Community ski areas

Sometimes the value of a ski area isn't measured in its terrain, but in the support it receives.

The Ski Bowl at Mulligan's Hollow is in Grand Haven, Michigan, perhaps two miles from Lake Michigan.

You won't confuse the ski bowl for Vail or Stowe or even the typical Midwestern ski area. At just seven acres, it's smaller than the parking lots at major destination resorts.

Even a slow double chair would be outsized. The bowl, which has six named slopes, is served by five tow ropes. The longest slope is 700 feet--about the length of two Wal-Mart or Target stores.

On the upside, there's another small dimension: A season pass is $65. You can take lessons as well as develop your skills in slalom racing or in freestyle snowboarding or skiing.

You can also develop your muscles in civic participation by supporting the bowl, which has depended, in part, on the local Rotary, volunteer workers, area businesses, and the local community foundation.

Recently supporters held Burgers on the Bowl, one of several fundraising events that has helped pay for lighting, snow-making equipment, and a groomer.

The bowl has seen its share of financial difficulties through the years:

The city opened the Ski Bowl in December 1963, but the facility closed in the late 1970s because the city had higher priorities at the time than to repair the aging ski hill equipment. Several residents and supporters stepped in and raised money to reopen the Ski Bowl in 1981.

The adjacent Tri-Cities Family YMCA took over the operation in the early 1990s, which may have kept it from being closed down again. The YMCA ran it until 2005 when its own budget constraints became an issue, and the city took it over again. That's when the group — many of whom were already involved in the support of the ski facility over the years — stepped up and asked to take over the operations.

By the way, the bowl is the ski "area" closest to Muskegon, the home of the Snurfer, the predecessor of today's snowboard.

Ski Areas and Facebook Marketing

Ski areas are starting to add Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools to their marketing mix. Unfortunately, putting your name out there in the public sphere can also give members of the public--that is, your (would-be) customers--the opportunity to criticize you.

So how's a ski area to respond? Somehow I don't think that Welch Village, Minnesota, has the right idea. Here's a notice from its Facebook fan page:

Attention Terrain Park Complainers: There are 60 runs at Welch Village that we are trying to open for all of our guests. We are taking advantage of this cold weather to make snow for the entire ski area, this maybe our last opportunity to do so. A lot of our park crew is working long hours making snow this year. We ...will block users who only complain about the terrain park and erase negative and abusive comments.

In an earlier post, the Welch Village Facebook manager told customers, "You should just relax about the terrain park."

Removing negative comments, from my understanding of online PR, is not the way to go. Announcing that you're going to do it makes things worse. Telling customers to be quiet doesn't help.

Welch Village has "fans" who defend it, and it ought to let them carry the load, while patiently explaining its plan for preparing the terrain for the season.

Skiing and Riding on the Plains

Some ski areas are owned and run by big companies (think Vail Resort) or enterprises that can boast of world-class terrain (think of the Aspen Ski Company). Then there are the industrialists who have a ski business on the side.

The March/April 2009 edition of Enterprise Minnesota (article not online) has a one-page write-up of Vern Anderson and Paul Anderson, who are the brothers behind Andes Tower Hills.

ATH is about 50 miles east of the Minnesota-South Dakota border, so don't expect half-hour runs. Neither the company web site nor the 2008-09 season brochure give any indication of the vertical drop, though OnTheSnow.com says it's 290 feet, on 35 acres.

So none of the three words in the name--Andes, tower, hills--is that informative. But you make do with what you have. At least that was the motto of hill owner Vern Anderson, who says "I've always enjoyed the winter ... and as a family we really enjoyed skiing." Since the nearest lift-served terrain (Powder Ridge, 300 vertical feet and 60 acres) was 75 miles away, "the only solution, Anderson decided, was to build a ski resort himself."

Today, the magazine says, ATH gets 60,000 visits a year. That's a pretty good amount of traffic, considering that the county the hills is in has a population of just over 38,000.

Anderson is the CEO of Douglas Machine, so he turns the operations over to manager John Bitner. Bitner talks up the area's vibe: "We--flat out--have the best family atmosphere for skiers and snowboarders in the state of Minnesota. That's what's unique about us." Anderson, for his part, says "Seeing kids and families have a really great tine. That's what's exciting."

