What’s New For 2022 – Book Your Trip Now

We hope all of you are doing well, are vaccinated or immune somehow to COVID, and carrying on with your amazing life.

As we do at this time of year, here is our plan for booking trips for next season. It’s time to rally your crew, talk things over, and let us know about your powder day with us next winter.

From now until May 26, we will be contacting (via email and phone) everyone who had reservations on the books with us prior to September 2020, as well as anyone who came this winter. We applaud your loyalty to us over the years, and we want to give you access to our reservation calendar before we launch it to the general public later in June.

For those guests who were booked with us prior to September 2020, you will see in a follow-up email the date, number of seats, and what ability level cat we had you on before we shifted things due to COVID. You will also see the corresponding date for your seats for the coming winter. Please let us know asap if you wish to book your seat.

For those guests who came this winter, you will see in a follow-up email the date you came this winter and how it corresponds with a similar day for the next season.

Here is our plan for loading reservations:

  • A 50% non-refundable deposit will be required for all reservations.
  • From May 27 – June 13, we will first build reservations for any guest(s) who was on our books prior to September 2020. This is in an effort to honor the commitment to those of you who had reservations with us prior to launching our COVID Plan and rebuilding our calendar for this winter. Many of you come back every year on the same day, you are part of our family, and we hope to get you back on our snowcats next winter. THANK YOU! We really missed all of you this winter.
  • From June 14 – 27, we will build reservations for any guests who came this winter. Your dates may not be available based on us honoring the pre-September 2020 calendar first. We hope you understand. If your date is taken, you will be able to review our availability and book another date before we open the system to the rest of the public. THANK YOU for coming this winter and playing with us. You rock!
  • From June 28 – August 31, during this time we will open the remaining inventory to the public for private cats only. Everyone will also have the ability to “fill in” any non-private cat that may have 1 or more seats already booked on it.
  • After September 1, our remaining inventory will be available for both private cats and those seeking individual seats.
  • Non-motorized backcountry ski tours will be available for booking starting on May 27th to any and everyone. You will be able to book those seats via our Online Booking Calendar.
  • Our Avalanche Course dates will be published later this summer. We typically do one course in December and one in January. Let us know if you wish to learn more and stay informed once we launch these dates.

Moving Forward

This past season taught us many things about our operation. One of the big lessons learned was that the private cat model is a great way to come visit Steamboat Powdercats. Working with one trip leader who organizes the entire snowcat simplifies our reservation process, allowing for better communication, billing, and other logistical needs. With private cats it’s more intimate and social, we typically get more runs during the day and there are much fewer ability level issues due to everyone knowing each other and understanding if there are weaker or more advanced guests in the cat.

Another big lesson we learned was that having fewer guests in the cat makes for an even better experience for everyone. Fewer guests in the cat mean more runs, easier organization on the snow for you and our guides, and a more intimate social, snowcat experience.

Due to this, we will now have a maximum of 10 guests per cat, not 12 guests like in the past.

Thank you for your patience in understanding this new policy. It will allow us to simplify and improve our experiences as we move forward.

Pricing for our snowcats this coming winter will be $7,500 for private cats and $750 for individual seats.

After this season, our 6th Day Free promotion will be going away. So it’s time to cash in on your previous trips with us! Grab one more free day this season. We love all of our returning guests, and we hope you understand and can see our reasoning to move on from this nice promotion we have done for many years. With our seats in the cat shifting to 10 and no discounting for a private cat, basically, every seat will now be worth the same amount and the 6th day free becomes irrelevant.

We also learned that we can take care of all your check-in and ski/snowboard rental needs on the morning of your trip. From now on, there will be no evening check-in. This will also allow us to fully focus on those guests visiting with us each day. Our doors open every morning at 7:30 am and we will still shoot to get out and into the vans by 8:15 am which is our normal timeframe.

Another lesson was that by eliminating our simple breakfast buffet we headed up to the pass earlier, and perhaps kept guests and guides alike healthier. Because of this, in the future, we will be shifting to a pre-packaged, breakfast burrito or breakfast sandwich (meat or veggie option). We will still have copious amounts of coffee, juice, and hot drinks available.

Beyond those major shifts, we will also be keeping our health pledge with you and our staff as none of us showed up in the snowcats with germs this winter. NONE OF OUR GUIDE TEAM GOT SICK ONCE in 2021! This was amazing and hope to replicate this again in 2022.

Thank you all for understanding and much gratitude to you for being part of the SPC family. We will be reaching out to many of you soon and we wish everyone a glorious spring and summer.

Your friends at Steamboat Powdercats