SKI GUIDE 2022
What’s new up north at 6 Midwestern resorts
While the Midwest may not have 3,000-foot descents like some resorts in the Rockies, it’s got a number of fun places to ski and snowboard, with vertical drops ranging from 300 to 900 feet. Moreover, the farther north you go, the lighter and more abundant the snow tends to be. Especially along Lake Superior, which gets what meteorologists call “lake effect” dumps. Options abound along the Wisconsin-Michigan border and on the Keweenaw Peninsula as well.
Dave Cushman, a veteran patroller at Cascade and native of Glenview, has skied in the Upper Peninsula for more than half a century. He, too, said he plans on heading to the UP, as most locals call the Upper Peninsula, at least several times this winter.
Cushman first visited Indianhead (snowriver. com) and Whitecap (whiteresort.com) resorts to ski with his father when he was a youngster. He recalls long cruising runs, some glade skiing among trees, challenging terrain and a wider variety of slopes than at areas farther south.
“But it’s all good,” mused Cushman, who said he has little patience for those who look down on Midwestern resorts. “If you live here and ski or snowboard, you ought to take advantage of the recreational opportunities we have. After all, we can’t go to Utah every weekend.”
Cushman, who has skied in Colorado many times, also has made a few trips to Lutsen Mountains (lutsen. com), near Grand Marais, Minnesota, and is what he considers the closest thing to Western skiing in the Midwest. He said he likes the 2-mile-long cruiser runs that drop 825 vertical feet on Moose Mountain the best.
But he said he’s most excited this season about the changes now transforming the former Indianhead and Blackjack ski areas near Wakefield in the UP. The two resorts, which have a combined acreage of nearly 400 acres and are 400 miles from Chicago, were purchased in late August by Minnesota’s Skinner family, which also owns Granite Peak (skigranitepeak.com) outside Wausau, Wisconsin, and Lutsen as part of the Midwest Family Ski Resorts company. All three are part of the company’s Legendary Pass (snowriver. com/season-passes).
In addition to rebranding Indianhead as Jackson Creek Summit, Blackjack is now Black River Basin, both of which are named after rivers flowing nearby. The moniker for the two areas is now Snowriver Mountain Resort (snow river.com), which is slated to open Nov. 24. The changes were made in part to respect Native American culture, owner Charles Skinner said, and because another skiing company was using the resort’s old combined name of Big Snow.
Skinner has pledged to spend millions of dollars to upgrade the resorts, which have ski lifts dating to the 1960s. Work this fall has included extensive lodge and room renovations, a new kitchen and the addition of 25 state-of-the-art SMI Snowmakers guns.
By this time next season, Skinner said the resort hopes to have replaced the Chippewa Double, Leelinaw Triple and the Voyager Quad chairs out of the Jackson Creek Summit area with the Voyageur Express, the first six-person, highspeed detachable chairlift in the Upper Peninsula. The new lift will be faster and transport more skiers and snowboarders than the three lifts it is replacing.
Lonie Glieberman, who runs the Mount Bohemia (mtbohemia.com) resort near Copper Harbor on the UP’s Keweenaw Peninsula, said he’s elated the Skinner family will be investing heavily in Snowriver.
“It’s good news for Upper Peninsula skiing and snowboarding, for sure,” said Glieberman, whose resort is opening two new trails — Fireball and Triton — this season in the Outer Limits section of the mountain.
“We’ve also added another room at our lodge,” said Glieberman, whose resort has the greatest vertical descent in the Midwest at 900 feet. It sits above Lac La Belle and is but a long stone’s throw from Lake Superior. He said it should open around Christmas.
Bohemia, which bills itself as a wilderness adventure escape, is 455 miles, or approximately a7 ½-hour drive, from Chicago. It caters mostly to advanced and expert skiers, purposely does not groom its slopes and has no snow-making — thanks to abundant natural snow from Lake Superior, Glieberman said. It also features cliff drops and chutes on some runs in its 585 acres of terrain.