If you're one of those people who chafes at the commercialization of winter sports (my attitude: Meh), think of Andes Tower Hills, and many other small places like it, where the passion of owners and managers keep the wheels turning.

Others Speak on NASJA Convention at Lutsen

Being a Midwesterner, I've wondered how my fellow journalists would respond to their trip to Lutsen Mountain. Here are excerpts of what I found so far:

Lutsen Mountains … a Midwest gem
Dan Cassidy
Maine Today

One thing you won’t get at Lutsen is altitude sickness. No, that won’t happen here. However, you’ll ski more relaxed. The lifts are a little on the slow side. They’re the older two seats with a pole in the middle that travels a little slower than the more modern quads. It gives you time to relax, enjoy the scenery and get to know your neighbor.

From Moose Mountain Summit Chalet, you can enjoy a wonderful meal, sit outside on the wrap around deck and enjoy the vistas of Lake Superior. On a recent evening while attending our North American Snowsports Journalists Association (NASJA) reception and banquet, I took a walk outside just to watch the sunset and look over the Lake in the distance, and noticed five white tail deer walking across the trails below. Deer sighting are common all over the resort.

Indeed. One of my fellow convention-goers told me of spotting a dead deer in the woods.

Cassidy has several other blog entries on his trip, including one on a 150-mile snowmobile journey to the Canadian border and back, which occurred before the convention.

He also wrote of a trip to the nearby town of Grand Marais, writing

"Having just spent a week snowmobiling, skiing and touring along the western shore of Minnesota’s Lake Superior, I had the feeling of a touch of home. The shoreline and forests from Lutsen to Grand Marais resembled the coast and woods of Maine’s villages and towns."

Minnesota's Lake Superior? As a native Michigander, I'd have to take issue with that. More of the lake is in Michigan's jurisdiction than that of the other units of government that border the lake, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario. But I would agree that the North Shore of Minnesota and the Maine coast have a similar feel.

You’re Going Where…On Purpose?!
Neal Estano
Albany Times-Union

Duluth is a small city of about 85,000 hardy residence. Sitting on the western tip of Lake Superior it gets some of the harshest weather in the lower 48. Duluth's nickname is "The Air-Conditioned City" because of cooling effect of Lake Superior who’s water temperature struggles to reach the 50 degree mark.

Duluth is about a 90-minute drive from Lutsen, and the nearest "big" city.

Estano also wrote "A Pleasant Surprise in the North Country" on March 24. He said, in part,

With just under 1000 vertical feet Lutsen is not a big mountain but they do a lot with what they have. As my fellow NASJA member and friend Phil Johnson of Clifton Park said: "There's not a lot of vertical…but there a heck of a lot of horizontal".

Estano also has some photos of convention-goers climbing up a frozen waterfall.

Weekly Skiing Column
Bob Cox
Torrance (Calif.) Daily Breeze

Lutsen Mountain, Minn., is not one of the major stops or even one of the best-known ski areas in America. Yet that's where [World Cup champion Lindsey] Vonn started her career, following in the footsteps of another great Minnesota racer, Cindy Nelson.

The resort was founded by Nelson's family, and is hard by the shores of Lake Superior. It is located about 100 miles north of Duluth, which puts it close to the Canadian border.

To get a perspective on racers coming from Lutsen, consider that the mountain has a vertical drop of only 975 feet. To create an FIS-approved race course, the mountain had to build a start platform 25 feet above the peak, to achieve a vertical drop of 1,000 feet.

We started our NASTAR race about 50 feet below the bottom of the platform.

Oh deer. A nature and snowmobile lesson in Lutsen
Martin Griff
The Times of Trenton

Griff has several articles about two different trips he made to Lutsen. The link above takes you to a short article about a snowmobile trip (not the 150-mile trek that Cassidy wrote about), and a good photo of death, animal-style, on the trail.

NY Times Reviews Lutsen

The New York Times ran a review of Lutsen Mountains, where I spent a few days last week.

It overstates the amount of vertical by about 100 feet, but offers the interesting fact that the gondola ride is a mile long. (Given the previous misstatement, I wonder if that's correct). The gondola is a nifty novelty for the Midwest, but it's fairly slow; don't plan on using it to make laps.

