Photos by:

Nancy Sand

An Ansel Adams view

from the chateau deck.

Which way?

Should have brought a GPS.

Can you see Lake Superior in the

distance? Nah, neither could we!

The last ULLR multi-day ski trip of the season was March 1-2 to Spirit Mountain.  Four ULLRs made the trip: Pat Nelson, Nancy Sand, Bruce Warner, and Jim Habeck.  Following reports of more than a foot of new snow around Duluth, there was much anticipation for great snow at Spirit Mountain.  Alas, the high winds blew most of the snow off the runs.  Thus the conditions were okay but not great.

We arrived at Spirit Mountain late morning, so we bought the four-hour senior lift tickets at $22.00.  We then determined to get the cost down to no more than $1.00 per run, with the stipulation that we would not break for lunch until the cost per run was around $3.00.  So, math majors, how many runs did we ski before we broke for lunch?  After seven runs, Pat declared we were close enough to the $3.00 mark.  And, did we get the cost down to $1.00 or less per run?  We think so, but we lost count of our runs after about 17.  We did, however, all exceed the four hour limit on our lift tickets.  We simply skied too fast for the lift ticket police to catch us!

As many ULLRs know, Black Bear Casino has a huge all-you-can-eat seafood buffet on Thursday nights.  Pat indulged with crab legs.  Nancy sampled alligator.  We finished our dinner and still had room for desserts!  Then it was time to visit the Casino.  Jim tried hard to win at a poker machine with Bruce and Pat cheering for him, but Nancy was the big winner getting 6,954 cents at a penny machine – enough to buy a couple rounds of drinks with a little left over to take home.

Although the original plan was to ski two days at Spirit Mountain, these four decided get up early and drive further north on the second day to ski at Lutsen.  Here we were delighted to find a couple of inches of fresh snow that made wonderful skiing conditions.  The tops of the mountains were enshrouded with clouds.  When we skied out from underneath them, it was like someone had raised a curtain.  We did not have any sunshine, but the scenes were like Ansel Adams photos—beautiful!

Bruce was our main trail guide at Spirit Mountain and Lutsen.  He did a pretty god job choosing the trails—except for one run at Lutsen where we found ourselves skiing through blades of grass with an occasional big rock to dodge.  At both places, we had fun skiing over the jumps and around the rails in terrain parks.  Nancy claimed to be doing super fast 360s off the tops of the big jumps, but no one saw this, and there are no photos to substantiate the claim!

Although the original thought was to submit a story that said only "What happened in Lutsen, stays in Lutsen", we hope you enjoyed reading about our adventures because the four of us agreed ULLR needs to plan a future trip to include both Spirit Mountain and Lutsen!