The only way you can ski or snowboard on Saturdays is if you hold a season pass, which will go on sale Nov. 23 to Dec. 3 and cost a mere $99, one of the best deals in the ski industry. Bohemia has two lifts, a spa with a eucalyptus steam room, a nine-person yurt, a lodge, a restaurant and a hostel that costs $60 per night, including dinner. At Whitecap Mountains (whitecapresort. com), which is near Upson, Wisconsin — 409 miles from Chicago and 10 miles from the UP border — the resort has renovated some of its hotel and added a magic carpet to its novice area, said general manager Dave Dzubian, who was born in Elmhurst and grew up in Chicago’s western suburbs. He said he hopes to open his slopes in early December.
Whitecap, which has 43 trails and five lifts on 250 acres, also revamped its snow-making system and purchased another grooming machine for use this season. Dzubian, who became sole owner of the resort in September, said he may add a new base lodge and a smaller facility at the area’s summit next year.
He said Whitecap, which is spread over three mountains and is 15 miles from Lake Superior, often gets up to 17 feet of snow a year.
“We really get dumped on,” he said. “Thanks to the lake effect, we can get storms that bring us 30 to 40 inches of powder, which means skiing and snowboarding in snow up to our chests sometimes. Winds from the north pick moisture up off Lake Superior, move it into the cold atmosphere and then it falls back as snow. We’re very fortunate that way.”
Mont Ripley (mtu. edu/mont-ripley/), 417 miles north of Chicago in Hancock, Michigan, has finally reopened two runs — Deer Track Trail and Powder Stash — that were washed away in a huge 2018 rain deluge that left a 500-foot-long, 300-footwide and 50-foot-deep hole. The resort, which is operated by Michigan Technical University, has four lifts, a 440-foot vertical drop and, this year, 24 trails again, spread over 100 acres.
“That ginormous storm caused more than $250 million in damage to this area, and we did not escape it,” said Mont Ripley general manager Nick Sirdenis. “The side of our mountain slid off and it took four years to repair because we had to jump through a lot of hoops and even do an archaeological study.
“Our claim to fame is that we are the snowiest city in the Midwest and the third snowiest in the entire country,” said Sirdenis, who said adult lift tickets this year are $60. The resort, slated to open Nov. 25, is 45 miles south of Mount Bohemia, so some skiers and snowboarders coming from the south combine visits to both areas.
Ski Brule (skibrule. com), located near Iron River, Michigan, and 343 miles from Chicago, has upgraded its snow-making system to open terrain faster and make more snow, said operations manager Jessica Polich, a native of Lake Zurich. The resort, which has a 500-foot vertical drop, has also overhauled motors on its 11 lifts and painted some of them to “pretty them up,” she said.
Polich said Ski Brule, which has 17 trails on 150 acres of skiable terrain, is part of a 3,000-acre resort that also offers cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and fat bike trails. Its projected opening date was Friday.
Lift tickets will be $70 for adults this season, but she said skiers and snowboarders who download a Krist Oil app (kristoil. com/ski-brule-adventure) can use it to get $15 off that price to buy tickets in advance. Kids 9 and under ski free with an adult. Polich said Krist Oil has 90 gas stations in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.
Lutsen Mountains
(lutsen.com) may be the farthest resort from Chicago at 561 miles, but it’s worth the drive and a multiday visit. At 1,000 acres spread over four mountains — Eagle, Ullr, Mystery and Moose — it’s by far the Midwest’s largest resort and has the region’s only gondola, one of eight lifts at the resort, as well as views overlooking Lake Superior reminiscent of skiing at Lake Tahoe.
Charlotte Skinner, the chief financial officer for Midwest Family Skiing, said Lutsen replaced several bridges linking the resort’s mountains that were damaged by storms this year. The resort, which should open Nov. 19, also installed new snow-making equipment.
But the biggest change is the renovation of the popular Papa Charlie’s restaurant. It was remodeled and expanded to create what Charlotte Skinner called a casual fine-dining experience. That part of the building is now called Legends. Longtime fans will still be able to enjoy their apres ski time, happy hour, music and bar experience on the tavern side of the building, she said.
In the plans for next year is a high-speed, six-person lift on the Bridge Run, Charlotte Skinner added.