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.