MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Fall 2017

FALL 2017 ML BLUE 63 words :: Nelson Phillips "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" says a strangely cheery mustached gent from behind the bar. Stranger still is the fact that only one word was uttered to the man: “Hello.” By the time this happened on day four of our trip to Mount Bohemia on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we were pretty used to the Yooper dialect: in-your-face and unconventionally friendly. And for four Canucks looking for endless powder turns within driving distance of Georgian Bay, it was surprisingly easy to fit in. A few days prior to leaving, the proposed U.S. travel ban started clogging borders and airports around the planet. I had zero intention of going anymore, but the boys were good sports about booking time off work and dedicating themselves to a 26-hour round-trip on the road. I had to ask myself why I didn’t want to go. I admit it boiled down to fear—of the ugliness of the situation, and of a country in the midst of a polarizing identity crisis. In general, Canadians are easily weirded out by the current state south of the border—but equipped with seven new powder boards courtesy of local Burton rep Adam Carmichael and Burton Canada, Dylan and Mark Howatt, Dave Eby and I hit the road. The U.S. border guards haul us into a customs garage to inspect the vehicle. “In this room you’re to keep your hands out of your pockets... you’re from Owen Sound? Is that Toronto or Sudbury? I always get my suburbs confused.” We’re instructed to sit in a room until they can make sense of the story we’ve fed them. Maybe it was the snowboards in the back of the truck, or maybe someone thought to Google Mount Bohemia—but they let us go and suddenly we’re not in Canada anymore. Located at the northern terminus of the Keweenaw Peninsula’s Copper Island in Lake Superior, Mount Bohemia is surrounded by derelict mining towns and copious amounts of lake effect snow—an annual average of 250 inches, or 640 centimetres in Canadian. Bohemia is a pleasure-dome of powder and bizarrely brilliant business sense, like the ABBA Bus, for example: a resort shuttle decorated in disco posters, Swedish flags, and playing “Dancing Queen” cranked up to 11. Or the lack of the widespread grooming and glading found at most eastern resorts. After a few days of riding, you start to get it. There’s serious method to the madness of ignoring the typical snow resort formula. All alone on the tip of the UP, Bohemia thrives. BOHO RHAPSODY NORTHERN MICHIGAN’S MOUNT BOHEMIA DELIVERS CHAMPAGNE POWDER ON A BEER BUDGET LEFT Dave Eby making snowboarding in midwestern America great again. ABOVE: L-R Dave Eby, Dylan Howatt and Mark Howatt rip through the glades of Bohemia's lower Haunted Valley. NELSON PHILLIPS