can sea kayakers.

and guidebooks, including Paul Humann and Ned Deloach’s “Reef Fish Identification: Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas,” which I’ll refer to often.

After fresh fruit, juice, bacon and fromthe-tree banana pancakes, Andi tells us the day’s itinerary. We’ll sail our sea kayaks four miles to Long Cay, where we’ll drift snorkel a hundred-foot-deep reef wall. I put Casey in the bow of a double kayak while I take the stern. Brooke decides to ride in the motor support boat to snorkel for conch for lunch.

The Caribbean breeze fills our sail like the pirate craft of yesteryear. In the main channel, Denise latches her single onto us for additional stability. As we gain speed, waves arc over the bow, splashing Casey with 80-degree water. She laughs with each dousing.

We soon catch guides Moses and Gene in the lead kayak and I slough the sail to slow down. Once at Long Cay, we drop sail completely and paddle through a swath of sea grass to make landfall. James makes fresh conch ceviche, two harvested by Brooke, while the kids throw cannonballs off an old dock.

After our drift snorkel, where we feel insignificant above a bottomless reef wall, we return to Halfmoon, towing our kayaks like linked sausages behind the motorboat to avoid beating into the wind. We arrive in time for a sunset game of beach volleyball, the net secured by palm trees, and rum-andcoconut-juice happy hour. It takes Casey six tries to successfully hop in a hammock, each attempt tumbling her onto the sand.

Our fish and coconut pie food coma is interrupted by Andi, who outlines the next WINTEr 2011-12 | At HomE

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EUGEnE BUcHanan

Road trip day’s activities on the chalkboard. Options include fishing, or “catching” as the locals call it; a tour to a “secret” snorkeling spot; or an advanced kayaking excursion.

Tonight is Paul from San Francisco’s birthday and James serenades him with a guitar.

Later, rum-induced conversation turns to the hermaphroditic habits of parrot fish, which start as large-scaled females with ovaries and mature into multicolored males with testes.

I wake up early for a sunrise yoga session hosted by Tammy Fovargue, a visiting instructor from Aspen. Her caressing voice talks us through various positions as I stretch shoulder and back muscles sore from paddling.

Over fresh-ground coffee at breakfast, she tells me that yoga is the perfect complement to kayaking. “They’re both very meditative,” she says. “They bring your yin yang, male/female together.” It sounds a lot like those hermaphroditic parrot fish, I think, spearing a piece of

Denizen From the Deep: a successful “catching” outing yields a barracuda for the barbecue.

papaya with my fork.

After another paddle and snorkel, we stroll a path at sunset to the Audubon Society’s bird observation deck. Climbing a stairway to the platform, we stare over the treetops at a literal sea of sea birds. More than 4,000 red-footed boobies and frigates nest in orange-flowered zericoti trees, their guano providing the trees with fertilizer in return.

Matching the pink sunset are the bright red, puffed-out gular sacs of a few male frigates, hoping to attract mates. Like pirates, frigates attack other seabirds for food and regurgitate it into their chicks’ mouths. “I’m glad you don’t feed us like that,” remarks Casey.

In the morning, Andi has written “Meet the Fish of Lighthouse Reef” on the chalkboard.

She’s listed some of the prominent families we’re likely to see, including angel, funky dudes and tiny gobies as well as silver guys, snappers and grunts. We’ll also see the diminutive, attitudefilled damselfish and butterflies, which have the fake eyes on their rears. Surgeons, we learn, pack heat in the form of switchblades that pop out from their sides to stab predators.

We return from our afternoon paddle to see James cleaning a barracuda on a wooden countertop in a foot of water on the beach. Today’s catching session went well, the fruits of which chef Bol will barbecue this evening. The entrails draw nurse sharks and opportunistic frigates.

The kids wander by with a lasso for coconuts.

The next day finds us kayaking to a nearby shipwreck and snorkeling near its hold, and then struggling to keep our course as we sail back to the island.

Later, we venture to the region’s crown jewel, the Blue Hole, a 400-foot-deep sinkhole that’s the cornerstone of the national preserve. It takes nearly two hours to snorkel

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If you go Island Expeditions offers sea kayak and snorkel trips throughout Belize from November through April, for all levels of paddlers, from bed-and-breakfast trips to point-to-point camping trips to base-camp-oriented trips on islands like Halfmoon Cay and Glovers Reef.

