STEAM RISES from a placid Lake Superior, the car thermometer reading a balmy 9 degrees as we enter the Ke-weenaw Peninsula. The 150-mile thumb’s up jutting from the western U.P. into Lake Superior is a magnet for lake effect snow, and it can get pummeled nightly for a month straight. Average January snowfall up here tops 70 inches but can exceed 100, so we are disappointed to learn that last night’s storm down south didn’t drop a single flake locally. Near the tip of the Keweenaw, and mainland Michigan’s northernmost point, Mount Bohemia stretches into a blue-bird sky. This U.P. classic looks like a real mountain in a way that's atypical for Michigan. It’s steep and rugged, with 900 feet of ungroomed vertical. I’d been here once, over a decade ago, when the base area consisted of just a couple of yurts. Now it offers a whole hobbit shire of them, plus a bunch of tiny log cabins, a hostel and the largest hot tub in the U.P. We load one of two fixed-grip chairs painted an oddball lime green and purple. Even though it was built for three riders, a sign at the base instructs us to “load as a double.” Halfway up I look over my shoulder and the view hits me. Seemingly right at the base, a frozen Lac La Belle is untouched save for a lone snowmobile track. Beyond that a thin strip of pine forest is the only thing between us and Lake Superior on the horizon. Though I’ve never lived within 80 miles of here, I feel at home. I think it’s the blue-green Great Lakes water. Living out West now, I miss that water dearly. Robbie’s a Bohemia veteran, catching the annual $100 season pass sale that happens one day only each December, and making the 600-mile trek from Kalamazoo at least once or twice per winter. This place offers tree skiing at its finest, and since Robbie knows the area, we follow him across thin snow cover, finding smooth lines through the trees with sliv-ers of Superior in the distance. The runs at Bohemia are named after planets and Lord of the Rings characters. There are thickly treed, steep, jump-turn-only sections, and rockstar runs spaced wide enough for speed. We haul through the top of Middle Earth before contemplating whether the dense trees of Gandalf or Frodo offer the best lines. One of the things I love most about tree skiing is the choose-your-own-adventure nature of it. In trees like Bohemia’s, you’ll never ski the same line twice. The density of trees makes these 585 acres ski like a much bigger resort. Just when it seems that we might be hopelessly lost, we pop out onto a road. We take off our skis, sit down in the snow and wait for the bus to take us back to the lift—just one feature of a mountain built to ski anywhere you please. The wait for the shuttle is a welcome respite for hurting bodies. We talk about how it’d be nice to ski a groomer. Then again, groomers don’t exist here. By the end of the day, when golden hour light casts long shadows from these hundreds of thousands of pines, we are all absolutely beat. We roll out our sleeping bags on bunks in the log cabin hostel and hit the giant hot tub. Though there are probably 20 people, it doesn’t feel cramped. Bohemia may be more developed than it was last time I skied here, but the vibe is the same—more backwoods hippie commune than resort, its crowd a mix of fiercely loyal regulars and first-timers making the bucket-list pilgrimage. I towel off to FaceTime my 2-year-old son, Jackson, before his bedtime and tell him just two more sleeps until I’d see him. “You ski fast, dada?” he asks. “Yeah, bud,” I say. “I ski fast.” After my call, I find the crew saddled up to the log cabin bar talking with Missy, the bartender who lived in an un-heated trailer in the parking lot for years before buying a house near the mountain. On the bar top she drapes a trail map handkerchief over a rocks glass, simulating the contour of the mountain, and points out a dozen different spots we should ski tomorrow. It’s going to be another good day. Missy takes a tray of drinks to the hot tub. Everybody knows her by name. They reach out from the water to give sopping wet hugs as hot tub steam billows into the night. Michigan 071
The Ski Journal Volume 17, Issue 1: Page 71
