In the News

Steamboat Springs Nordic combined athlete Jasper Good.

Steamboat At-a-Glance

A summary of the current happenings in Steamboat Springs.

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS ATHLETES MAKE BIG STRIDES IN 2021, LEADING UP TO 2022 OLYMPICS

• MARCH - Steamboat ski jumper Decker Dean set a local ski jumping record among homegrown Steamboat Springs

Winter Sports Club skiers with a 211-meter jump. This is the second longest jump in SSWSC history. • APRIL - Fourteen Steamboat athletes were nominated to the national Nordic combined and ski jumping teams:

Men’s Ski Jumping Junior Team Jason Colby Women’s Nordic Combined Junior Team Aspen Bennett-Manke Men’s Nordic Combined Junior Team Gunnar Gilbertson

Women’s National Ski Jumping Team Annika Belshaw Logan Sankey

Men’s National Ski Jumping Team Erik Belshaw Decker Dean

Women’s Nordic Combined National Team

Tess Arnone Alexa Brabec Annika Malacinski

Men’s Nordic Combined National Team

Grant Andrews Taylor Fletcher Jasper Good Niklas Malacinski • MAY - For the third year in a row, Steamboat skier

Noel Keeffe was nominated to the U.S. Cross Country

Development Team. • MAY - Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club Alpine skiers Jett

Seymour, Jay Poulter and Cooper Puckett were nominated to the U.S. Alpine Ski Teams for the 2021-22 season. • JULY - Annika Belshaw swept USA Nordic’s U.S. Ski Jumping

Championships in Utah Olympic Park, with three victories. • SEPTEMBER - Annika Malacinski won the Nordic combined competition at Finnish Nationals, part of many successes for her in Europe last summer. She also finished in the top 10 in three Grand Prix events.

TRAINING GROUND OF CHAMPIONS

Athletes from the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club and the Steamboat Springs Youth Hockey Association will soon have their own training facility, no longer having to cram into multiuse training facilities after school. The new facility, located behind Howelsen Ice Arena, will allow plenty of room for fitness training. The SSWSC’s current training facility only has room for around 5% of the club’s athletes to train in it at a time, so the new facility will be a welcome improvement. The building will house an indoor trampoline and airbag ramp jump.

HOWELSEN HILL GETS A MAJOR UPGRADE

“Poma Trauma” experienced by many beginner skiers riding the Howelsen Hill Poma Lift, will become a rarer event this winter. While the upgrades at the Steamboat Ski Area are a popular topic of conversation among Steamboat locals, there’s a lot of excitement surrounding the changes happening at Howelsen Hill, too. A new three-person chairlift, replacing the old Barrows lift and running daily, is bringing more weekday skiers to Howelsen Hill and making it a less threatening option for beginner skiers who may balk at the Poma Lift. The previous Barrows lift only ran on weekends, leaving weekday skiers at the mercy of the Poma. By attracting more skiers – and more income – to the hill, the City of Steamboat Springs hopes to achieve the goal of making the hill financially independent.

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS’ FIRST-EVER STORYWALK DEBUTS ON YAMPA RIVER CORE TRAIL

Steamboat Springs families can experience the joys of reading and the outdoors simultaneously, thanks to the addition of StoryWalk to the Yampa River Core Trail. Started through the collaborative efforts of Routt County Women United, Bud Werner Memorial Library and the City of Steamboat Springs, the walk was created in hopes of improving reading levels among Routt County kids. StoryWalk posts the pages of a children’s story along the Yampa River Core Trail between the Stockbridge Transit Center and Bud Werner Memorial Library so that children and their parents can read pageby-page as they walk, with stories changing seasonally. Originally created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, Vermont, StoryWalk has installations in every state as well as 13 countries.

PRIEST CREEK CHAIRLIFT AUCTION RAISES OVER $200,000 FOR LOCAL CHARITIES

This past summer, Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp. auctioned off 125 chairs from Priest Creek Chairlift, after retiring what was the oldest lift at the Steamboat Ski Area. Following the auction, the resort reported raising over $200,000, which will go to nearby nonprofits, including Mountain Valley Horse Rescue, Moffat County Humane Society and Steamboat Reading.