However what a day this cruelty introduced. Feathery flakes had fallen the final 16 hours, luring each powderhound in a 100-mile radius. Given how distant this place is, which means perhaps 300 skiers and snowboarders. The forest echoed with the hoots and hollers of my folks as they bounced via a few of the finest snow we had skilled in our collective 150 years of snowboarding. With no wind the snow crystals had stacked up alongside the spindly hardwood limbs in strains as delicate as a haiku. Certainly, Hokkaido, Japan, may be the one different place I’ve ever skied that would match these circumstances.
However this was not Japan. This was Mount Bohemia, in Michigan.
To these within the know, this ski space, seven-hours from the closest main airport in Minneapolis-St. Paul, is known.
I first heard of it 23 years in the past, when a pal talked about a ski space with solely professional runs that had simply opened up on Michigan’s distant Keweenaw Peninsula on the already distant Higher Peninsula, 600 miles northwest of Detroit. In 2016, Mount Bohemia popped up once more when it opened the primary and solely U.S.-based cat-skiing operation east of the Rockies.
“Does the Midwest even have mountains?” I questioned on the time.
Final fall, I Googled it once more and discovered that Michigan’s highest mountain, Mount Arvon, is only one,979 ft. Nonetheless, Michigan has 40 ski areas, the second most of any state within the nation after New York’s 43. On-line, Midwesterners swore Mount Bohemia was the place for severe skiers and snowboarders. On a YouTube channel known as Mount Bohemia TV, clip after clip confirmed quick turns in bottomless powder and storybook glades. No condos, no massive buildings. You may ski via areas serviced by no chairlift, all the way down to a lonely street, the place a ski bus would take you again to base.
Clearly, one thing nice was happening in these woods.
Equally nice was the fee: Day tickets bought for $92, however for $99 I might get a season move. If I purchased three, I might get a fourth one free. Mount Bohemia has just a few ski-in, ski-out bunkhouses that sleep 4, however the perfect place to remain is a couple of mile away, the place, for about $260 an evening, we might hire a lakeside cabin. If we booked three nights midweek, we’d get a fourth night time free with dinner included each night time.