The Winter of our Content Not everybody gets upset when snow blankets the land

By Hal Higdon

woman in my eye doctor's office was bemoaning this winter's weather. "I'm sick of looking at snow," she groaned, "and it's only the middle of January!"

Bad luck for her; good luck for the ski industry. After several seasons of below-average precipitation, snow blankets the Midwest. Barry Godwin, the director of marketing at Shanty Creek, has begun to refer to it as the "Snowfall of the Century." I don't know why Barry is so reticent. He could identify the current abundance as the "Snowfall of the Millennium" and nobody would disagree.

Godwin loves snow. Although Shanty Creek, located near Bellaire in Northern Michigan, may be best known as a golf resort, it quickly converts to skiing once snow begins to fall--if snow begins to fall. "The last several winters have not been kind to skiers," Godwin concedes.

Indeed, last year my wife Rose and I planned a February visit to Crystal Mountain, another Northern Michigan resort, returning from Florida for our ski trip. Stepping off the plane in Chicago, I noted that the temperature was warmer than it had been in Jacksonville. Although enough snow remained on the downhill slopes at Crystal to satisfy downhill skiers, mud was the order of the day on the cross-country trails I favor.

But if 2000 offered a winter of discontent, 2001 has proved a winter of content for skiers. I can't remember snows so early, or snows so deep. This motivated Rose and I to plan another ski trip in Northern Michigan, snatching three of our grandkids from their parents and heading for Shanty Creek.

World-class ski trails

The Michigan ski resorts are an easy drive from Long Beach: across I-94 and I-196 to Grand Rapids, then up 131 to Cadillac. The expressway peters out near there, but then it's only an hour or more to the resorts, four to five hours total. Clustered around Traverse City and Petoskey are more than half a dozen downhill ski resorts plus dozens of cross-country ski areas with trails groomed and ungroomed. Our favorites are Crystal Mountain, Shanty Creek and Boyne Mountain, as much for cross-country as downhill. Having skied Crystal last year, we decided to try Shanty with a side trip to Boyne this year. That a friend offered his condo at a relatively low January rent rate helped in our choice. Going midweek is another way to save money and avoid weekend crowds.

Northern Michigan is a great destination choice for ski families, who can't always afford trips West. With vertical drop peaking around 450 feet, Michigan can't match Rocky Mountain resorts where vertical drops are counted in thousands of feet, but the cross-country skiing is nonpareil. You can travel through North America--or even Scandinavia--and not find Nordic trails as well designed and groomed as you will at the three resorts mentioned above.

Arriving late at our rented condo mid-week, we began the challenge of organizing downhill equipment for our three grandkids: Kyle, 12; Wesley, 10; and Holly, 6. Kyle came well equipped, but Wesley needed poles and Holly needed skis and boots. All needed lift tickets plus we had decided to sign them up for lessons. The boys have been skiing with us long enough so that they needed lessons only as a refresher, but this was Holly's first year of serious skiing. We set the alarm for 7:30 A.M. to give us time to prepare them for lessons beginning at 10:00.

After they were in the hands of the instructors, getting Rose and I ready to go cross-country skiing proved simpler. Not only are the skis, boots and poles lighter, but you need less clothing to stay warm moving down a trail than sitting on a chair-lift. The Pine Cone Trail, Shanty's novice loop, passed near our condo. I skied the short distance to the Nordic center to pick up trail passes for Rose and myself. The access to 30 kilometers of groomed trails more than compensated for the small cost.

Double your pleasure

Rose found Pine Cone Trail just to her liking. Having twisted her knee several weeks earlier testing her Florida grandson's scooter, she worried that skiing might aggravate the injury. But the 4.5-kilometer trail was flat and friendly and she buzzed along it contentedly. I took a side loop onto the Winter Brook Trail that provided 1.5 more kilometers plus a few ups and downs to challenge me both technically and aerobically.

The next day, the grandkids wanted to stay in their ski lessons, so we obliged. (Their parents were paying.) That freed me for some extra duty on the cross-country trails. Shanty Creek actually consists of two nearby ski areas: Schuss and Summit. Cross-country trails 8 to 9 kilometers in length connect the two. You can ski one-way or go round trip and double your distance as well as your pleasure. I opted for one-way and caught a shuttle bus back that dropped me near our condo.

Later that evening, we drove back to Summit to eat in The Lakeview Restaurant, one of the resort's two gourmet restaurants. (The other is Whispers at the newly opened Cedar River Village on the backside of Schuss Mountain.) The view through wide picture windows of the lit downhill slopes was impressive. Were it summer with longer daylight hours, we would be able to see Torch Lake in the distance.

I skied the next morning with Kyle, Wesley and Holly. The boys slowed their skiing to accommodate their little sister, while I served as surrogate ski instructor. Skiing behind Holly, I urged her to move out of the pie she had been taught at ski school. In a "pie," ski tips are pointed together in a V to slow the skier down. Gradually Holly began to realize that by shifting her skis parallel, she could move faster and avoid getting stuck on flat areas. In another few years, she'll be whizzing down the mountain as fast as her older brothers. We ended skiing early to go tubing at Summit.

You need only courage

We had spotted the tubing area dining in the restaurant the night before. While being a skier requires not only expensive equipment but the practiced ability to use it, you need only courage to jump on a rubber inner tube and let gravity tug you downhill. As grandparents, we reserved the right to watch safely from a distance and take pictures as tubers oft connected in trains of a dozen slid between large mounds of snow.

Following tubing, we headed north to Boyne Mountain where Lou Awodey oversees one of the best Nordic programs in the Midwest. The first weekend in January each year features Ski Fest, sponsored by Subaru, offering free group lessons and beginner trail passes. Ski Fest began in Michigan, but has been picked up by other states and provinces in North America. All you need do is call a Nordic area a day in advance to let them know you're coming. (It's too late for this year, but keep Ski Fest in mind for January, 2002.)

Awodey gathered a group of beginners and lay down on the snow. His first lesson was how to get up after falling! Because cross-country ski boots are lightweight and not connected to skis at the heel, getting up is considerably easier than with more cumbersome downhill boots. But as Awodey explained: "The secret is not to fall down in the first place."

We moved in two groups, beginners and more advanced skiers, along the appropriately named Pancake Trail that wound gently through pine trees near the Nordic Center. It was Holly's first time on cross-country skis, and for a while it appeared that the lesson she benefited most from was how to get up after falling. But I moved ahead of her, said "watch me," and soon she began to more than hold her own with the others. The boys buzzed along at their own pace. Rose finished happy, having skied four days without having aggravated her "scooter" injury.

More trails at Boyne beckoned beyond those we skied, including one that peaks near the highest point on the mountain. On the backside are a number of swooping descents that would convince any downhill skiers that cross-country skiing is not for sissies.

Too much snow and too little time to ski it! I could have stayed all winter in Northern Michigan and not skied over the same tracks twice, even if Barry Godwin's Snowfall of the Century lasted into March or April. But I'm not sure the woman I met in my eye doctor's office wants to hear about that.

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Hal Higdon, Senior Writer for Runner's World, claims to love skiing as much as running. For more on Midwest skiing go to Crystal Mountain: Destination for Parents with Kids in Tow.