This Weekend in Skiing

Was fantastic.

Skied both Saturday January 29 and Sunday January 30, 2011. The skiing was for the most part fantastic. Lots of new snow, the crowd was not too large, and the lift lines tolerable or better.

We arrived at the resort on Saturday and were greeted by five coach or school buses in the overflow parking lot, still there was no cars parked on the road and since our arrival coincided with lunch we figured we could get some good skiing in while the crowd was inside for lunch.

Last time I skied the runs were ice coated (literally) and not all that fun to ski on. This time the runs were powder coated. Lots of fresh snow and by the time we arrived the pow was cut up on the sides and scrapped off of the centers of the runs. The pow was soft enough to slice through bumps of the stuff without having the bumps push back on you, still it was fun to try to ski around the bumps and if you missed one and hit a bump it just busted apart.

One annoyance was the resort was hosting HS races and so one trail was closed. That is not a big deal, but very annoying was the fact these HS racers had their ski bags strewn about right in front of the main lodge. Come on people, have a little courtesy and thoughtfulness for your fellow skier. I have a picture of that and will post. Annoying too are people sitting in the barroom, not drinking and taking up scarce tables, if you are not patronizing the bar please leave there is plenty of other seating available.

Today (Sunday) the crowd was way down and the trails all groomed. We arrived very late, but arrived ready to ski. Lift lines were very short (next to non-existant) and the conditions were very favorable. The snow was good, the weather was cold but not overly so and there was no wind to speak of. We arrived got some warm up runs in and registered for our first NASTAR runs of the year. The course was fairly easy but I did not ski it very aggressively and the first run was the better of my two runs. A ski team was also on the hill practicing and they had slalom gates setup and I skied those once, taking it easy not really attacking — just to get the feel.

I am quite certain all of the ski resorts in the northern parts of Wisconsin and in Michigan’s UP had similar conditions on. Great skiing!