Info: www.islandexpeditions. com, 1-800-667-1630 seems to have it wired, dipping her blades with the comfort of riding her bike back home.

Before the boat arrives to take us home, James leads us to a secret snorkeling spot on the island’s windward side. It’s the best yet, allowing us to explore deep, canyon-like passages through the reef.

A huge manta ray glides away from its hiding spot in the sand, and giant tarpon patrol the perimeter like sentries. But rather than give chase, I try to go slow and look past them in favor of the little things — the fingernail-size gobis and darting damselfish — all in the stride of a flipper. And it’s a notion I vow to follow back home. ■

EUGEnE BUcHanan

around its perimeter.

On our final full day, I paddle around the island with Andi and Dave, a sea kayaker visiting from Great Britain. So far, the island’s windward side has been off limits, with a huge swell crashing on the reef offshore. But it has let up a bit, and we beeline out of a protected cove to open sea beyond the breakers.

I’m in a single kayak, and at one point I don’t see Dave or Andi behind me for a few minutes. Then their heads pop up at the top of a swell. I wait to regroup, the swell lifting and dropping my hull. After clearing the island’s tip, we turn to starboard, carefully surfing the rollers home.

It’s our last night, and Bol breaks out his congo for a local garifuna drum dance. James hits a log with a stick, wipes his brow, shimmies over it, and passes the stick around for us to do the same. The rum punch helps everyone join in.

After a final yoga session in the morning, I grab Casey for a quick tandem paddle along shore. I’ve been in my kayak for six days now and my arms feel loose and relaxed. Even Casey

Dinah, Blow your Horn: casey making the dinner call with a conch shell.

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cooking with

Pot roast Pride: carl’s Tavern’s collin Kelley and the meat dish that has put his pub on the map.

down

home

cooKinG

Carl’s Collin Kelley makes pot roast the way mamma used to

C

ollin Kelley learned the ins and outs of a busy kitchen from a group of farm wives in a one-stoplight town in Eureka, Kan. And he cooked not for pleasure, but as a means of survival.

“I started learning to cook at age 9,” says Kelley, who recently opened Carl’s Tavern in downtown Steamboat Springs with his wife, Noella. “I started by making things like spaghetti and meatballs.”

A bus boy at a family restaurant before he graduated high school, Kelley says his path to a head chef position and eventually to a restaurateur started

with more modest roles that required washing dishes and learning about every aspect of a restaurant’s operations from the ground up.

Now 27 years old and undoubtedly one of the youngest restaurant owners in Steamboat, Kelley stands behind flatiron griddles mixing the cooking techniques he learned in rural Kansas with the culinary skills he picked up as a student at Johnson and Whales University’s culinary arts school in Denver.

“After culinary school, I took the best of the tricks I learned from the farm wives and mixed them with what I learned in

school to create something more refined,” he says.

As he sprinkles parsley on top of a freshly cooked pot roast at his new restaurant on Yampa Street, Kelley says cooking is about achieving a delicate balance. He crafts his menus so that patrons can be served the things he himself grew up eating.

“You can’t argue with good,” he says, adding that come winter, he predicts his pot roast will become one of the “hottest dishes in town.”

“A lot of chefs make their dishes too technical or too froufrou, and they can become

Story by Scott franz ❘ Photos by John F. Russell 36 | At HomE | WINTEr 2011-12

inaccessible to some peoples’ pallets,” he says. “I like to think cooking is not so much about presentation as it is about creating really good food.”

A former chef at fine dining joints in Denver that included Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and Del Frisco’s, Kelley says his journey to the Yampa Valley began while he was recovering from a skiing accident in Breckenridge. Unable to work for nine months, Kelley came to the realization that he wanted to stop cooking at fine dining establishments and instead cook in a kitchen of a restaurant that more closely resembled the

small family restaurant in Kansas he grew up working in.

In Kelley’s current kitchen at Carl’s Tavern, which is open for all patrons to see, fresh is a buzzword.

The batter for the Tavern’s chicken wings is homemade, and when patrons ask for a pickle, they’re handed a whole jar.

Several of the dishes, such as the pot roast, are started two days before they are plated because they need time to marinate.

“I like to make everything from scratch,” Kelley says. “I don’t use any bag food. I even use a craft approach for chicken wings.”

Kelley adds that he simply likes to make the food he grew up eating.

“I graduated high school as a line cook,” he says. “Being in this business for so long, I know what’s fresh and made by hand as opposed to cutting corners.”

