I was in the mood to go skiing again this week (imagine that). I had thought about it all week long, and decided to actually do it on Thursday. The resorts “down south” (like Hidden Valley) have already closed. The resorts like the one I went to last week, Alpine Valley, were pretty well done.. I needed to go farther north. One of the reviews for Alpine Valley had mentioned that they thought that Alpine Valley was oriented more to beginners, and recommended Granite Peak, Cascade Mountain, or Devil’s Head for more interesting skiing. So, I did some research on the three of them as well as others in the area, and ended up deciding on Cascade Mountain. Granite Peak was an extra 100 miles north, which made it rough. Even the other two were an extra 40 minutes past Alpine Valley. So, Granite Peak was out because of the distance. Cascade and Devil’s Head are within a few miles of each other. From what I had read, Cascade was a little better for the more advanced skier. So, Cascade it was.
Once the locale had been determined, I had to worry about weather. Champaign was on the leading edge of a large amount of rain. Supposedly 3-5 inches over the course of a few days. And warm weather. Supposedly in the 50-60s on Thursday. Not good skiing conditions. A quick check of the weather in Portage, Wisconsin showed that they were expecting highs in the low-mid 40s on Thursday. About a quarter of an inch of rain Wednesday night, and a 30% chance of showers Thursday morning until the 10 o’clock hour. The resort opened at 10:00am. I didn’t want the rain to be delayed. Skiing in the rain doesn’t seem like it would be a fun thing.
So, I did the normal preparation thing the night before. I set the alarm for 5am, and ended up getting out of bed at 5:09am. I had to seriously consider whether or not I wanted to go. It would have been a lot easier to lay in bed. But, I ended up crawling out of bed and was thus committed. A check of weather.com showed that they were still expecting the showers to end at 10:00am.
So, I was off! I left the house at about 5:40. I hit fog around Utica, and was in fog until I got to Cascade mountain. The view from the interstate looked pretty good. It looked like there were some good runs, but there was a lot of fog, so it was hard to tell. A nice view from an airplane is available on their website. Radio reports were saying that the fog should burn off by noon.
I got my ticket, which ended up being $42.20. The normal ticket was good from “open” until 4:30pm. I could have gotten a ticket for the entire day for two dollars more, but I figured that if I only went to 4:30 that would make sure that I left Wisconsin at a reasonable time. Since I didn’t get there until about 9:50am, I quickly changed into my ski clothes and hit the slopes. I didn’t want to waste any time, since I knew I only had until 4:30.
It was foggy! Did I mention that? As I headed up the Mountain Top Express lift (high speed detached quad) I could bairly see 2 chairs in front of me. BeforeI made it to the top of the hill the outside of my ski goggles had fogged up to the point that they really weren’t usable. So, the goggles were removed from the eyes. The sun certainly wasn’t causing me to need to use them, though. At the top of the hill, I could probably see 100 feet in any given direction. So, it made things interesting. I was on a hill that I had never been on, and didn’t have a clue as to where I was going. So, I pointed my skis downhill and slid. Cascade is quite a bit different than the other midwest resorts that I’ve been to. At Cascade I get the feeling that there was a forest there and they have carved out runs. The other midwest resorts feel much more manufactured. Almost as though they have a blank hill, put in the runs, and then a few trees in between the runs. Cascade has a lot more tree action. This makes it feel much bigger. I was confident that i could make it down any run there without killing myself, so that helped a lot in the fog. If I hadn’t been a new skier, that would have scared me to death.
I found myself on the Mogul Monster run. At the top of it, I noticed that it was moguls, but figured that I could: a) make my way through it, or b) go beside the moguls. Resorts typically have a non mogul area on the run next to the moguls. Well.. not Cascade. I headed into the moguls and promptly fell. This is probably the first time I’ve fallen in the actual act of skiing in a few years. But, it was moguls. So, I found myself trying to figure out a way out of that run. I spied a made-up path through the trees over to another run, and worked my way down to it and over to the last part of the North Wall run. From there I made it to the bottom of the lift and back up. Next, I decided go way out to the east end and took the Far Out trail. Far Out is a green trail, but there were a lot of black runs that led off from it. I knew then that the place had possibilities. From Far Out, I took the Cindy Pop lift back to the top (a slow lift) and started working my way through the black runs. My impressions: The Bridge Ridge run was a somewhat narrow trail through the trees that goes across a man-made bridge. From the Far Out run below the Bridge you can see a huge frozen stream that goes under the bridge. Next over is the Narrow Margin trail. Narrow Margin is pretty narrow. Both Bridge Ridge and Narrow Margin have signs at the top saying that they are narrow and for experts only. Narrow Margin has a pretty narrow chute at the bottom with a steep section right after the narrow chute. So, you can’t slow down a lot. You just have to hit it and go. This isn’t a problem, though. The steep section is short, so as long as you don’t panic, it isn’t a problem. Radical Rob is next over. It is unique because it has a nice conifer right in the middle of the trail at the top. P.W. and Screamin’ Steven follow those. Each run gets slightly steeper as it gets shorter. A couple of the runs bank to the left and have a few small bumps in them as well. 