"Runs at the Minnesota resort wind through the woods for almost two miles — intermediate avenues that roll and drop, then roll on some more."

That's true for some of the runs, though certainly not all. During my trip, I could tell that I haven't been working out at the gym very much. My legs actually got a bit tired at the end of the first day there.

The article says that Lutsen get 100,000 skier visits a year. The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, 4.5 hours to the south, is home to five small ski areas (Afton Alps, Buck Hill, Hyland Hills, Welch Village, Wild Mountain), each of which has about 300 feet of vertical. Together, they take in (my guess based on some conversations I've had) 600,000 visits a year. The fact that they get so many more visits with much less extensive and impressive terrain only serves to show that even in the ski business, location, location, location are three important words.

Location, in fact, is the most serious problem that Lutsen faces: "Lutsen is remote. For skiers from Milwaukee or Chicago, boarding a plane to ski Crested Butte in Colorado or Jackson Hole in Wyoming can be almost as quick as driving to the North Shore in Minnesota." On the other hand, getting to those places requires a substantial outlay for airfare, which could be a problem for families.

One writer mentioned in the article compares the drive along Lake Superior to parts of Maine. In parts, yes. Just be sure to take the scene route, else you miss the most interesting parts of the drive. Watch for the deer, though!

Why Midwestern Skiing and Snowboarding Rocks

In pursuit of a different topic, I came across an interesting discussion on the site EpicSki.com, titled "Why do we ski in the Midwest?" It's a great question for anyone who skis or rides. I'm not one of those riders who gets insulted when someone asks "Did you go skiing this weekend?" So when you read "ski," read it to include "snowboarding" as well.

Here are some of the answers that people submitted. I've slightly edited a few responses for grammar and presentation, and grouped them into categories.

CAMARADERIE
- You are seldom more than a minute or two away from the bar.

- If you get on the lift with a real a**hole, don't worry, you'll be off the lift in just a few minutes.

- Because 30 chair rides gives you 30 chances to meet new friends.

- You do get to know the other "regulars" because on many weekdays you are the only skiers there.

- The joy of teaching a new skier [or rider].

- Because even 400' gives you time with your family and friends building memories that will last forever.

SAFETY
- You can't get lost.

- Good place to ski if you are scared of heights.

- If you get hurt, it is a short toboggan ride to the Ski Patrol room.

- The saving grace of Midwest skiing is kids love it and parents can let them have the run of the hill without them getting into trouble.

CONVENIENCE
- Of course the main reason we ski in the Midwest is because it is close to home.

- I am content to make the most out of what is in easy driving distance.

- I may not ski Mountains, but I ski 3-4 times a week and have a smile on my face all the time I'm doing it. That smile on my face is reason enough!

- We tend to ski out-west or in Vermont now, but our ski trips to Michigan were more pure fun and less headache than our "better" trips to larger resorts.

- Because it is fun and accessible.

MAKING THE MOST OF TECHNIQUES
- I think that Midwest skiing really teaches skiers to love the sport and every turn possible.

- Skiing in the Midwest teaches you to turn. If you don't make turns, the ride is short and boring.

- Because it's fun to see how many times you can turn in one run.

- You can refine techniques to perfection on a small hill just as you can anywhere else.

IT BEATS THE MOST LIKELY ALTERNATIVES
- Because it's better than working.

- Because it's more fun than ice fishing.

- What else is there to do outside in the winter in Minnesota.

IT'S ALL GOOD
- I've never had a bad day on skis, regardless of location.

- Because it's better than not skiing.

- The overall level of fun has never seemed higher to me at a big mountain; it's just interrupted less frequently.

MY OWN TAKE
I agree with many of statements above. I would add a few more.

- Skiing can occur in some beautiful places, even in the Midwest. I must admit that skiing and snowboarding in the Midwest can occur at places that aren't as pleasant as many places in the Rockies. The dozen or so Midwestern ski areas I've been to are, in addition to being relatively flat and short, tend to be cut from less impressive forests, have fewer trees, and generally have less visual beauty. But if you use your imagination, you can visit vast forests while riding up the chairlift. And a gentle snowfall can be beautiful, no matter where you are.

- Skiing and riding are a way of giving a big "says you" to big, bad winter. Winter becomes something to enjoy, not dread.