And from the restaurant’s rounded, horseshoe-shaped bar to Kelley’s emphasis on using fresh ingredients every step of the way, you won’t find any corners cut at Carl’s.

carl’s Tavern pot roast 12-ounce certified Angus beef chuck Carrots, celery, onions Salt, pepper Red wine Parsley Garlic Mashed potatoes Beef stock Gravy roast with salt and pepper.

1 Season Sear meat on flat griddle, set aside. Mix carrots, onions 2 and celery with garlic and cook on griddle until soft.

Place beef in a casserole dish and cover with veg3 etables. Add two to three cups of red wine to beef broth to cover meat and vegetables. Add bay leaf and roast overnight for 12 to 15 hours at 280 degrees. vegetables and drain liquid.

4 Remove Serve vegetables, meat and broth over mashed potatoes 5 and gravy. ■

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staying fit

&

nate Daughenbaugh demonstrates a choke move on Dave Marrs during Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training in steamboat springs.

focUS oN

form TEcHNIqUE 38 | At HomE | WINTEr 2011-12

Nate Daughenbaugh establishes Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Steamboat

S

teamboat Springs native Nate Daughenbaugh first fell in a love with Brazilian JiuJitsu in San Diego and was able to continue the passion for a year in Korea.

After completing his veterinarian training, there was something missing when he moved back to the Yampa Valley.

“I immediately started looking for Jiu-Jitsu, but no one else did it,” says Daughenbaugh, a former U.S. Marine. “I wanted to continue training, and the best way to do that is to have other people to train with.”

Story and photos by matt Stensland

Daughenbaugh decided to start a club. It started small with Daughenbaugh and Dave Marrs training on four small mats. The club has grown, and today takes over the Manic Training gym for 90 minutes every Monday and Wednesday evening.

“We’re just here to have fun and learn,” Daughenbaugh says.

Internationally televised mixed martial arts fighting matches have exploded the popularity of the sport and illustrate that fighting is not just about strength and power.

“Jiu-Jitsu is all about the small guy beating the big guy,” says Blake Ingerick, who came into the sport with a background in wrestling. “It’s all about form.”

According to the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, Jiu-Jitsu is thought to have started in India by Buddhist monks.

“Concerned with self-defense, these monks created techniques based upon principles of balance and leverage, and a system of manipulating the body in a manner where one could avoid relying upon strength or weapons,” the organization states.

Japan’s Esai Maeda Koma in

1915 brought the art to Brazil, where Carlos Gracie picked it up as a teenager. In 1925, Gracie opened the Academia Gracie de Jiu-Jitsu in Rio de Janeiro.

Gracie and his brothers evolved the sport to make it more focused on ground fighting and submission techniques, and it took on the name Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Training in Steamboat starts with Daughenbaugh leading a warm-up followed by a session focused on specific moves, such as choking techniques. The main set is aerobically intense and consists of repeated two- or three-minute sparring rounds.

The club has attracted a variety of students.

Erik Powers, a 16-year-old Steamboat Springs High School student, discovered Jiu-Jitsu when he was forced to stop playing football after suffering his second concussion.

“I’ve been getting pinned and choked ever since,” Powers says.

The club is primed for growth, and Daughenbaugh encourages anyone who wants to try it to email him at ndaugh@ hotmail.com. ■

Erik Powers, left, and lee Meyring spar during Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training.

The main set is aerobically intense and consists of repeated two- or threeminute sparring rounds. Pushups wrap up training for the night.

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BroNZE ambition

Graves’ sculptures bring animal emotion into abstract realm

S

andy Graves doesn’t distinguish her art from her life. In her downtown Steamboat apartment, her studio occupies one corner of the space — with her bronze sculpture pieces, drawings, clay and other materials spilling over into the rest of the room — while her son, Wyatt, 5, plays with Legos just a few feet away.

Wyatt likes that the sculptures are shiny before his mother puts a finish on them. Graves likes that her art has now become her livelihood and her full-time job, in addition to a lifelong passion.

The first time she displayed her bronze sculpture work in a formal art gallery was five years ago, when she and 26 and other local artists launched the collaborative Artists’ Gallery of Steamboat. Now, the Nebraska native’s work is represented in 11 galleries across the globe, in public displays like a large, realistic piece on the Routt County Courthouse lawn and in well-known festivals each summer.

“It’s been really surprising, and all I can do is be grateful for the opportunity,” she says.

