Lutsen Mountains:
Four Peaks and a Superior Lake
It’s late March at Lutsen Mountains, a sudden freeze has wrecked havoc with the previously soft spring snow, and a group of us are perched at the top of the winch-cat-groomed Plunge. As we peer uncertainly toward the edge, resort co-owner Charles Skinner says, “I want to stress that this thing is steep, it’s the steepest trail in the Midwest, and I understand if you decide to skip it.”
Lutsen Mountains
Minnesota
Address: 467 Ski Hill Rd.
Lutsen, MN 55612
Ski area phone: (218) 663-7281
Reservations: (218) 406-1320
E-mail: ski@lutsen.com
Internet: www.lutsen.com
We all laugh. We’re in Minnesota, for goodness sake, and we’re all well-traveled skiers who have honed our skills on some of the steepest mountains in the East and West. How steep can it really be?
And therein lies the question. For starters, you don’t know how steep it can really be until you crest the rollover at the top. You have absolutely no idea what waits below. You are skiing into the void. And so you have a bit of a head game to contend with.
But we brush that off. One by one, members of our group disappear over the edge. I don’t hear any screams of fright. No sounds of a big crash and burn. But, no hoots of joy either. In fact, I hear nothing at all. Huh. Wonder what that means.
I push off and drop down several hundred feet of very firm snow—I won’t call it bulletproof but I will call it icy. Thank goodness for freshly tuned skis. It is steep, I’ll give you that. I never thought I’d find myself in a “no fall zone” in the Midwest, but the combination of the pitch, the snow conditions and the sharp 90-degree turn at the bottom conjure up images of sliding all the way to the bottom and slamming into the forest below.
Turns out the headwall is 42 degrees at the top, so it is legitimately rated as a double-black-diamond trail. The entire time, I'm thinking, “This would be really sweet on a powder day or a spring corn-harvesting day! But in these conditions, not so much!”
I reach the bottom and rejoin my group, suddenly wishing I had my touring skis so I could switch from Alpine to touring mode. The cat track back to the lifts is flatter than Kansas. Who said Alpine skiing isn’t a cardio sport?
As we peered
uncertainly toward the edge, resort co-owner Charles Skinner said, “I want to stress that this thing is steep, it’s the steepest trail in the Midwest, and I understand if you
decide to skip it.”
You might wonder what would motivate me to leave Northern Vermont during prime time to ski in Northern Minnesota. While the initial reason was a ski writers’ meeting, I was undeniably drawn by the prospect of a trip down memory lane. Not just any trip, but a bonafide road trip from Vermont to Minnesota by way of Quebec, Ontario, Michigan and Wisconsin.
It had been more than 30 years since I’d left Northern Michigan, where I was raised skiing at Schuss Mountain under the careful tutelage of my mother, the ski area’s director of children’s ski programs. I couldn’t help myself, I just had to go back to the Midwest. And I hoped my husband, Scott, born and raised in New Hampshire, would see why I have fond memories of the oft-overlooked middle section of our country.
Lutsen is smack dab in the middle of nowhere—Minnesota’s North Shore, to be exact. The state with the nickname of “Land of 10,000 Lakes” hides more than 2,000 of those lakes in the vast region surrounding Lutsen. The glacially carved landscape here is part of the Superior National Forest, almost 4 million acres of mountains, forest, lakes and rivers. The views of Lake Superior are stunning and you can’t help but stop to admire your surroundings. Look north, and you’re gazing into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and, ultimately, Canada. Simply stated, this is one of the most scenic places in North America.
My greatest pleasure was hearing Scott repeatedly say during our trip, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was still in New England. I thought it would be flat and boring, instead there are rolling hills, mountains, cliffs and big lakes. It’s nothing short of impressive. I can see why your family would move to New England after living here, it must have felt a lot like home.”
We didn’t know what to expect at Lutsen. My family had never ventured this way, and my skiing memories of Northern Michigan were of small hills that may have had a few challenging trails but not much in the way of vertical. Scott and I were, we thought, prepared for anything.
The glacially carved landscape here is part
of the Superior National Forest, almost 4 million acres of mountains, forest, lakes and rivers.
That’s why what really struck the two of us about Lutsen is this: Since trails are spread across four mountain peaks—all part of the Sawtooth Mountain Range—it’s very much reminiscent of the resort experience you get out West or at the bigger resorts in the East. Lutsen can genuinely brag about its size, for by Midwestern and even Eastern standards, the resort is gigantic: 1,000 acres is nothing to sneeze at. And, yes, you can get lost here.
Moose Mountain is the tallest of Lutsen’s peaks at 1,689 feet above sea level (but 1,088 feet above the nearby shores of Lake Superior and 825 vertical feet of lift-served terrain). The other three—Ullr, Eagle and Mystery mountains—range in size from 350 vertical feet to 650 vertical feet. Ullr Mountain is the dedicated learning area, a welcome treat for novices and families with young children. Many of Lutsen’s trails meander, they don’t just cut straight down, so not only are the runs long, you get the feeling of exploring the mountains. Perhaps the resort’s only drawback to being spread across four peaks is some long run outs where you are literally cross-country skiing back to the lifts.
Lutsen’s size means it offers something many other Midwestern ski areas cannot: a decent variety of terrain for every ability level. Granted, advanced and expert skiers aren’t going to declare they’ve found the Promised Land and subsequently swear off ski trips to other North American destinations. But they will find enough to keep them occupied and genuinely entertained. In addition to the aforementioned Plunge, Lutsen’s peaks are sprinkled with glades, moguls and fairly steep albeit short pitches.
But most of all,
listening to laughter all around us, whether in the lodge, on the trail or in the lift line, reminded me of how easily a certain camaraderie
is formed
in the mountains, whether they are massively thrusting
into thin air or
just 350 feet tall.
In truth, Lutsen was nothing like my memories of Midwestern skiing. Well, let me backtrack a bit, the firmness of the snow, that was pretty much exactly as I remembered. It might come as a surprise, then, that as we set about discovering the secrets of Lutsen, nostalgia kicked in at some of the most unlikely moments.
Watching giggling kids followed by their beaming parents as they did pizza-wedge turns reminded me of how lucky I’d been to grow up in a skiing family. Ripping turns through a race course set up on Upper Caribou for the visiting ski writers’ annual competition reminded me of my family ritual of slogging all over Michigan as my brothers competed on the race circuit. Eating a grilled lunch on the deck of the midmountain lodge reminded me of those warm spring days every diehard skier looks forward to as a reward for being willing to ski in the most frigid of weather...just to get some turns in.
But most of all, listening to laughter all around us, whether in the lodge, on the trail or in the lift line, reminded me of how easily a certain camaraderie is formed in the mountains, whether they are massively thrusting into thin air or just 350 feet tall.
For more pictures of our Lutsen Mountains trip, please visit the “Road Trippin': Vermont to Minnesota” album in our Photo Galleries.