Steamboat Opening Day
by Mark North
(November 16, 1996)

She blurts out, "I'll dance naked with my underwear on my head if it'll help," and I'm like, yeah, that'll do wonders for me, but I'm not sure if it's the kind of help we need right now.

That was last Thursday. After a record 34 inches of snow in October, rolling into fat early November storms, the sun came out. Countdown to opening day could now be measured in hours, yet much to our grief, it was melting.

That very evening, three mugs of Alpenglow after her desperate offer, snow resumed pounding this valley. Three days later it hasn't stopped.

Opening Day kicked off this morning with a throng of rowdy locals pressed up against the sliding glass doors of the gondola building an hour before they slid open. Up top, folks were literally running out of the gondola to get to the goods. Hooting and screaming.

Freshies were had by all.

Only a portion of the lower mountain was open, with the gondola, Thunderhead, and a few beginner lifts running. We worked the avenues off Heavenly Daze--Oops, Ted's Ridge, and Vertigo--and found lotsa fresh, knee-deep lines down the banks for much of the morning. Even when it started to get bumped out, they were soft, point-it bumps.

The trees were universally killer. So were the kickers on Ted's and under Thunderhead lift, down near the bottom.

We took a midday break to tank up on dark coffee and .80-cent day-old muffins (still soft--what a deal!) at the new Mocha Molly's in Gondola Central.

Finally--a coffee shop on the mountain. Nothing like riding up the gondy with a mug of Sumatra.

It snowed light crystals all day long. By early afternoon it was dumping hard again, burying us on the chairlift. Tracks got filled in, everything stayed soft. Probably a foot of fresh for tomorrow.

So no underwear-on-the-head thing.