Local collector Gail Eden — who along with her husband, Don, owns several pieces of locally made, natureinspired art — says she’s especially proud that Graves has been invited to the Loveland Sculpture in the Park festival for three straight years.

“We were thrilled to see her there,” Eden says.

In the art hallway of their Steamboat Springs home is a Graves sculpture of two horses snuggling. Eden says the piece captures the essence of the moment without losing the form.

“You still see the animals, but they’re unique,” she says.

“We really like what she does with the long legs on the horses.”

Graves’ signature style — often featuring horses or other iconic creatures with long, spindly legs and hollowed out bodies exposing vast negative space — originally was a “naïve mistake” for Graves. She first experimented with the abstract style while working on an assignment in college.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” she says. “I don’t even remember if I got a good grade on it.”

Graves graduated from Colorado State University in 1993 before landing a job teaching art at The Lowell Whiteman School for 16 years. Two years ago, she left her job as her art career began to take off.

A few years ago, she returned to that hollow style, finding that it was unusual and expressive, a way to fuse realistic forms with creative flair.

“All of my pieces are about an emotion or an action, something that strikes me as fun, scary or proud,” she says.

“I don’t have a plan when I start. I really like when I get into that right brain place where I don’t know what’s going on around me, and the bear is just building itself. That’s when your technique doesn’t get in the way of your vision.”

Her vision is evolving, too. She’s experimenting with armatures, large pieces and a line of increasingly popular bronze horse necklaces.

Although she grew up a horse person, she’s been branching out and experimenting in re-creating all of the critters that surround her in Steamboat like fish, bears and elk. And she’s constantly inspired by the wealth of other local artists and their interpretations of the surrounding Yampa Valley.

“I think beautiful places draw people interested in that kind of beauty,” she says. ■

airy art: sandy Graves’ style features animals with hallowed-out bodies exposing negative space.

Story by Nicole Inglis ❘ Photo by John F. Russell 40 | At HomE | WINTEr 2011-12

Ross remembers

Leif Hovelsen: The son of the ‘Flying Norseman’

L

eif Hovelsen, who died in Oslo, Norway, on Sept. 18 at age 88, was an honorary resident of Steamboat Springs if ever there was one.

Leif (pronounced “life”) was the son of Carl Howelsen, a Norwegian ski champion who taught locals in 1913 that longtime local skiing could writer Tom be a form of ross has called recreation, steamboat home then estabsince 1979. lished the first Winter Carnival in 1914. Carl, who died in 1955, set in motion this community’s enduring romance with competitive skiing in all its forms. In particular, he built the first ski jumps here and taught local youngsters how to soar over the snow.

Leif took an enduring interest in the little Rocky Mountain community that has cherished and kept Carl’s tradition alive.

And he’s done his part by giving us the gift of a biography of his father, “The Flying Norseman,” published by the National Ski Hall of Fame in 1983.

One of my favorite pages in the book contains five photographs of Carl ski jumping in Hot Sulphur Springs, Steamboat Springs and outside Denver.

The book also includes a photograph of the log home in which Carl lived in Strawberry Park from 1913 to 1921.

But Leif’s own story is interesting in its own right, and far different than his father’s, who was a stone mason by trade.

While he embodies his father in many ways, his story also transcends that of his father. As a teenager during World War II, Leif aided the Norwegian resistance by smug-

leif-like: leif Hovelsen takes in the statue of his father, carl, outside Howelsen Place in downtown steamboat in February 2009.

gling shortwave radios out of his city. He rolled them up in a sleeping bag and took them into the countryside on his bicycle.

When a friend betrayed him to the Nazis, Leif was pulled from his parents’ home, imprisoned in Oslo and later transferred to a concentration camp.

There, his tormentors tried repeatedly to break his will by telling him that his death was imminent. He told me he achieved a level of tranquility by accepting that he would not survive the ordeal. He emerged as a young man greatly changed by the experience.

“I felt like I had been given my life,” he recalled in the 2009 documentary “Out of the Evil Night,” by Routt County’s F.M. Vandergrift and Cynthia Rutledge. “After a thing like that, you cannot be indifferent.

You have to do something.”

While Carl traveled to Norway to see his ailing parents in 1922, where he met his future wife and never returned to Steamboat, it was Leif, in his later years, who embodied the genesis of competitive skiing here.

