Hill Names: Duck Soup

Did you know that a pintail is a type of duck? Pintail Peak at Nub's Nob was named after a boat owned by Walter Fisher. When the land was acquired a lot of names were bandied about. Pintail Peak had a really nice ring to it. When naming the hills, the resort tried to stick to the wildlife theme: Goosebumps, Whitefish, etc. What did they decide upon for the long, flat hill leading back to the area? Duck Soup of course! No one seems to be sure where the saying "easy as duck soup" comes from, but for this hill, it fits!

Advice From the Purple Chair: Nights

Do you ever avoid heading to the ski hill on weekends or holidays because you think it will be too crowded? The answer is night skiing. At night hills are always quieter than during the day, and lift lines almost disappear. Another advantage is the slopes are freshly groomed. On weekends and holidays Nub's Nob shuts the lifts down at 4:30 and sends out the fleet of Pisten Bully snow cats. They groom all of the lit runs before the lifts reopen at 6:00, leaving a smooth, soft carpet of snow to ski on.

Back to Nature: Weather

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, when I work up this morning I knew it could be one of the best days of the year or one of the worst days of the year. It depended on one thing: the weather. I am a weather junkie. I "Wake Up With Al" each day and always have a tab on my computer open to Weather.com. I also love my Weather Channel app. Usually I know what to expect, but the forecast for today had me baffled. Last night's reports stated "fog/drizzle" for the morning and "partly cloudy/windy" for the afternoon. The high of 48 degrees would be first thing in the morning with temperatures falling throughout the day. The day could end up damp and dreary or bright and warm. On my way to breakfast in the morning I could see a faint glow in the east! At our morning meeting there were clouds to the west, but they were moving north! Temperatures did warm up overnight, but the snowpack "set up" and hardened just enough: soft enough in the morning to get an edge but not too soft to be bad by the end of the afternoon. All things came together to give us a perfect spring skiing day in the middle of January. It was the best of times! Thank you sunshine! Now, back to the snow!

Take the poll to the right of the blog: What do you like better: sunny days or powder days?

ChairTalk: Webcast!

After three years I finally made it onto a Nub's Nob Webcast! A student and I can be seen at about 1:15 into Season 4, Episode 5.

Back to Nature: Panda Land

This year Nub's Nob has a new hill: Panda Land! It is a green circle hill just off of Pleasantview after the orange chair. Panda Land is named after our Winter Sports School children's program, but you won't find pandas. Instead, there are five life-size statues of Michigan wildlife: a moose, a cougar, an eagle, a deer, and my favorite, a bear! The hill was the idea of our resident Papa Panda, Bob Mogford. It is a fun detour and now part of my teaching repertoire. It is a great way to practice turning and learn about nature.