- There's a special joy to be found in skiing or snowboarding during an extremely cold day. Once you get over the initial shock, you think "Good Lord, I'm ALIVE!"

- Setting skiing and riding goals and achieving them can be personally satisfying. Learn a new trick. Manage your fear of steeps or of ice. Set a new personal best in racing. If you're a skier, try snowboarding. If you're a snowboarder, try racing. And so on.

- Even on a small hill, you can get the rhythm and dance on the snow.

Buck Hill, Home of Downhill and Halfpipe Champions

My first season pass was at Buck Hill, a place so small that boredom from doing laps on skis made me look into snowboarding. The "Buck Hill" name precedes the ski operation, allegedly stemming from--you guessed it--the bucks that could have, at one time, been seen grazing on the hill, with today. You won't find any bucks around today, though from many points on the hill you'll be able to see Interstate 35, which travels from Minnesota, down through the center of the country, and into Texas.

Buck is a day (and night) area where residents of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area can get some quick turns. Once out in the sticks, it's now easily accessible from both major cities as well as the southern suburbs that have expanded over the last 40 years.

Its claim to fame is not its terrain (100 acres, 300 vertical feet) but its ski racing heritage. Many adults race in leagues and high school teams seem to take over the place from 3pm until 6pm. Buck has been the training ground for World Cup downhill skiers such as Kristina Koznick (now retired) and Lindsey Kildow Vonn, who finished the 2007-08 season as the world's downhill and overall champion.



The best time to visit is mid-day during the week. Ten dollars will get you three hours of riding or skiing, which is more than you'll need to cover all the slopes if you're a freerider. An hour will be enough to let you visit all the named slopes, so use the other two to revisit favorite slopes or experiment with riding switch.

If you want to try the terrain park or halfpipe mid-day, you're (mostly) out of luck. Those areas are open mid-day, but they're not too accessible. The easiest way to lap the halfpipe is to take a dedicated rope tow, which doesn't start running until 3pm. When the rope isn't working, you may find yourself having to hoof it uphill to a chair. As far as the park goes, you can get there on a lift at any time, but you may have to be careful to keep your speed at the end or you face a short uphill walk.

I've mentioned skiers. How about snowboarders? Steve Fisher, a noted halfpipe competitor, got his beginning at Buck Hill.

This season Buck introduces what it claims to be the country's longest moving carpet. The carpet replaces both a rope tow and a j-bar lift.



A portion of the carpet is covered, to keep kids (and anyone else) from falling off onto the trail below.

Approaching the covered portion:



And inside it:



One thing I like about Buck is its modesty, starting with the name: not Buck Mountain, Buck Alps or Buck Highland, but Buck HILL.

The folks also have a self-depreciating sense of humor, too. On one of my visits there, I noticed a lift attendant having a conversation with a person who had a "Vail" sticker on his gear.

"We're like Vail," the liftie said. "They've got snow. We've got snow. They've got an interstate, we've got an interstate." He laughed.

Finally, a tongue-in-cheek sign that I spotted (I'd love to include it, but I refuse to let it take up your whole screen and I'm giving up on trying to reduce its size after 15 minutes of fruitless labor.) It must have been put in place a couple of years ago, after they added some height to one of the "peaks" and created a couple of new named slopes.

It reads:

Moose Pass Summit
Ele 1180
CAUTION
Avalanche Danger

Buck Hill isn't Keystone, Vail, or Jackson Hole it isn't. On the other hand, it has done its share to introduce people to the joys of sliding. Doing laps on a 300-foot hill is better than sitting on the couch eating Cheetos.

* Not only does Buck Hill lack the vertical height to have avalanche-prone snow, but the staff grooms everything on a daily basis.

Grooming the Powder

I suppose it's time to take back, at least partly, my complaint about ski areas grooming away the powder.

My preference for powder over groomers remains. But today I got a better appreciation for the value of stomping down the powder: It keeps the base around longer.

This fact is one of those things you know in your head, but have to experience to truly appreciate.

Last week, this is what I saw:



A golf course cart path. The path is not in this case part of the ski trail, and the ski trails themselves were not melting away. Still, the visible cart path and the visible grass were both bad signs for the snowboard and ski season.