The Cindy Pop run is right under the Cindy Pop lift, and has the steepest section of hill at the resort. It is steep enough that I was able to really work on paralleling to slow down. If the lift was just faster it would be a most excellent run.
The Anniversary run is somewhat unique because the bottom of it feeds to both Cindy Pop lift and Mountain Top Express. So, if you ski east of it you have to go to Cindy Pop, and if you ski west you go to Mountain Top, but it can feed to both. Next to Anniversary is 
North Wall, which has an excellent view of the resort buildings at the bottom and the Interstate. Each of these runs is flatter at the top with a steep section at the end. Very satisfying for midwest skiing. Mogul Monster is next, but I’ve already talked about it. A terrain park is next to that, with an actual half pipe, almost unheard of for the midwest. Apparently earlier in the year they have another half pipe at the top of the North Wall run, but that had been removed yesterday. Probably because of the snow melt. Skiers could gracefully go along the east edge of the terrain park, though, and that made a nice run. About halfway down you could veer right for Racer’s Edge, or just go straight down. Anyway, that completes all of the black runs.
Farther west, the Ptarmigan, J.J. and Badger Bowl provided some blue runs. I would have been tempted to call Ptarmigan a black on their scale, though. I guess it wasn’t quite as steep, but still was more challenging than the other blues. Badger Bowl dropped into a surprisingly deep bowl (compared to what I was expecting) which was a nice surprise. The first time I went down it I just pointed my skis downhill and went, and found myself picking up more speed at the bottom than I had expected. Lighting conditions were horrible yesterday. With no sun at all it was very difficult to see conditions on the ground. Everything just blended together. The fog started burning off on the lower part of the mountain about 1pm, but didn’t burn off on the upper part until probably 3-3:30pm.
I had my second fall of the day on the next to the last run of the day. There was an upper terrain park that had smaller features than the one on down closer to the bottom of the hill, and it had a little jump on it. I’d guess that the build up to the edge was probably 2 feet or so. The first time I got up enough nerve to go over it, I was going very slowly, and when I got to the crest of the jump, my skis just fell over the edge and I slid down the other side. Each time I went down the hill, I tried to hit this jump. Each time I tried to go slightly faster. Towards the end of the day, I was getting some pretty good speed up. I’d guess that I was hitting the jump and probably landing 5 feet or so down the hill. There’s definite technique required for jumping. One unfortunate time I learned that you really need to lean forward. I found myself too far back and my skis were in front of me. I managed to maintain some semblance of order, though, and got up rather quickly. I was covered in snow, but otherwise unscathed. The next time I went down I leaned forward more, and the run worked out perfectly.
At 4:30 I quit. I hadn’t stopped all day long. I had packed a couple of granola bars in my coat, and literally didn’t stop at all for the entire day. No breaks. I wanted to maximize the time that I had available. I then took a couple of pictures with my real camera and checked out the pro-shop. They had clothing 50% off, but I didn’t see anything I liked.
The trip home was relatively uneventful. About 20 miles south of Cascade I hit rain, and it rained on me all the way back to Champaign. I stopped for gas in Madison, Wisconsin and drove straight through other than that.
So, that’s the descriptions.. Now.. my thoughts..
Crowds were nonexistent. I said that last week, but last week was busy compared to this place. There were probably 10 people there. I spent probably 45 minutes on the Cindy Pop lift one time and didn’t see a single other person. Not one. The main lift was busier. It generally always had at least one person on the lift somewhere, but it was still really really dead.
Each loop (lift and the run down) took about 5 minutes. Both lifts, actually. The Cindy Pop lift was slower, but didn’t go as high on the hill, so you could still do the run in about 5 minutes. I did a test at one point and did all of the runs mentioned above. 14 runs. It took me one hour and 10 minutes.
This resort was definitely more satisfying than Alpine Valley. Alpine Valley isn’t a bad resort. After last week’s visit I was relatively happy with it. However, this resort felt much larger and had a lot more variety for the more advanced skier. I wouldn’t hesistate to choose this as a destination over Alpine, even though it is 30 – 40 minutes farther away. It is also more expensive than Alpine Valley. Paying $42 for a lift ticket puts it at the high end of what I would want to pay for midwest resort, but you seem to get what you pay for. Seeing as how they only had 10 or 20 people there, it would have been nice to see an end-of-the-season discount price. But, that wasn’t meant to be. It would be great to go back sometime in January, though. It might be neat to take a mini vacation and spend a day at Cascade, a day at Devil’s Head, and a couple of days at Granite Peak.
