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Courtesy Mount Bohemia
Mount Bohemia
Expert skiers and snowboarders alike are drawn to Mount Bohemia for the ungroomed powder, frozen waterfalls, challenging glade runs and sweeping vistas.
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Courtesy Mount Bohemia
Mount Bohemia
Mount Bohemia sometimes receives more than 300 inches of snow in a season.
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Courtesy Mount Bohemia
Mount Bohemia
Mount Bohemia’s lodging options include heated trailside yurts. They sleep 10 in bunk beds, lending a camp-like feeling that encourages guests to socialize.
For a few brief moments as he slashes through the powder of remote Mount Bohemia, towering above Lac La Belle near the tip of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, Joey Wallis is overcome with déjà vu. The sheer and tree-covered pitches, the cliffs, the dry powder, the uncompromising difficulty – the experience echoes his winters spent skiing in the West.
“If you could throw me in a plane and just blindfold me and put me on the slope, I could literally be like, ‘I have no clue where I’m at,’” says Joey, an Iowa-based photographer who heard about Bohemia from an extreme-skier friend.
“Maybe eventually the Lake would give it away, or the Yooper accent.”
On Lake Superior’s shores you won’t find the West’s dizzying exposures, gaping couloirs and raw vertical, but, Joey says, Mount Bohemia resembles the acclaimed Crested Butte, Colorado, if “someone sawed off the top 1,000 vertical feet.”
What Bohemia does offer is heaps of fresh powder – sometimes more than 300 inches over a six-month-long season – technical challenges, and smaller and friendlier crowds.
And that has caught the attention of powder hounds like Joey.
At Colorado resorts, Joey says, “it’s so hard to find fresh powder because there’s so many people. … Everything’s gobbled up within the first hour or couple hours of the day. At Bohemia on a weekend, you can find fresh, untouched powder at the end of the day. I was blown away by that.”
Mount Bohemia’s runs may be shorter, but the quality and quantity of powder more than make up for it. Mount Bohemia opened last year in mid-December and didn’t close until the first weekend in May, all without an ounce of artificially made snow.
The resort does no grooming, no snowmaking and only minimal trail maintenance, resulting in a backcountry-style experience that keeps even expert skiers interested for days. Many resorts will kick you off the mountain for skiing the trees, but Bohemia is defined by its off-piste runs. Skiers zigzag around oaks, maples and virgin white pines to find hidden powder stashes; fly off cliffs and frozen waterfalls; and then make big, surfy turns through clearings – all of it in a single run.
It’s no wonder, then, that with such incredibly challenging ski runs, the signs that shout “No Beginners” in red capital letters are not mere marketing hyperbole. The Midwest Ski Areas Association gives 88 percent of the mountain’s trails its toughest rating of “Most Difficult.” The rest are only slightly mellower, earning a “More Difficult” label. No other regional ski area comes close to that figure, and Bohemia’s 900 feet of vertical are the most in the Lake region. Bohemia has no bunny hill.
Steve Rowe, a soft-spoken skier whom Joey calls Mount Bohemia’s Mr. Miyagi (after the Karate Kid’s mentor), has been skiing the mountain since 1987, 13 years before Lonie Glieberman opened the resort.
In the ’80s and ’90s, the mountain had but one run, cut as a test by developers in 1984, and no lift. For almost a decade, Steve and a few hardy locals had Bohemia to themselves, hiking up and skiing down. He worked summer weekends and holidays clearing brush and widening lines, grueling work that burned out more than a few helpers over the years. When Lonie bought the property in the late 1990s, Steve quit his job in emergency medicine to work full-time on the mountain.
“For me, the reward, other than a modest little paycheck, was I got to open up the lines that I’d been drooling over but that were too tight to ski. Just about every year since the start, I’ve been expanding the acreage.”
He’s been careful to preserve the untamed character of the mountain while making it safer than those hair-raising pre-resort days, when he had a few close calls himself.
Midwest Powder Mecca Mount Bohemia
Video by Joey Wallis.
Nestled near the Keweenaw’s tip, Mount Bohemia isn’t the kind of place a casual skier stumbles across. That, together with the bare-bones amenities, creates a vibe you can’t find at the large Western or East Coast resorts, Joey says. When the lift was closed for two days last winter during a storm, nobody pouted or demanded a refund. Like the Bohemia skiers of yesteryear, they slung their skis over their shoulders and hiked to the top.