Today, the path was not visible. Nor was the grass. Areas that had lost their snow were now good off-the-path places to catch some slight (about 4 inches) powder. And the groomed slopes had an addition applied to their base.

Was I disappointed to find that the only powder available was on the extreme outside edges of the trails? Certainly. On the other hand, the packed-and-groomed new snow should now make for a better rest of the season.

Midwestern Ski Heritage

The western U.S. has the best terrain and snow, while the eastern U.S. has skiing history.

And the Midwest? It's actually got more contributions to the industry than people think.

Mike Terrell points out that skiing got started here about the same time as it did in the eastern U.S.--in the 1930s.

The Virtue of Running East and West

Football commentators sometimes describe a running back who plows straight down the field as being a "north-south" runner. In other words, it's all about moving in a single line, not meandering from side to side.

That kind of approach works fine for football, but it robs the rider of some of the enjoyment of snowboarding, especially on short runs.

If you're riding down a regular mountain with a two mile run and several thousand vertical feet to descend, being a north-south runner is fine. But when you're dealing with 300 vertical feet and at most three-quarters of a mile, as is often the case in the Midwest, you've got to appreciate the more subtle changes in the terrain and go east-west as well as north-south.



For example, look at the various undulations in the photo above. It's one of the shortest slopes in this particular ski area, but it's also one of the most interesting. Near the top--in the shadows--is a section that is fairly steep, though for only 10 feet or so. You can drop off that, or head off to the rider's right and enter into a bowl. As you move towards the base you have several options as well.

Granted, Breckenridge or Park City it isn't. We make do here. Looking at the possibilities of the terrain at a small ski area, though, can pay off during trips to the mountains, so you can imagine a line and then follow it.

"Cold" Does not Always Equal "Snow"

Even though the winters are cold here, we don't get a lot of snow; according to= the University of Minnesota, the historical average is a mere 45 inches a year. The winds that arrive here from the western plains are simply dry.

Tuesday night we received 4-5 inches, which, by comparison with the seasonal average, is what we call a "powder dump" around here.

Sadly, riders don't get to enjoy it that much. First of all, there's so little terrain compared with the number of skiers and riders that it gets tracked out pretty quickly.

And if it's not tracked out? The grooming machines attack it. Seriously. I once saw a groomer steaming up the hill, mid-day, wiping out the powder.

Yikes.

Then again, so many people here depend on groomed surfaces, especially ski racers, for whom the icier, the better.

Not all Midwestern areas are so cursed. For example, Indianhead, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and on the leeward side of Lake Superior winds, gets about 300 inches a year. Boyne Mountain, much further south in the state, claims 140 inches a year. Lutsen, in Minnesota and along Lake Superior but along its windward side, says they get only 114.

Snowmaking, as you can see, is rather important for the region.

No More Fun in Fun Valley

While updating the pages of the Grays on Trays resort listing, I noticed that Fun Valley Iowa is now defunct as a ski area. (The web site says that the place will continue as a motocross area in the summer.)

The site mentions that a triple chair has been moved to Seven Oaks Recreation. The "About Us" page for Seven Oaks tells the story of how hard it can be to run a mom-and-pop area. Edwin and Kay Bryan opened Fun Valley in 1970. Rick, one of seven children, took over after his father died two years later, and the other children helped run the place. The family opened Seven Oaks in 1997. A few warm winters and the opportunities of Seven Oaks apparently made the family decide to dispose of Fun Valley.


The Fun Valley site points to a liquidation sale. I don't know how old that information is--the page is not dated--but it is rather interesting to troll through the photos of stuff for sale. There's a lot more to running a ski area than collecting money and renting gear. So the site offers snow-making equipment, groomers, a couple of bulldozers, various pieces of lift equipment, and rental gear for sale.

Oh No! Not a Harsh Glade!

Being based in the Midwest presents certain challenges for the snowboarder, especially the adult not interested in becoming a freestyle champion. There are the short pistes, of course.

Then there are the conditions. Grooming is an obsession at some areas. Perhaps that's rightfully so, given the preferences of the customer base. Yet knowing that didn't keep me from cringing when I once saw a grooming machine trample over four to six inches of new snow. (I know that's not much in powder, but around here, that's decent.)

