On to Steamboat, Dan and Ken on their own (15 Feb 2008)

Today James departed the Adventure to ski at Vail and Winter Park with his friend Jeff before returning home to CT. Dan and I left Leadville and headed north for Steamboat Springs. We know we'll miss James' photography, his enthusiam for everything, and his technical support. We're sure they had a great, blue, cloudless, powder day at Vail.

Dan and I drove north on US40 under blue skies until we started gaining altitude and drove into a cloud. Everything got real white. A few miles further the road ahead was closed (lots of flashing lights). We found out later that a tanker semitrailer carrying CO2 crashed and rolled-over in Rabbit Ears Pass. We got detoured way to the west where we had to cross Gore Pass and Deadman's Gulch to get to Steamboat, which we did, just fine, in the mid afternoon.

Dan found a damaged edge on one of his skies, so they're in a shop until Sunday AM. He'll get to rent hot, new, demo skies tommorow.

Steamboat is also famous for a natural hot spring spa. It's five miles up a canyon near town. After such a vigorous day of driving, of course we had to check it out. It's not exactly a resort spa. See the teepee in the second photo? That's the only enclosed changing area. Most people don't use it. The water comes out of the mountain hot and gets mixed with cold river water to keep the pools at about 102 degrees. Very nice. After cooking for a while Dan talked me into jumping into the river. He went first and lied to me about how cold it wasn't until I jumped in too.

Tomorrow we ski Steamboat.