The snow at Steamboat Ski Resort is so light and fluffy that it’s known as “champagne powder.” It’s the type of billowing snow that makes skiing feel effortless and the snowpack bottomless, and it’s so ubiquitous in Steamboat that the resort trademarked the phrase in 2008.
Eleven years later, a group of cyclists established SBT GRVL just as the gravel discipline was kicking into high gear. The mass-start event started and finished in downtown Steamboat Springs, taking in the hilly terrain in surrounding Routt County. The smooth, fast-rolling gravel roads became known as “champagne gravel,” the type of gravel road that’s treated with magnesium chloride to suppress the dust and compact well, then baked to perfection in the summer sun. But while SBT will celebrate it's eighth edition when it rolls out of Steamboat this Sunday, June 28, its journey has not always been as smooth as its gravel.
Word quickly got out about SBT after that first 2019 edition, and it began attracting pro racers and establishing a reputation for its diversity and inclusivity efforts. SBT quickly hit a peak of about 3,000 riders on race day and seemed unstoppable – a late summer monument of the gravel calendar.
But after the 2023 edition, organizers began hearing rumblings from Routt County’s rural residents that something was wrong. Nearly 50 people filled a small conference room at a local bank, where SBT organizers heard the community’s grievances.
Did we do a good job with this story?
