TOP TO BOTTOM “A free-refills kind of night at Marquette Mountain and the best skiing of the trip. On the south shore of the big lake, nights like this are common.” Photo: Colin Clancy Welcome to the Marquette snow globe, courtesy of the Great Lakes’ unique winter weather patterns. Photo: Colin Clancy GROWING UP WATCHING Warren Miller movies and dreaming about big mountains out West, we trash talked Michigan skiing despite our love for it. As teenagers we didn’t think much about the ski history here. We didn’t think about the roots that took hold with the arrival of Scan-dinavian immigrants in the late 1800s. We didn’t consider that Michigan ski jumps were considered some of the best in the world in the early 20th century, nor that Michiganders set world records away from home. We didn’t consider that with over 40 ski areas still operating, Michigan is second only to New York in that regard. No part of Michigan holds more ski culture and history than the Upper Peninsula. After a rainy first couple of days of our trip, we cross the Mackinac Bridge in search of that history and find something else—snow. After six harrowing hours on the road we pull into Marquette, where I lived for most of my 20s and where lake effect snow off Lake Superior had been pounding 500-vertical-foot Marquette Mountain all day. In low-20-degree temps, we rip groomers and play in the glades. Robbie, having ditched his teles for alpine skis, pops off side hits, and Adam follows his train. When the after-school crowd shows up, we go into singles line mode, meeting at the top of each run. As the daylight wanes, the lights power up. Something about night skiing feels like skiing in its purest form, maybe because as kids we spent 90 percent of our time on the slopes after dark. Under the lights, the snow falls so hard that the chairlift’s haul rope vanishes into a curtain of white. My legs feel strong and dialed, my ankle pain-free for the first time in weeks. The temp has dropped a few degrees, and the snow firms into a perfect, edge-holding softpack. Hero stuff. In a favorite term of ski hill snow reports, we’d call this “packed powder.” We bomb it in fast, wide and low carves. I follow the others and take in the view. It’s possible that Maggie’s carves are the prettiest I’ve ever seen, powerful but graceful—almost like a racer but a bit more laid back and flowy. She talks about learning to ski in her dad’s tracks at Sugarloaf, a hill near Traverse City, MI, that’s now closed. “Literally in his tracks,” she says. “I don’t know how he ever saw me ski enough to give me pointers because I was always behind him.” He’s since passed on, but Maggie’s skiing, and those turns, continue to be part of his legacy. The Scandinavian immigrants who brought skiing to the U.P. also brought something any tired skier can get behind: saunas. After our ski boots come off that evening we follow a local buddy, Matt Torreano, along a snowy path to the back of his house where he’d lit the sauna stove that afternoon. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge,” he says, point-ing at a stack of Hamm’s sitting in the snow on a little shelf outside the sauna window. Inside, the thick 170-degree air has the dense smell of wet cedar. I breathe deep and slow, feeling the sweat start to roll. Torreano douses the sauna rocks and the air thickens. I inhale deeply. The world feels good. Just when I think I can’t stand the heat anymore, Adam makes a mad dash outside and flops into the snow, giggling. We all follow, a wonderful shock. 068 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 17, Issue 1: Page 68