While updating the resort listings pages on the main web site, I came across this description from Devil's Head, Wisconsin:

"The ski slopes are pampered almost as much as the guests: they get groomed twice a day – the slopes that is – to make sure guests experience the best Wisconsin skiing possible."

What'd I well you about grooming?

Devil's Head then extols its freestyle terrain, pointing out that you can slide from top to bottom while hitting features all the way. (To me, those are things spice things up, only by being things to avoid, for the most part.)

Then there's this oddity:

"Devil's Head has been a longtime favorite of intermediate skiers because of its long, cruising slopes that create an exhilarating ride without the harshness of bumps and glades."

A ski area that celebrates the fact that it doesn't have glades?

What a shame!

Resort Review: Welch Village

Welch Village is a small but pleasant place for riders and skiers in southern Minnesota, northern Iowa and western Wisconsin. Now if it only would have a more honest trail map.

Welch is one of the several ski areas in the Twin Cities area. It's southeast of Saint Paul, beyond land that is still home to corn fields and cow pastures. A friend of mine says "In Minnesota, we don't ski down mountains; we ski down to rivers." And that's certainly the case for Welch Village. Its 330-or-so vertical feet aren't of the "Mount Trashmore" variety, in which a bump on the land is created through the development and then closure of a landfill.

Instead, Welch's slidable surfaces come about because you descend into a river valley, take a lift up to the "normal" altitude for the region, and then take your snowboard or ski back down. Hey, at least you've got the scenery of a river, on your short (one intersection) trip through "downtown" Welch.

A recent trip to Welch Village the day after a major snowstorm convinced me of this fact: It wins the award in the Twin Cities for "most treacherous last-3 miles of approach." The trip from the north is on County Road 7, two-lane, twisting road that goes both down (and sometimes back up, temporarily) and side-to-side on its way to the Cannon River, "downtown" Welch, and then to the ski area. It's a great drive on a summer day when the sun is shining and you're in a convertible with the top down. But the drive can be a bit uncomfortable during the winter when the roads are snowpacked and slippery.

Welch isn't the largest ski area in the Twin Cities, nor does it have the longest runs. But I do like the feel of it. I can't explain why or what exactly. Maybe it's the drive there, both on County Road 7 and 240th street, which goes straight but which has a series of 50-foot peaks-and-troughs. Maybe the trees are more interesting. It could be that the base village looks marginally more attractive than those found elsewhere. Again, I'm not sure why, but I like it.

Welch faces north, with 3 major sections. From the top of the middle grouping of lifts, you can descend into any of those sections. You can also, if you get the right lift, go from east to west in one lift ride and one run. But you can't make the west-to-east trip in just one trip; the layout doesn't allow for that, and the permanent closure of one run--more on that later--doesn't help matters.



My favorite part of Welch may be the eastern section. It's got a couple of country-road runs through trees, both which open into a meadow suitable for trying ground 360s, small jumps, or the maximizing-snowboarding-time maneuver known as riding from one edge of the meadow to the other.



The east also has a couple of green runs that require some skating to get to from off the lift, but which can reward you with powder (along the edges) after the good stuff has been smashed down elsewhere. But these beginner trails actually require some intermediate skills to use properly, as they empty out into a long nearly-flat road that has a slight incline just before it drops down into the meadow. If you're going to avoid a quarter-mile walk, you better keep up your speed, which newbies can find unsettling.

The east is also the home of the promised "future back bowl." This has been on a feature on trail maps for at least 3 seasons if not longer. Two years ago I was told that the timber harvesting was going to start soon. During my recent visit, I did notice a construction fence beyond the easternmost lift. And sure enough, I did see a space that appeared to have been cleared of trees, at the top of a ravine. I wished I could have gotten a better view of what the terrain might look like, but I respect private property, so I stayed within the fence line. The day was overcast so I couldn't see far into it. I'm looking forward to riding into this terrain should it ever open, but I suspect there's a lot of work yet to do, including installing pipes for snowmaking (an essential around here), installing lifts, and before all that, the enduring the environmental review process.

