First trip to Lutsen

Well Melissa and I just returned from our first trip to Lutsen yesterday. Overall we had a great time. Friday I left work a little early and headed home to pick her up so we could get on the road. We packed up the car quick and headed out. The weather was rainy and pretty crappy but the roads were in pretty good condition so over all we were not slowed down at all. We made it to Duluth in a normal time. Gassed up in Two Harbors and headed further up, we planned to stop at our favorite restaurant on the way up like we sometimes do, so we were both looking forward dinner at Northern Lights. This is a great little spot right before you hit Beaver Bay. The food is always good. I had my favorite menu item, the prime rib sandwich with fries. It also comes with a horseradish sauce that is just excellent. Melissa had salmon which she said was really good. After dinner we drove the final 45 miles and checked into our hotel.

Saturday we got up to foggy and warm weather. The temperature was 36 and I was worried. After all of the rain that we had on Friday I was concerned that the snow was going to be sketchy and low and behold I was correct. It was like really bad spring conditions. The snow was hard and crappy. And the fog was thick. We moved around the 3 mountains looking for good pockets of snow and luckily we were able to find some good stuff. Cliff Run on Eagle was in really good shape, which is a fun little double diamond right off Manitou. We skied that one a number of times. We also found areas of good snow on Hari Kari, and Koo-Koo. Moose Mountain was socked in with fog and the visibility was really bad, the skiing was very poor over there. Ullr the little mountain was really busy because it was not affected by the fog so it seemed everyone headed over there. We skied one run there and then decided that the lift line was worth waiting. Finally in the early afternoon the fog started to lift and the conditions started to improve as the snow started to soften up. The runs on the north face of Eagle were all great by the end of the day, we skied them all, Split Rock and Cliff Run turned out to the in the best shape of the Eagle Runs. We headed back to Moose to find, Grizzly, Bull and Glade to be in the best shape over there out of the ones that we skied. Overall it turned out to be an ok day.

Saturday night we went to the Gunflint Tavern in Grand Marais and had a really good dinner followed by some great music. It was a fun night.

Sunday we woke to temps in the low 20's and a clear sky. After breakfast we checked out of the hotel and headed back up to the mountains. We found the conditions to be excellent, surprisingly. We started out over on Eagle working our way around the mountain. We skied the north face diamonds. They were great, night and day difference from Saturday. We then skied over to Moose to check out the runs over there, again they turned out to be great. The run of the day for me was Upper and Lower Caribou, which is a nice long cruiser. The snow was in great shape and it was just fun cruising down in the middle of that run making nice turns the whole way. It was great. We ended up having a lot of fun. I was a little disappointed with Saturday. But what can you do, I can't unfortunately do anything about the weather.

I am looking forward to more snow in the forecast for tonight. I am going to try to get to Welch Village on either New Year’s Eve night or Friday or both. I think we are going