It’s no coincidence that today’s American Nordic combined Olympians enjoy a rousing welcome from Norwegian ski fans when they take part in Norway’s annual Holmenkollen ski festival. And it’s no coincidence that the Steamboat Springs Winter Carnival is deeply ingrained in local culture after almost 100 years.

(The 99th Winter Carnival will be held Feb. 8 to 12.)

In a letter I received from Leif datelined Oslo, 16 Feb. 1994 (during the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer), he described his pleasure at seeing two Americans win gold

medals in Alpine skiing. “One day, youngsters from Steamboat Springs will also win some gold medals, I believe,” he wrote.

I’ll let Leif describe in his own words the essence of skiing and jumping in an excerpt from “The Flying Norseman”: “Sweeping down a slope, curving gracefully into a turn while the wind whistles past your ears and a cloud of powder snow shoots into the air — down, down, faster and faster, feeling your skis skimming lightly through the white surface of snow at top speed like a hydrofoil on the blue sea, still body and skis under control … does something to you.

“Sailing like a bird in space, stretching out and resting on the air, then landing on the out-run and carving to a stop … does something to you.”

I promise you Leif, we know exactly what you mean. ■ WINTEr 2011-12 | At HomE

| 41

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pon us u e r a s s liday tocking s The ho g n i l l i f kily, means fts. Luc i g which h t i w acks e bases greenb and tre r u o y keep a you can ey with l l a V a comamp m o r f g in the Y n fferi utt rown o g e e in Ro r m e o h h t h ig based r have to ’t n o panies d ou s . And y y t holiday n u e o h t C o t f ke yoursel ems ma restrict t i g n i winter. follow e e h t h t t u o — gh ts throu f i g t a e gr

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Big Agnes Helinox Passport Trekking Poles Poles If it works for tent poles, it works for trekking poles. That’s the theory behind Big Agnes’ new Helinox Passport trekking poles.

Available in pairs or singular, the series employs Tension Lock — simply pull up on the top shaft until the pole locks into place, and press the release button to collapse it. And don’t worry about them breaking; they’re engineered with a provid proprietary aluminum alloy, providing the best strength-to-weight ratio centime on the market (115 and 125 centimeter lengths). $49.95 to $99.95, www. bigagnes.com

Bridgestone Winter Driving School DVD Even Santa could use this for his sleigh. Modern Winter Driving Tech Techniques from the Bridgestone Winter Driving School is a 24-minute HD DVD, perfect for those unable to attend the local school in person. It covers the proper use of weight transfer, front and rear wheel skid control, everyday braking, emergency braking, accident avoidance, proper cornering tech techniques on low-grip surfaces and more — perfect for that rush to press glass. $34.95, www. winterdrive.com

Hog Island Boat Works LTD 16 Little Moon Essentials Tired Old Ass Soak Who couldn’t use a little Tired Old Ass Soak ($5.50 for 4 ounces, $15 for 14 ounces) every once in a while?

Little Moon Essentials offers that as well as other handmade body care items (including our favorite injuryhealing Dream Cream ($18 for 2 ounces, $50 for 9 ounces). www. littlemoonessentials.com

Have a fisherman in the family?

Hook them up with an aquatic magic carpet built right here in Steamboat Springs. While it might be a tad big to fit under a tree, Hog Island’s 16-foot LTD 16 drift boat comes decked out with rod holders, cooler wells, oarlocks, trailer as well as a motor mount for trolling. And you can give with it the caveat that you never have to row. $7,950, www.hogislandboatworks.com

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more Gifts ProPerty ManageMent Customized ContraCts at Competitive priCing!

Long term Leases assoCiation management Accepting New Properties Spring 2012

Full Service rTeal eState “S B S ” ervice

eyond

he

ale

Rare Yampa River Frontage Waterside Condominium with incredible downtown location.

Largest unit at complex, 2,227sf, three bedroom plus private den/ office, 2.5 bath, two balconies, 2 car garage. The property is in excellent condition. Unobstructed views of Howelsen Hill sports complex and the Yampa River.

Unit has large picture windows with wonderful natural light.

Call now to preview! #132833 $995,000

The Steamboat Castle The absolute best fractional ownership available.

Four bedroom, 4.5 bath. Expansive views, hot tub, locker room, vehicle and golf membership included in this high-end duplex. Three-week shares. #128215, #130028, #128051, #128052 $60,000-$75,000 each

Pines at Ore House Great newer one bedroom/ one bath condominium with hot tub amenity. Excellent location.

