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Covering skiing and snowboarding events has shifted from a day on the mountain to a day on the telephone, as area competitors have been traveling farther and farther to chase larger and larger stakes.

Still, some questions linger for me as I'm trying to acclimate myself to the altitude after a lifetime on the plains.

For instance, what the heck is the difference between all these different disciplines? I get the basics. I know a snowboard from a telemark ski and a halfpipe from Heavenly Daze. What I don't know is what drives athletes to one event or another.

These are kids, and often adults, dedicating the early portions of their lives to whatever they wound up in. What if the poor sap currently strapping on his helmet for a death-defying alpine downhill dash was really meant to find Vancouver gold in the moguls? What if a top mogul specialist could have done better as a telemark skier or even a baseball player? And how in the heck does one decide to specialize in snowmobile riding, something most of us do (or at least hope to do) on a pay-by-the-hour basis up on Rabbit Ears Pass?

The answer, of course, is opportunity and influence. It's parents and location and friends.

I've just gotten to the point where I'm comfortable telling the Texan/Iowan/Australian sitting next to me on the Storm Peak chairlift that I'm a local. The impetus behind that step, as much as anything else, has been learning to get involved in more sports myself - allowing my boundaries to be stretched.

I've been bound and determined to get better at skiing. My arms-flailing, turn-a-second style of a few weeks has given way to what I imagine to be a more streamlined form, better control and a few more black runs.

I've been wondering about a cheap pair of off-season snowshoes and have been pricing a new pair of running shoes ever since I spent most of last week talking marathons with some of Steamboat's most serious runners.

Basically, I'm getting swept up. Apparently, I'm not the only one. Henry Fabian, a Steamboat-area doctor featured in last week's Outdoors marathon article, is lean and strong. He's in shape, and he said the environment here is entirely to thank for his quest for a four-hour marathon.

"I wouldn't be doing it," he said, asked how his life would be different if still living in his native Ohio. "I would probably have just kept up my fitness, worked out two or three days a week with weights and maybe ran 15 minutes on the treadmill. There's no way I'd be as fit as I am now. Up here, you just get pulled along by the sheer energy of the town."

An inner-city kid becomes a basketball player because he grew up next to a court. A California kid becomes a baseball player because of the weather. A snowmobile maverick is what he or she is because they first stepped aboard early and long ago grew bored of safe speeds across open meadows.

Opportunity is everywhere up here. It defines sports and it defines life in Steamboat Springs.