Steamboat
Epic! That word is spoken enthusiastically on powder days in Steamboat. My backcountry companions say it often; we can be a bit smug about our tele excursions into unofficial terrain like Way Right, Drunken Indian, Storm King and North Woods. But the truth is, Back in the Day, Loris and Buddy Werner and their friends had truly epic ski adventures. In the 1950s, they’d drive up Rabbit Ears to the top of Hogan Park Trail… before it was a marked Forest Service route. They’d put skins over their alpine skis and break trail all the way to what is now Morningside. That’s seven miles. Once there, they’d build a snow cave, light a fire and settle in for the night.
Epic! That word is spoken enthusiastically on powder days in Steamboat. My backcountry companions say it often; we can be a bit smug about our tele excursions into unofficial terrain like Way Right, Drunken Indian, Storm King and North Woods. But the truth is, Back in the Day, Loris and Buddy Werner and their friends had truly epic ski adventures. In the 1950s, they’d drive up Rabbit Ears to the top of Hogan Park Trail… before it was a marked Forest Service route. They’d put skins over their alpine skis and break trail all the way to what is now Morningside. That’s seven miles. Once there, they’d build a snow cave, light a fire and settle in for the night.
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SporTS | By Greg I. Hamilton<br />
<strong>Steamboat</strong> filmmaker Greg I. Hamilton shoots footage for “The Movement,” selected for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.<br />
When a Movie<br />
Really Moves<br />
People<br />
<strong>Steamboat</strong> film writer &<br />
director inspired by<br />
adaptive sports<br />
60 | ONLINE AT WWW.STEAMBOATMAGAZINE.COM<br />
iN JaNuaRY 2010 right here on my home slopes of steamboat,<br />
i saw a blind snowboarder. Facing his instructor, arm-in-arm, the two<br />
of them looked like dancers waltzing down the mountain. Moments<br />
later a paraplegic caught air in the halfpipe, much to his instructor’s<br />
chagrin. it was like something out of a dream.<br />
That all Mountain camp (now in its eighth season hosted by<br />
steamboat adaptive Recreational sports and adaptive adventures)<br />
was the start of something for me. it provided my first real taste of<br />
an evolution i can trace back to at least 1950. in that year, as Warren<br />
Miller filmed his second ski movie, his buddies begged him to point<br />
the camera their way. They were shocked when he headed, instead,<br />
for the rope-tow. What his lens captured that day was a group of blind<br />
people learning to ski.<br />
Miller shared that story with me six decades later, between takes<br />
in the studio. We were taking a break from recording narration for the<br />
film i wrote and co-directed, “The Movement.” Before starting in again,<br />
Miller set my script aside and told me about a little girl named Traci<br />
Taylor. This nine-year-old March of Dimes poster child had traded her<br />
crutches for outriggers, learned to ski...and stole the show in Miller’s<br />
1985 film, “steep and Deep.” i knew it well: it was the first ski flick i<br />
ever attended.<br />
Taylor had been my film’s first casting call and revisiting her<br />
Courtesy Greg I. Hamilton
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