Colorful Chairlift

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Courtney

Mount Bohemia had the best chairlift paint job I’ve ever seen. The mountain is a completely different experience than any other resort I’ve been to. All the snow is natural, with an average of 270 inches per year. This season they were about 100 inches short. The unusually warm temperatures made the snow melt pretty quickly. Sunday was 52 degrees, and we were told it would be the last day that one of the lifts would be able to stay open. We hope to go back again next year when it’s a little cooler.

Tim is on the left, Nolan is on the right. The fold down foot rests were nice, but our boards were too wide to fit both of our feet on them.

A Night at Lutsen

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Courtney

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.

Enurshia Jay Jam

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Courtney

Thursday Feb 5th I had a morning class from 9:30 – 12:00. At noon I headed to Chilton Wisconsin to begin the first part of our trip to the Enurshia Jay Jam at Jay Peak Vermont. I skipped my Thursday night class (6:30 – 9:00) but made it to Chilton, WI around 5pm so it was well worth skipping class to make some good time. In Wisconsin I met up with Andrew and he drove to Sandusky Ohio. We got there around 3am then slept at Matt’s house. From Sandusky we headed to Ithaca New York around 7am. Once we got to Ithaca we relaxed for a bit and were off to Vermont. The driving time alone was about 27 hours one way from Minneapolis. Saturday we rode at Jay Peak and it was an awesome experience. We were riding through tight trees and deep snow. Although it hadn’t snowed at Jay for about a week previous to us getting there, it was still way more snow than I was use to riding in Minnesota. Riding the real snow was a pretty heavy work out. I had never ridden anywhere that required me to stop mid run and take a little break but this place definitely required it. My knees, thighs, and shins were pretty beat after riding most the day but it was a great time. My knees had already hurt from riding in the car for so long so after riding they were beat. Saturday night it rained then Sunday morning it was sleeting which then turned to snow. Some Jay Peak employees (as well as many people trying to go ride) couldn’t even get up the hills to get to the base of the mountain. Luckily we had an SUV so we didn’t have any troubles. Everyone from our car pool was pretty tired and didn’t really want to pay to ride for only a couple hours in probably icy conditions. We packed up and headed out around noon, maybe 1pm. We drove to Ithaca New York and then waited for the second car to arrive. We couldn’t head to Ohio without the second car so we hung out and waited. Several hours later the second car arrived. Their GPS had told them to go into Canada and then had them eventually take a ferry – we still don’t know why. Since it was pretty late by the time the second car got to Ithaca we decided to sleep at Robert’s house. This was the first night all trip that I slept on an actual bed so I slept great. We got up at 7:30 and hit the road. Andrew and I just happened to have the right timing and got stuck in Chicago for 2 hours. Apparently a tenth of a mile of construction can back the entire city up for 2 hours. We had just gotten into Chicago at 5:30pm and didn’t get out until 7:30pm. North of Chicago we hit some pretty heavy rain which made it hard to see for quite a while. We finally got to Chilton at 9pm and I hit the road toward Minneapolis. I hit a long area of thick fog which made my already tired eyes even more tired. Once I got to the Minnesota border I hit some light rain but nothing serious. I got home around 2am – there was no traffic around Minneapolis at 2am on a Monday night and I was definitely happy about that. Once I got home I carried my suit case and backpack inside and talked to Kurstin for a bit. Soon after I got home I went to bed. After spending 19 hours in a car I was beat. I maybe slept about 2 hours maximum in the car. To my surprise I woke up in the morning after sleeping only 8 hours – I had figured I would be in hibernation for quite a while.

The event had a really great turn out. It was so awesome riding with a bunch of other skiboarders. I still feel like my body is slowly recuperating. Unfortunately we have lost a lot of snow from the warm weather and rain but it looks like it’ll be snowing more pretty soon.

Here are some photos taken by another rider.