We had 40 people from 16 different ski clubs attend Spring Fling 2025 – Steamboat. This is the largest group for Spring Fling since I began running the trip 5 years ago. That is probably because the trip was such a great deal with package pricing starting at only $1,431 per person. The package included 5 nights lodging at the Holiday Inn – Steamboat Springs, R/T air from Chicago (MDW) to Hayden (HDN), a 4 day lift ticket, R/T ground transportation from Hayden to Steamboat (which is only about a 30 minute bus ride), daily shuttle ride to/from ski area and a daily breakfast buffet… What a great deal!

Without any glitches in our flight or ground transportation on Wednesday (4/2), we arrived at our lodging property (Holiday Inn) about 1:00pm. This was really nice because it gave the trip participants time to get settled in, unpack, relax or take a nap, or even catch the city bus to the grocery and/or liquor store to buy supplies for the next 4 days. At 5:30pm that same evening, we had a “Welcome Reception” at Blue Sage Pizza where we had some delicious pizza and had some time for people to mingle, get to know each other and find others with similar skiing abilities before hitting the slopes on Tuesday.

Steamboat did get 11” of fresh snow the day before we arrived but other than that, all 4 ski days were basically the same, sunny and clear skies with high temps reaching into the mid to upper 30’s on the mountain in the afternoon. The snow would soften up nicely by 10:30am from the overnight freeze, which got down into the low 20’s on the mountain, but stayed remarkably fluffy and didn’t get slushy until late in the afternoon and only at the lower altitudes. Overall, the snow conditions were incredibly good. The only thing that would have been better is some fresh snow while we were there. We really didn’t get any new accumulation while there but with a 94” base and the 11” before we arrived; there was plenty of snow to ski on.