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New Steamboat Ski Area trail names explained

Matt Stensland
Alec Sobotka snowboards Wednesday onto the newly-named "Children of Winter" trail at Steamboat Ski Area.
Matt Stensland

— The renaming of a ski run at the Steamboat Ski Area pays homage to a filmmaker who has repeatedly helped put Steamboat Springs on the map.

For this season only, the Baby Powder trail off of Tomahawk has been named “Children of Winter.”

Ski area spokeswoman Loryn Kasten said the ski area wanted to recognize the longstanding relationship with Warren Miller, who will celebrate his 92nd birthday this year. She said Warren Miller Entertainment is not filming this season in Steamboat.



This winter, Miller released his 66th annual winter sports film titled “Chasing Shadows,” which features epic lines — in among other places — Nepal, Japan and Steamboat. The Warren Miller crew captured footage of the 41st annual Bud Light Cowboy Downhill, which helped prompt the ski area to recognize Miller.

“It was a single-season change to recognize the pioneer of ski movies and Steamboat’s appearance in many of his notorious films, including this year’s Chasing Shadows,” Kasten said.



The Steamboat scenes in Miller’s 2008 film “Children of Winter” opens with Olympic gold medalist freestyle skier Jonny Mosely describing the snow.

“Calling this stuff powder is like calling Everest a mountain,” Mosely said. “It’s not wrong. It just lacks the right amount of reverence.”

The movie cuts to scenes of Mosely smashing through walls of powder and members of the U.S. Freestyle Ski Team tearing through the moguls.

It’s all cut with stills of Carl Howelsen from the early 1900s, images of trains departing from the Depot, and Mosely’s ending observation, that “Howelsen wasn’t much of a bumper, but these guys wouldn’t be either on glorified logs with bindings.”

Baby Powder is not the only newly named trail this season. In the area of Buddy’s Run, skiers will now find complementary runs Bugs and Skeeter. The trails are on previously unnamed acreage.

The late Gladys “Skeeter” Werner, the late Wallace “Buddy” Werner and Loris “Bugs” Werner are siblings and some of Steamboat’s greatest skiers. Buddy Werner, an Olympic ski racer, died in an avalanche in 1964.

“We just wanted to find a way to honor the rest of the siblings,” Kasten said.

A majority of Steamboat Ski Area is on U.S. Forest Service property that the ski area leases. Trail names have to be approved by the Forest Service.

Forest Service mountain sports ranger Erica Dickerman said trail names have to meet the Forest Service’s advertising policy.

“While ‘Children of Winter’ is a movie title, there is no advertising of the movie and no agreement between the ski area and Warren Miller to promote or advertise the movie,” Dickerman said. “Unless someone has prior knowledge of this phrase, there is nothing which connects the trail to the movie. It was determined that this did not constitute advertising.”

To reach Matt Stensland, call 970-871-4247, email mstensland@SteamboatToday.com or follow him on Twitter @SBTStensland


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