Opening Weekend at Marquette Mountain

It’s finally here!

After quite a wait this fall, winter is finally upon us in Marquette. This past Thursday, Marquette Mountain finally started spinning its lifts after weeks of delay from unseasonably warm temperatures. Similar warm temperatures also delayed other ski areas in the Upper Peninsula from opening their lifts, so I was unable to attend the Michigan opener at Ski Brule a couple weeks earlier. This meant that Thursday was my first day back on snow for the winter season!

I got out of class for the day and decided that I would study after I got a few turns in. Of course a few turns turned into a lot of turns, and a few rails, and then a couple of hours hiking rails as fellow Shaggy’s athlete Seth Shuster and I began to get some of our rail feet back under us. Unfortunately for my academic endeavors, this meant that I would be studying after I slept off a long hard day of skiing.

Even though warm temperatures only allowed Marquette Mountain time to blow snow for 1 top to bottom run and the bunny hill. The mountain nevertheless had several fun natural terrain options to play with. There was a small drop right off the top of the chairlift that we had a lot of fun on, as well as several natural side-hit jumps and rollers going down the front face. The faster you went the further you aired, and everybody was riding really fast all day. Marquette Mountain also supplied the park skiers and riders with several box rails and a flat down rail. Everybody was out hiking, and everyone was getting their rustiness off right away. Just about every rail trick I could think of got thrown by both the skiers and the boarders.

Marquette Mountain, being less than 10 minutes from campus, is a great place to get out and ride with friends from school. The community is great and everyone is pretty friendly in the park and on the hill. Plus there are a lot of very talented skiers and boarders that attend NMU so you can be guaranteed to see some pretty talented riders out on a daily basis. Marquette Mountain definitely has one of the best rider communities I have ever been a part of, and the best place to ski is always where your friends are, making Marquette Mountain a pretty fun place to go.

While conditions were definitely a far cry from my first day skiing Marquette Mountain last year (Read my report here) it was still great to get out and rip a couple turns and slide a few rails with good friends. With Lake Superior much warmer than at this point last year and the inevitable fact that, this is Marquette so it is going to get VERY cold in a month or two, this season still has a great potential for some very heavy lake effect snowfalls. Here’s to hoping for a good cold January and February to get the lake effect machine turning, so we can see some big storms this winter.

Thanks to Marquette Mountain and everyone who came out to ski and ride, I can’t wait for more as the season gets going! For now, it’s time to study for NMU finals week.

Photo Credit: Scott Crady | Andie Schroeter