We woke up today to sunny skies. It was a beautiful day, so we took the day off skiing and rented some snowshoes. Most of the parks in the area are not accessible easily by the free city bus, so we headed over to a city park and ski area called Howelson Hill. It seems to be more of a small ski area for the locals. They train many Olympic athletes here and are open for night skiing. They have ski jumps, tubing, and for us today, nordic trails. We snow showed on the side of the cross country ski trails through a meadow area and them up the mountain almost to the top. It got up to about 32 today, so we were very warm and put our jackets in our packs and just wore our fleece. As long as we were moving we were comfortable if not warm. The sun was out and so were the people. We encountered many people cross country skiing, or just out jogging through the snow with their dogs. The skiers had their dogs with them as well. I don't think we saw any dogs on leashes, but they were all very well behaved. With a clear day, we took the good camera out with us and got some good landscape shots. For the most part we stuck to the groomed trails, but had fun going "off roading" too. The snow here is so soft and powdery. Even in snowshoes we sink down to our knees. Without the snowshoes, I'm sure we'd be buried past our waist. It is also gorgeous snow because it sparkles like glitter in the sunlight. That's the Steamboat Springs Champagne Powder.
In order to be home in time for the BCS football championship game, we left the hill and headed back to the condo getting back by 6pm. It's been a tiring week and a tiring day traipsing through the snow so we were happy to collapse in the condo. However, I manged to get up to get some night pictures. Steamboat tonight was very different from the rest of the days. The day was so warm that the snow had melted from the roads and the sidewalks had melted and were refreezing into ice. Everything was now dirty instead of the pure white snow we'd been seeing. But it was still a perfect night for photos because the almost full moon was out, the sky was clear, and it wasn't crazy cold out.
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Night shot of our condo:
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