This photo was taken Saturday night at Lutsen Mountains in north eastern Minnesota. Lutsen has no night skiing so the lift you see here had been closed down for quite a while.

Our trip was overpriced and overrated. We payed a lot for “ski-in, ski-out” lodging, which wasn’t the case at all. We ended up having to walk quite a ways to get to a place we could start riding. The rooms look much, much nicer online than they actually turned out to be. Lift tickets also aren’t cheap, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal if conditions were better. Saturday conditions were less than average, Sunday had 30mph winds – which definitely weren’t in the forecast when we planned the trip just a few days prior. I don’t blame the resort for the weather, however, I did bundle up and go for a few runs. At the bottom of the first run the lift attendant said he couldn’t let anyone up, even though the lift was running. I then had to walk about a half mile up hill, into the wind to the next lift. After finally getting to the lift I could actually take up, it stopped for about 5 minutes while I was in direct wind. By that time I called it quits and went to return my lift ticket. They had given us two-day lift tickets, and issued us rain checks for our Sunday tickets.

It seemed really irresponsible for them to even be selling lift tickets on Sunday due to the high winds and lift closures. At one point I was attempting to go down a run and was basically being stopped from moving by the wind. Really not a fun time for anyone. I’ll gladly stick to Giants Ridge.