NASJA DAY 1: Snowboarders Plan Ahead at Lutsen

Today I spent the day on the four mountains at Lutsen Mountains. It was a blast, but it reminded me that when you’re on a snowboard, you sometimes have to plan ahead. After all, most ski areas have, well, portions of their terrain that are best suited for skis.

We started out descending from the Caribou Highlands (where many people picked up their skis) to the Bridge lift, which took us up to the top of Eagle Mountain. Eagle, like most places at Lutsen, has views of Lake Superior, a jewel of the Midwest. We made a long run down to the trail named Moose Access, which ends up at the Bull Chair of Moose Mountain.

Moose Access is a long, occasionally winding road that demands the snowboarder to maintain a hefty speed for most of the way if he wishes to avoid unstrapping and walking the last 100 yards. Most beginning snowboarders will have trouble keeping up sufficient speed, since keeping the board flat, or nearly so, is essential, but also frightening. (When your board is flat, it’s easier to “catch an edge,” resulting in a painful crash.) The road also has some small rollers, which adds to the challenge. As it was, I had to skate up a slight incline the last 20 feet or so.

Moose Mountain has a variety of trails: Caribou and Timberwolf are wide-open, let-er-rip boulevards. Several runs have mogul fields. When the snow allows, there are a number of areas suitable for tree skiing. And the Summit Chalet offers an outside deck for taking in the lake. And if you like your skiing or snowboarding steep, take a look at “The Plunge,” which is off Ridgeline. On second thought, don’t look. You may not like what you see-or don’t. I tried looking down the hill, and could see only the first 50 feet or so. Then the terrain disappeared. Our guide said that it has a northeast exposure, so it doesn’t get much sun, making it not only steep, but fast. I decided to ride elsewhere.

Moose is also the home to the only FIS-sanctioned GS venue in the Midwest, but for mere mortals, NASTAR is also available. I was going to take two runs as part of a friendly competition that we have within NASJA. But there were so many people and so little time that I bailed out after one run.

To leave Moose Mountain, you can take Lutsen’s gondola, which is the only one in the Midwest. Unfortunately, it’s rather slow, so I opted for “Moose Return.” Like Moose Access, it’s a road covered with snow. My impression is that towards the end it is flatter than Moose Access, which means that many snowboards (most?) will have to skate quite a ways or, as I did, simply get out of the bindings and walk.

I did scrub off some speed about halfway through the return trip, as the road makes a large S-turn that I found unnerving, especially in the shadows and on hardpacked snow.

My next stop (requiring a return trip to Eagle to catch the appropriate lift) was Ullr Mountain, the learning area. Snowboarders will find a full five of the seven named runs troublesome. That’s because they funnel into one long, flat road that towards the end requires keeping up a fair amount of speed to return to the lift. They also face a slight incline just before the lift area, and has to pass through an area that is at the least visually busy, if not in fact. That could be unnerving. Advancing beginners should stick to the Ullr trail.

Plan ahead, if you’re a snowboarder visiting Ullr. Do not make Ullr trail your last trip down Ullr mountain. If you do, you may have to walk out of the lift area. I also had to walk quite a ways on my penultimate run of the day, when I found out that the Eagle Mountain chair was not running, and I had to use the Bridge lift.

One good thing on the horizon is that over the summer, Lutsen purchased and installed what had been the “Naked Lady” lift at Snowmass. (There’s no word yet on what its name will be.) The towers and terminals are in, but the chairs are not.