The Wisconsin Skier

Recently I skied Nordic Mountain and present to you my review and opinions of the resort.

I visited Nordic Mountain on part of a bus trip organized by The Skier’s Outlet and by WVBO. Since I have never been to Nordic Mountain before I decided to go.

The trip left at about 9:40 and we arrived at Nordic around 11:00, though I was not pay real close attention. We were directed to the groups door and the attendants asked for people looking just for lift tickets and not rental gear so I went and collected my lift ticket and went to change into my gear.

Then I went skiing.

BTW, visit @snowdotcom’s website when you can. I mention this to get entered into their “swag” contest!

I got into my gear, clicked in and poled and skated to the triple chair. Rode it up and skied to their huge ski map board. Looked it over and decided to ski the blue and black runs under the triple chair. I sampled them and then took a run over the right side of the hill (as you are looking up). Eventually I wound up coming down in an area without lift service but ropes, so from that point on I stayed away from that side of the hill and concentrated skiing under the triple chair. They have a double chair but it seemed to me if you did not ski exactly right when attempting to get to that chair you wound up in ropesville.

SKIING

I found the snow on the ski trails to be in good shape with no ice found on the groomed runs. Novice skiers and boarders could concentrate on learning to ski on the runs here and not dealing with adverse snow conditions. However, the run under the triple chair has a section where 1/3 of the trail is covered by moguls, on top of the run there is a steep chute feeding the run, and Nordic does have a glade-skiing area, however I did not check out the glades.

The quality of skiing at Nordic is definitely novice to early intermediate level. However, as I note above more advanced skiers can find things to give them some thrills (albeit short-lived ones). The trail map shows they glades formed for glade skiing, but that area is not serviced by lifts and I never found that skiing, which is unfortunate because that could have been another opportunity for some new type of skiing.

Still, there were areas for advanced skiers to explore. Nordic had a mogul run, the glades, and some steep chutes leading to their main trails.

The Staff

Top notch! They were friendly and patient with those needing patience. The lift attendants would chat it up with you and ask you about your day. I wiped out in the mogul field and before I could get back into my skis a ski patroller was there checking me out. In addition, I did see the ski patrol in action on a boarder who fell and they had the sled out.

The Base Place

The rental facility was small and crowded. Not too much to report on there. However, I found the bar to be top notch.

The bar had $1.00 cans of Lost Lake Lager (the old Kingsbury recipe) and I ordered a cup of split pea soup and the reuben sandwich. The soup was excellent, the sandwich good, and the fries standard. The service was slow at first but got better throughout the day. At the end of skiing they had a double bubble where the $1.00 Lost Lakes turned into $0.50 Lost Lakes!

In fact, this in my mind is the biggest draw for me!

OVERALL

Overall Nordic Mountain is a novice to low-intermediate ski resort and the frequent lift stoppages were another indication of that. Advanced skiers need to find little tricks to keep themselves interested. This is not a rip on Nordic Mountain. Nordic Mountain is ideal if you have a four or five year old learning to ski or if you youself are learning to ski.

Would I return to Nordic Mountain? Not anymore this year and it would probably be a once a year trip for myself.

THE RATINGS

The Snow:………………90%
The Runs:……………….30%
The Staff:……………….85%
The Base Place:……….50%
The Tavern:……………..90%

Overall:……………………69%

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tags: ski, Skiing

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Grand Reviews, Resorts, Skiing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.