The east section of Welch is also home to Madd Jaxx, the place to enjoy an adult beverage. Tailgating commonly takes place in the parking lot, which is accessible to the main base area by a dirt road. Jaxx has the usual collection of ski bar kitsch: old skis and snowboards nailed into the ceiling; a license plate from a state (Montana--Minnesotans seem to love Montana) blessed with far better terrain; and advertisement after advertisement for beer and hard liquors. That latter--including a 4-foot tall poster of Captain Morgan--is a bit over-the-top for my preferences, but then again, I don't own the place.

Moving from east to west, you have a couple of decent diamonds that are used for slalom racing, which is a big deal in these parts. There's also a bumps run--which I tried but didn't handle too well--and a sorta-kinda halfpipe. Welch did have a very good halfpipe two or three years ago, but it's gone, replaced by more kickers and other park features.



The steepest section among the always-open slopes is called Chicken. It's reasonably gentle on top and becomes more severe until right before the end. I don't straightline it.

After you ride the top fifth of Chicken, you can take a short path to the east and another trail. The name of that path: Chicken Little.

If you keep riding on Chicken until just before it drops off, you have another opportunity to leave, to the west. The name of that exit: Chicken Out. A sense of humor is also evident in the name of a beginner's trail of "Mary Jane." I'm not thinking of reefer so much as the bumps run at Winter Park that has the same name. What a contrast.

Welch also has a decent-sized terrain park with rails and kickers. It used to be home of the halfpipe, as I said, and even before that, Eurocarvers used to love the space as a place to do their magic. No more.

Terrain is what it is, and I can't fault Welch for not being Whistler. But if there's one thing that I can fault it for, it's the trail markings. Welch, like a lot of areas, inflates its trail count.

The marketing material boasts of 50 runs. But in the five years that I have been visiting (at least once a year, some years, often), a few maps on the trail have never been open. These include (for those of you in the area): Southern Cross, Eastern Star, Adam's Rib, and Cedar Fork. There are also two double-diamonds that I have never seen open. I've been told that they do get used on powder days, though truth be told I'm not sure that I'd want to try them. If you would, get there exactly on the powder day; if you're there the day after, you'll be out of luck.

Another problem with the trail count is that things that should never have a separate name do. Two short trails start at the top and then merge to form a single trail? Three names.



One unique feature of Welch is that none of the eight lifts are rope tows. That's good for newbies, and for snowboarders generally. Speaking of newbies, Welch has a solid area for novices, complete with a mini-terrain park in which the features are mere inches above the ground.

Make sure you know what lifts are running before you start; in non-peak times, the eastern slopes are closed, and the closure of some lifts can leave riders with a long walk back to a chair.

Tahoe in the Midwest

It's late in the Midwest season for snowboarding, which means that it just may be time to head to Lutsen, along the shores of Lake Superior. It isn't Tahoe, but it does have this in common with it: get in the right position and you can slide with a great view of water right in front of you.

In this case, Lake Superior is the largest (by surface area) freshwater lake in the world.

Here's a clear shot of the lake, though taken with a disposable camera:



And a photo with better resolution, though not showing the lake nearly as much:

How to Tell You're at a Place with Beginners

Midwestern ski areas have their virtues, including being cheap (you can stay at home) and accessible (you can stay at home). They're also places where beginners and novices can feel comfortable on much of the terrain.

Even so, there's a difference between "beginning snowboarder" and "pretend snowboarder." Even the cheapest, true novice snowboard has edges. Anything else is a sled.

Take up a seat on an old chair lift

I'm a sucker for alpine kitsch. Not that I have any at home--save my father-in-law's 50-year old skis--but I think ski and snowboard areas ought to play up some of their obvious qualities.

One thing they can do is recycle their equipment. Sports stadiums do something like this when they replace all the seats and sell the old ones to fans. A couple years ago I played the last round of golf anyone played on one particular course slated for a housing development--but only after the management had auctioned off the yardage markers and other objects on the course.

What do ski areas have? Chairs, for one thing. What other outdoors activity involves being suspended in air while being transported from point A to point B? The only thing I can think of is skydiving. Like snowboarding or skiing, the point isn't so much the trip up (though that can have its own pleasures, such as looking at the scenery or engaging in conversation) as it is the trip down.

In the Midwest, the typical snow slider will spend much more time on lift chairs than actually snowboarding or skiing. So what better way to welcome customers to a snow hill than to put a few chairs near the chalet?

