Lutsen

Melissa and I spent this past weekend up in Lutsen skiing. It turned out to be one of the best weekends up there condition wise that I can remember. Lutsen got about 11" of snow this past week and there was a lot of untracked lines left when we hit the slopes on Saturday morning. We stayed slope side so we walked out of our room and clicked in right on Bridge run and made our way down to Bridge chair. Once to the top we headed down Manitou and found George's run COVERED in fresh snow. Moguls and powder, some of the best turns I have ever had at Lutsen then transpired. I kept thinking, there is no way this can be Lutsen... The snow is so soft and light and fluffy and perfect, any minute I am going to wake up. Nope it was real and it was all over the mountain. The Lutsen grommers did something they don't do very often, they did not groom every square inch of groomable area and left some natural lines. This was awesome and I have already sent my email to them giving them kudos for doing so. Anyway after George's we skied Chris's Couloir which was in the best shape ever, eerily soft corduroy and a nice steep line = Eric happy... I was having a blast powering around the mountain. It was hard getting my Minnesota legs back after 5 days of skiing powder in Montana, but eventually everything came back and Lutsen was rocking... We did all of our favorite runs on Eagle mountain, Chris's Couloir, George's, Cliff, Split Rock, and Raven. After working the north face we headed to Expert's Cutoff which unfortunately the upper portion had been scrapped clean and a lot of grass and rock was showing so the first 15' were a little dicey not to ruin your skis, but the rest of the run was great. I love Experts Cutoff, it is a fun run with a good line and it is kind of hidden so it is not skied a lot. After Experts we headed to Moose to hit the trees. There was a huge ski race going on this weekend, so once we got to Moose we pretty much said ok one tree run and we are outta here. Moose was packed. Bummer. But the tree runs Red Fox to Bears Den turned out to be awesome. Good snow, good coverage and very little ice. Rare indeed, but awesome. After the trees we went and had some lunch at Papa Charlies. After a nice lunch we went and made some turns on the runs on Ullr mountain. I skied Big Bunny, which is the bunny hill, I love skiing that run, it is always a fun cruise and it is the first real ski run I ever skied so there is a certain sentimental thing there as well. After a few runs on Ullr we headed over to Mystery mountain and skied Maple Glade and then headed back to Eagle Mountain and finished our day with Split Rock and the upper chutes of Chris’s Couloir , Cliff and George’s run. What a great day. Skiing fresh snow at Lutsen is really fun and pretty rare; I never get lucky so this was a great day.

After a great night sleep we got up and headed out for our last day at Lusten for the weekend. Sunday turned out to be a great day as well. The races were still going on over on Moose so we stuck to Eagle, Ullr and Mystery Mountains. The skiing was still pretty good, but the fresh snow firmed up a bit but the corduroy was still nice and soft, we started our day skiing upper and lower KooKoo and then moved on to Manitou to Chris’s Couloir which was even softer Sunday then it was Saturday. Thinking back the only run we didn’t ski on Eagle was Hari Kari… Hmmm I under how I missed that. Oh well, next time. We made our way around skiing all of our favorite runs, we had to cut the day short because we had some stuff to do at home so we left about 1:30pm, but even with the shorten day it was still great.

We had a great weekend up in Lutsen and are going to head back next weekend to give it a go once again.

Tonight I have my mini-medical school class. I am looking forward to that, it should be great. I really enjoyed last week and it sounds like this week is going to be very interesting.

Otherwise this will be another week at work looking for a way to retire in the mountains…