“It reminds me of a fishing camp or something like that,” says Joey. “I did a season in Vail (Colorado) as a photographer on the hill, and I never felt like I could get a grip on the feel of that ski area. Everyone’s a stranger. At Bohemia, you hang out on the slopes, at the bar, the lodge. … You get to know people.”
Many skiers stay in the resort’s communal yurts – “It’s all happening underneath the yurt,” Joey says – where strangers quickly become friends. You’ll probably even meet the owner. Lonie himself works the ticket counter; at bigger ski resorts, few guests even know the owner’s name.
“There’s a pretty wide following of very, very passionate believers,” Steve says. Skiers praising Mount Bohemia online sometimes get flak from the West. “‘You’re talking about powder skiing in the Midwest?’ All these Western guys are pounding their chests and say, ‘You guys are a joke! Nine hundred feet of vertical?’ And then you watch the legions of Bohemia loyalists who come. And a lot of those responders say, ‘You have no idea, dude.’”
Behind those impassioned fans, Mount Bohemia made the Final Four in Powder Magazine’s contest last year to find the best place in North America to ski powder. The hill bested the vaunted (and similarly ungroomed) Mad River Glen of Vermont and New York’s one-time Olympic venue Whiteface Mountain to reach the semifinals. Bohemia and Marquette Mountain were the only Midwest ski areas in the 64-hill competition.
“You hear a lot of first-timers saying, ‘Whoa, I can’t believe this place is here, this is crazy!’” Joey says. “It’s almost becoming a Midwest badge of honor.”
Adds Steve, “We’re popular among a smallish, but growing group of adventure-seekers who don’t want anything to do with snowmaking or grooming or expensive restaurants or posh lodging. They just want powder, trees and a rickety, slow ride to the top, then maybe a shuttle to bring them back around.”
Insider Tip
Steve Rowe, known as the godfather of Mount Bohemia skiing, says not to miss the Extreme Backcountry area of the mountain. “That’s the top one, two and three areas on the whole hill.
“It was in an area of the mountain that was too inaccessible for logging in the old days, in the 1800s and early 1900s when they were clear-cutting virtually every virgin white pine east of the Mississippi. We’ve got a couple hundred acres where those pines still stand.”
Pine, oak and maple trees, some of them up to 5 feet in diameter, form a thick canopy overhead, which prevents smaller trees from filling in the glades below.
“The spacing is pretty wide, and I’ve cleaned out the brush and downfall. This is just a massive area, and with great snow.”
Even after a busy weekend, you’ll still find pockets of fresh powder on Bohemia’s labyrinthine runs.
If the south side gets tracked out or baked by the sun, try the other side of the mountain. “Some of the north face doesn’t get sun until late March or April because it’s so steep,” Steve says. “It’s got some shorter but really steep pitches and interesting terrain.”
Other Ungroomed Options
Mount Bohemia isn’t the only ski area with ungroomed trails and glades. As demand for backcountry-style skiing has grown, regional resorts have let skiers into the trees. Bohemia’s trails are mostly double and triple diamonds, while these hills may have options for newer skiers.
At Searchmont Resort, north of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, five of the 18 trails are ungroomed. Searchmont is only a little shorter – 750 feet of vertical vs. Bohemia’s 900 – but its difficulty tops out at black diamond. It averages 132 inches of snow, plus snowmaking.
On the North Shore, try the devilish tree runs on Lutsen Mountains’ Moose Mountain, rated single and double diamonds. The resort’s Eagle Mountain has a few easier tree runs. Lutsen has 95 runs in all, most of them wide open and groomed, with 825 feet of vertical. It averages 114 inches of snow, plus snowmaking.
Porcupine Mountain Ski Area in Ontonagon, Michigan, offers four glade trails and 640 feet of vertical. It averages 200 inches of snow.
Michigan’s Marquette Mountain has a large backcountry area with six named runs, 600 feet of vertical and an average of 210 inches of snow.
Blackjack Ski Resort continues to add new expert-level glade trails every year. The Bessemer, Michigan, ski hill has 490 feet of vertical and averages 210 inches of snow.
Ski Brule in Iron River, Michigan, has two wooded trails for experts and averages 150 inches of snow.