But what a day this cruelty brought. The feathered flakes had been falling for the past 16 hours, sweeping away every hound within a 100 mile radius. Given how remote this place is, that means maybe 300 skiers and snowboarders. The forest echoed with the faces and voices of my men as they bounced through some of the best snow we had experienced in our 150 years of collective skiing. Without air, the snow crystals had piled up along the hardwood edges in lines as thin as a haiku. Indeed, Hokkaido, Japan, may be the only other place I’ve skied that could match these conditions.
But this was not Japan. This was Mount Bohemia, Michigan.
For those in the know, this ski area, seven hours from the nearest major airport in Minneapolis-St. Paul is legendary.
I first heard about it 23 years ago when a friend mentioned an expert-only ski area that had just opened on Michigan’s remote Keweenaw Peninsula in the already remote Upper Peninsula, 600 miles northwest of Detroit. In 2016, Mount Bohemia resurfaced when it opened the first and only US-based cat ski business east of the Rockies.
“Does the Midwest even have mountains?” I wondered at the time.
Last fall, I Googled it again and learned that Michigan’s tallest mountain, Mount Arvon, is only 1,979 feet. Still, Michigan has 40 ski areas, the second most of any state in the country after New York’s 43. Online, Midwesterners swore the term Bohemia was The place for serious skiers and snowboarders. On a YouTube channel called Mount Bohemia TV, clip after clip showed fast turns in bottomless powder and storybook glades. No apartments, no big buildings. You could ski in areas not served by a lift, on a lonely road, where a ski bus would take you back to the base.
Clearly, something great was happening in that forest.
Just as big was the cost: Day tickets sold for $92, but for $99 I could get a season pass. If I bought three, I could get a fourth free. Mount Bohemia has a few ski-in/ski-out bunkhouses that sleep four, but the best place to stay is about a mile away, where, for about $260 a night, we could rent a lakeside cabin. If we booked three nights midweek we would get a fourth night free with dinner each night.
