My love affair with downhill skiing began at tiny Mount Hardscrabble near Rice Lake, Wis., in the mid-1960s. Those were the days of leather ski boots and bear-trap bindings. Our skis were long, heavy and unshapely.
Hardscrabble had some steep pitches, a fast three-stage rope tow and a base lodge built around a huge open-hearth fireplace. There, kids and adults would be scattered about in happy chaos, breathing in a heady mix of wood smoke, wet wool and grilled burgers. An oompah band wearing lederhosen would play polkas.
Those days may be gone, but much of the local ski-hill spirit still remains in places like Mount Ashwabay in Bayfield, Wis.
Perhaps you know the property by its summertime identity as the Lake Superior Big-Top Chautauqua, where music legends such as Johnny Cash, B.B. King and Gordon Lightfoot have performed over the years.
Come winter, the 300-foot hill overlooking the Apostle Islands reverts to its cold-weather persona and becomes a place for youngsters to learn how to ski or snowboard, a place for high school race teams to shave microseconds off their times, and a place for everyone else to have fun during the seemingly endless weeks of white along Lake Superior.
Cross-country skiers are accommodated, too, with more than 50 kilometers of Nordic trails snaking around the alpine area.
My two daughters and I grinned our way through a day at Ashwabay this past New Year's weekend while visiting relatives in Bayfield.
The weather was sunny and seasonably cold, but not too windy, and we were psyched to find a couple of inches of fluffy overnight powder lying atop previously groomed snow -- a surface that proved fast, grippy and quiet. We were virtually alone on the slopes until after lunchtime, when a few dozen skiers and boarders joined us on the gentle terrain.
