WHITE HOT
STEAMBOAT
One moment she guffaws about the story of a cowboy who was tasered after riding a horse through a bar, the next, a sorrowful solitary tear rolls down her cheek. Erin Simmons Nemec is a Steamboat Springs local now, gifting her privileges to re-tell homegrown legends, even (especially) if she wasn’t there. She upped sticks from Vancouver in 2003 to move to the Rocky Mountains town to further her boardercross career; one of the most perilous sports known to humankind.
Erin continues the (true) tale; two cowboys and one cowgirl ride their horses down Steamboat’s main drag, Lincoln Avenue, and try to get into a pub (yes, still on horseback). The cowgirl, the supreme rider among them, negotiates her steed up a narrow flight of stairs. The barman is livid yet astounded at how she manages to squeeze her hulking horse through the tiny front door. Next, they trot into Safeway on a quest for chips.
And so the horse-capades go on until, eventually, the cops catch up with them. One of the cowboys doesn’t play ball and, then, zap!
Not quite your average day in downtown Steamboat, says Erin, whose own story, which includes years of X Games competition and one fateful winter Olympics campaign, is far from average. But this rarefied Colorado town-cum-ski-resort doesn’t ‘do’ average.
Obviously, except for the injuries (including four knee surgeries), Erin pines for the exhilaration and adrenaline of the ‘circuit’. Yet there’s one unresolved moment from those heady days that lingers just below the surface, every time she straps on a snowboard. A bad equipment decision and a fleeting distrust of her own instincts during the crucial part of her solitary Olympic campaign (Torino, 2006) saw Erin miss the quarter. Cue that single tear.
However, unlike many ski resorts, Steamboat Springs has another depth to its narrative outside alpine sports.