Income potential includes nightly or long term rentals. #131132 $215,000

Evlyn R. Berge Broker, GRI, MRE 970-879-8171 970-846-1052 (cell) Berge@AxisWestRealty.com

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Moots Jersey So you missed the deadline to order a new Frosti Snowbike. You still can put Moots under your tree. Moots’ Premium Long Sleeve Jersey ($150), made by Vermarc, is a long-sleeve, cool-weather riding shirt made from wicking ATX fabric, with three pockets and a full-length zipper for temperature regulation; and its Wool Trainer ($175) is a long-sleeve, full-zip, merino jersey that can be worn as a technical or casual piece, complete with titanium grey Moots logos and racing stripes. www.moots.com

for the ones you Love (ESPECIALLY IF YOU LOVE YOUR STOMACH)

Solbites Fill your loved ones’ stockings with all-natural Solbites, a new 2-ounce. cracker-and-spread snack based right here in Routt County. Available in peanut butbutter/strawberry, almond but ter and chocolate almond butter/ strawberry, they’re perfect for the office, kids’ lunch boxes and even a ski jacket pocket. $1.99, www.solbites.com

Sweetwood Rib-eye Sampler What’s better than unwrapping a steak? Not much, especially when the ribbon’s coming off a rib-eye from Sweetwood Cattle Co. Each gift pack ($75) contains four boneless, well-marbled rib-eyes, slow-aged and handtrimmed, just like your tree. For slopeside portability, try the new Sweetwood Jerky (original and peppered, $7.99), a 2-ounce pouch of wood-smoked beef with natural herbs and spices to preserve your legs on the slopes. www. sweetwoodcc.com

Honey Stinger Waffles Don’t waffle on this gift idea. Inspired by co-owner Lance Armstrong, this homegrown, organic snack packs 160 calories of skiing sustenance, making it perfect for pulling out on the gondo.

Available in honey, vanilla and strawberry ($1.39 each, $22.24 per box), they also pack flat for no-bulge schussing. If waffles aren’t your cup of tea, try chews ($1.99 each, $22.50 per box), in cherry blossom, fruit smoothie, lime-ade, orange, pink lemonade and pomegranate passion fruit. www.honeystinger.com

Wing-Time Put some sizzle in your stockings with Wing-Time, an authentic Buffalo-style chicken wing sauce based in Steamboat since 1994. Available in five flavors (mild with Parmesan, medium, hot, garlic with Parmesan and super hot with habanero peppers), the line is sugar- and gluten-free and made from all-natural ingredients with no preservatives. Available in 13-ounce bottles and gift packs. $4.50 per bottle, $20 per gift pack, www.wing time.com

Moots Olive Oil For the culinary/cycling inclined comes the new Moots hand-pressed, organic, extra virgin olive oil from Napa Valley (tasting notes: green/grassy, artichoke, nutty, buttery smooth with a meme dium peppery finish). Just don’t use it as bike lube. $30, www.moots.com

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JoHn F. rUssEll

parting shot

neither snow nor rain nor wacky, upside-down mailboxes will stay couriers from their appointed rounds.

Mailbox mania Artful mailboxes showcase Steamboat spirit

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Services Offered

Hair Color Specialist

* Wheelchairs * Oxygen * Walkers * Shower Chairs * CPAP/BiPAP

All the latest coloring techniques! ¬ Peek-A-Boo coloring ¬ Block Foil Wraps ¬ Sectional Coloring ¬ Foil Highlights and Lowlights

$20 OFF 1st COLOR Visit & FREE Eyebrow Wax! Wake up your complexion for the winter season!...

* Breast Pumps * Hospital Beds * Phototherapy * Nebulizers * Commodes

Providing services in Grand, Jackson, Moffat and Routt Counties.

Call

Sharon Flanagan

970-846-2210

Located inside Tribeca Hair Studio

George Ibarra, Owner Bilingual Registered Respiratory Therapist 970.871.0999

(Phone)

970.871.0980

(fax)

NEW LOCATION! 2835 Downhill Plaza, Unit 603, Steamboat Springs, CO 80487 willowcreeko2@q.com

Design • Resource • Solutions New and Consigned Furnishings

MO VIN

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OO

N

3rd & Lincoln Avenue, Steamboat Springs | 970.879.5667 | Open Monday – Saturday | www.davidchaserugsandfurniture.com

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You Dream It...

We Build it.

Specializing in making your dreams a reality.

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970.879.3366 ÂŹ letsonenterprises.com