Everyone could be an Olympic super star, if you ask Billy Kidd.

“Just place your ski poles correctly,” he grins encouragingly, “and that medal is almost yours.”

An admiring crowd has gathered around the ex–alpine ski racer, eyeing their poles in disbelief. But the man with the broad-brimmed cowboy hat should know. After all, William “Billy” Kidd won silver during the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, becoming the first American (together with teammate Jimmie Heuga, who won bronze in the same race) to take home a medal in the alpine skiing discipline.

Steamboat’s director of skiing, 1964 Olympic silver medalist and world champion Billy Kidd, is surrounded by admirers at the top of the Heavenly Daze run.

Today, the larger-than-life skiing legend himself stands on top of Steamboat Springs’ Silver Bullet Gondola, his knees bent, posterior slightly protruding and left shoulder pushed forward, while thrusting the respective ski pole forward. Pole positioning in slow motion looks funny.

Snow crystals glisten on the sunny slopes. Supposedly, the snow here is much finer than at other ski resorts. Steamboat Springs is located about four hours by car northwest of Colorado’s capital, Denver, beyond Rabbit Ears Pass, in the sleepy Yampa Valley. Due to its semi-arid microclimate, snowflakes are purportedly extra light, fluffy and dry —like champagne. Thus rancher John McElroy coined the term “champagne powder” during the ’50s. Much quoted by the area’s ski industry ever since, it’s actually a registered trademark of Steamboat Springs. With close to 3,000 skiable acres (12 km²), the resort is one of the largest ski areas in Colorado.

Windswept juniper trees and slender aspen grace even the top of Mount Werner, the resort’s highest summit, at 10,321 feet (3,042 m), growing at perfect slalom distance from one another.

As I have skied mostly in Europe before, it strikes me as unusual to see deciduous trees at this high altitude. Geologically speaking, the Alps are only teenagers, sporting sharp cliffs and pointy peaks like a spiky Mohawk hairdo. The Rocky Mountain range could be their gentle grandfather, mellowed by time and erosion, and almost reminding me of picture-perfect toy train scenery. But don’t be fooled by the seemingly lovely terrain, as only 13 percent of Steamboat’s trails are classified as easy runs, more than half (56 percent) are considered intermediate, and a third (31 percent) are advanced.

Serviced by 20 lifts, Steamboat has 164 trails to pick from, boasting Western names like High Noon, Tomahawk and Rough Rider. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons locals like to ski here. Chances are you will see more cowboy hats than bobble hats on the slopes — especially on January 16, the date of this year’s annual Cowboy Downhill event. Professional rodeo cowboys will trade bucking broncos for a pair of skis or a snowboard — many of them for the first time — to race down the Headwall run.

The spirit of the Old West is alive and well in Steamboat Springs, population 9,815. Its main street, Lincoln Avenue, is lined with saloons and Western-wear shops such as F.M. Light & Sons, where even this writer — beware, the atmosphere is contagious — purchased a “genuine” cowboy hat for five dollars.