Wisconsin or Michigan?

[Gdog42]

Originally Posted by sabatoa

Boyne is fun. I don't know how the lodging is there but you should have a good time.

Hey! You're from MI, right? I recognize some of the places in your signature. Pine Knob was where I learned to snowboard back in 2007-2008, when I lived in MI after moving to the US from the UK.I didn't like their patch program...literally took me 5 attempts on the 2nd lesson to get my freakin brown patch!
I've also been to Mount Holly.
The best place I've been to in MI is Bittersweet. It's a completely natural hill, bigger than Knob and Holly, and gets a crap load of lake effect snow from Lake Michigan. That place is awesome, bar far my favorite local place to snowboard at the weekends! You should go there some time!

[sabatoa]

Originally Posted by Gdog42

Hey! You're from MI, right? I recognize some of the places in your signature. Pine Knob was where I learned to snowboard back in 2007-2008, when I lived in MI after moving to the US from the UK.I didn't like their patch program...literally took me 5 attempts on the 2nd lesson to get my freakin brown patch!
I've also been to Mount Holly.
The best place I've been to in MI is Bittersweet. It's a completely natural hill, bigger than Knob and Holly, and gets a crap load of lake effect snow from Lake Michigan. That place is awesome, bar far my favorite local place to snowboard at the weekends! You should go there some time!

The west side of the state, around Bittersweet gets a ton of lake effect, lucky bastards. You'll be happy to know that Boyne benefits from the lake effect snow too.

Usually I head up north for the weekends and the small places like PK or Holly on weekdays but I'll have to check out Bittersweet, it's about 90 mins from me.

[david_z]

Originally Posted by sabatoa

Boyne is fun. I don't know how the lodging is there but you should have a good time.

Another Michigan local here, go Boyne. There are two mountains about 40 minutes apart and I believe the lift passes are usable at both mountains so if you get bored of one you can go to the other.

As others have said, the Midwest is not exactly a "powder" destination but Boyne does tend to get some good lake-effect snow when systems roll in from the west over Lake Michigan. They might get 150" of snow in an average season which is half of what you'd expect in Colorado's front range, but the season is also a month or two shorter, so it's not all bad.

Both mountains about 500 vertical feet which is large by midwest standards but small by everyone else's standards except for indoor fridges and dryslope

Good variety of terrain and parks, although not much in the way of "extreme" terrain.

[hot-ice]

Bittersweet is normally where I go the most, but I would like to try timber ridge and swiss valley sometime. Does anyone have a report on them? Only thing I don't like about bittersweet is their park is a bit narrow in places and the place is PACKED on most weekends, so much so that you have to wait at least fifteen minutes on some lifts.

[hot-ice]

Originally Posted by sabatoa

The west side of the state, around Bittersweet gets a ton of lake effect, lucky bastards. You'll be happy to know that Boyne benefits from the lake effect snow too.

Usually I head up north for the weekends and the small places like PK or Holly on weekdays but I'll have to check out Bittersweet, it's about 90 mins from me.

I'm surprised you've never been there. I guess you guys have some good places there by Detroit though to.

[david_z]

Originally Posted by hot-ice

I'm surprised you've never been there. I guess you guys have some good places there by Detroit though to.

Not really. It's just that the places over on the west side are 2.5-3hrs drive from metro-Detroit, and it's not worth it to drive 3 hours to Bittersweet if I can drive 4 hours to Boyne or Crystal or Caberfae

Cannonsburg, for their park, is worth the 2+ hr drive.

I would like to check out the other places someday, it's just really hard to justify driving that far when there are 3 "mountains" about the same size, within 30 mins of my house!

[sabatoa]

Originally Posted by hot-ice

I'm surprised you've never been there. I guess you guys have some good places there by Detroit though to.

That's the thing, there's just a lot of options that all require some measure of driving so I usually just forsake the small stuff downstate and drive the extra 45 minutes to the northern hills since I gotta drive anyway.

If you're into park, check out Cannonsburg. They're really focusing on park and from what I read, it's one of the best terrain parks in the mid-west and I know for a fact it's only going to be better this season.

[sabatoa]

Originally Posted by david_z

Cannonsburg, for their park, is worth the 2+ hr drive.

Get out of my head

[Gdog42]

Originally Posted by sabatoa

The west side of the state, around Bittersweet gets a ton of lake effect, lucky bastards. You'll be happy to know that Boyne benefits from the lake effect snow too.

Usually I head up north for the weekends and the small places like PK or Holly on weekdays but I'll have to check out Bittersweet, it's about 90 mins from me.

It usually takes me about an hour and 40 minutes to get to Bittersweet -about 10 minutes longer than you. If you get up early on a Saturday and just stay there all day, it's well worth it!
Those guys at Bittersweet are so awesome, the first time I went there ALL of the snow blowers were on while all the slopes were open! The snow piled up, I got soaked, it was easily the closest thing I've ever had to a mid-west pow day! Really fun.

[Gdog42]

Originally Posted by hot-ice

Bittersweet is normally where I go the most, but I would like to try timber ridge and swiss valley sometime. Does anyone have a report on them? Only thing I don't like about bittersweet is their park is a bit narrow in places and the place is PACKED on most weekends, so much so that you have to wait at least fifteen minutes on some lifts.(

I've been to all 3 several times. Here is my fully-detailed review of Swiss Valley:
DO NOT go to Swiss Valley! That place is literally the smallest ski and snowboard place in existence. It's just a lame little valley with 3 lifts. It's ran by a bunch of skiers who think they know EVERYTHING about snowboarding, but they don't really know much at all. They over-groom all of their slopes to the point where it feels like you're riding on ice.(And I know what that's like- cold day, ice from the summit of Winter Park, CO, bombing it all the way down at balls-out speed onto rock-hard frozen moguls on the Mary Jane run. Yeah, that was really fun I guess...)
Swiss Valley has 2 terrain parks: a small main park with one 3- 5 ft kicker. Everything else are literally just boxes but they're so cramped together in that small space that it's kind of difficult to transition from one feature to the next. The other park is an even smaller beginner park, but it has narrow but short rails everywhere that are actually more difficult to hit than some of the boxes in the other park. Both parks are parallel and lead down to...brace yourself... THE WORLD'S SLOWEST CHAIRLIFT! so you can forget fast park laps if that's your thing.
One of the biggest complaints of me and several other people I know is that in the cafeteria they overcharge way too much for everything because they know that there's no where else to go for food, unless you bring your own like I did!
Want new gear? Their store is ran by skiers who think they have the best snowboard gear... Flow bindings are an example, which are known to break easily. One of those guys tried to sell me (6'4") a 140cm bargain brand board before last season, and claimed he knew everything about camber, length-to-height ratio, etc. He was talking absolute gibberish. He didn't know that I'm pretty much a snowboard gear nut due to an obsession with gear that I'll admit I've developed . When I started correcting him on everything he was saying, he went off and just started talking about the Whistler backcountry or something like that which had nothing to do with the board he was trying to sell me!
My point is that they have no idea what their doing or talking about there. For the same lift ticket price go to Bitter Sweet instead. Those guys are awesome!
See their website and check out their trials map to get an idea of how jokingly small the place is
*This review was not intended to offend anyone who may work at Swiss Valley. It is simply a review expressing my opinion toward the place. So don't try to come after me!
I'll give you a much shorter review of Timber Ridge next (which is much better) Sorry this was so long, I'm just sick of hearing people around my area say how good and "big" Swiss Valley is. They have no idea.