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Erica leaves the following note. The comment function is broken and I can't figure out how to fix it. Until that point, I'll paste in comments as they arrive.

Erica: I've seen old chairlifts at random places around some resorts... I agree though, there has got to be more use for the old stuff, recycle the materials at least - think Green! At Mammoth they just replaced an entire lift with a huge 6-person express, but I have no idea what they did with the old ones.

Me: There's got to be a customer somewhere who would love to buy something like that. More likely, they sold it to another ski area.

A Sign that the End of the Season is Near

Here in the flatlands, the season for snowboarding and skiing is coming to an end. It's hard for the areas to stay open until St. Patrick's Day, let alone later.

This morning my driveway was more than half uncovered.



People at ski areas have a hard time convincing the public that even if there's no snow at home, it is on the slopes. They're right, of course, at the beginning of the season, when cold nights and snowmaking equipment combine to make sliding possible.

But towards the end of the season, their job may be even more difficult, as thoughts turn to golf, tennis, cycling, gardening and other outside activities.

The Midwestern Connection

The Midwest has plenty of good qualities, but great snowboarding terrain is not one of them. Even so, the region develops plenty of skiers and riders, as the Chicago Tribune describes ("Midwest resorts excel in ski lessons," January 20, 2008)

It mentions that there are “more than 100” ski resorts in the region. You can, by the way, see the web site of all of them through GraysOnTrays: see the Great Lakes page for Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, and the Midwest page for Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and the Dakotas.

According to one official of Vail Resorts (which owns Vail, Breckenridge, Keystone, Heavenly and Beaver Creek resorts), Chicago is once again the second city—this time in providing the most number of customers to the company.

The Tribune article describes regional ski areas, including Wilmot (Wisconsin), Grand Geneva (Wisconsin), Shanty Creek (Michigan) and others.

If you’re interested in a long-weekend getaway to introduce your children to skiing or snowboarding, the article is especially useful, because it describes the children’s programs at various resorts.

Did you ever wonder how the number of snowboard instructors compares with that of ski instructors? Wilmot has 240 instructors, of whom 60 are snowboarders. Assuming that nobody among the 240 teachers both skiing and snowboarding (most likely an invalid assumption, but close enough to the truth), that’s a ratio of 3 ski instructors to every 1 snowboard instructor. That sounds similar to industry averages for the customer base, but I digress.

Are you ready for a magic carpet ride? The director of the snowsports school at Grand Geneva says they "have really revolutionized the learning process" for helping students—especially children—spend more time trying to make turns and less time grappling with the rope. I certainly would have benefited from a carpet too, as it took me quite a while to handle a rope tow during my early days on a board.

Opening Day!

Opening day this season isn't at all like my last day of the last season, but it will do.

In April of this year I closed out the 2005-2006 season with a trip to Vail. (See day one, day two, and day three for the account and some photos.) Today I opened the new season, back in the Midwest.

It's not quite the same.

I was at Wild Mountain, a Twin Cities-area ski hill that prides itself on always being the first place in Minnesota to open. The people are great (I've met the owner and many members of the staff), and they introduce a lot of people to the joys of skiing and snowboarding.

Vail has thousands of acres; Wild has somewhere under 200. Vail has something on the range of several thousand feet in vertical drop; Wild has several hundred.

But unless you live near a big mountain, what are you going to do? Here's what you do: make the best of what you have available. That's why Midwesterners flock to their hills when they aren't traveling to the Rockies.

So what was my experience like today? One intermediate run was open, a broadway that goes in a line from the top to the base. I did not get there until mid-afternoon, so some of the snow was gutted out, especially near the top.

Midwestern ski areas depend on their snowmaking abilities, and Wild had at least seven pieces of equipment lining the top of the run. They weren't going during business hours, but being spaced about 30 yards apart like staggered steps, they did increase the challenge level. I took a few runs, and wasn't as smooth as I would have liked. But it's very good to be back on the snow.

This day is more than two weeks earlier than last year's opening day. Given that I went golfing just three days ago, it's amazing that Wild was able to offer any terrain. Chalk it up to good equipment, a financial committment, and ownership's desire to get the season underway.

Laissez les bon temps roulez!