Skyline Ski Area

by greg@gibbard.us · Published August 25, 2017 · Updated August 27, 2017

Last month, my wife, Judy, and I traveled to Michigan to visit my mother and my brother and his family. As part of that trip we spent three days in the Higgins Lake area of Michigan where our family is in the process of selling the cottage on Higgins Lake which has been in the family in one form or another for more than 90 years. On one of those days we spent a few hours visiting the Skyline Ski Area.

When I was fourteen years old, my parents gave me a pair of skis for Christmas and that was the start of our family’s passion for skiing. The first year it was just my father and I who learned to ski, but within a few years, as my younger brothers learned, we all became ski enthusiasts, except for my mother. I fondly remember skiing at Skyline those many years ago. It was the nearest ski area to Higgins and was the first place I ever skied at night. It was a significant step up from the places we skied in southern Michigan, such as Mount Holly and Pine Knob but not quite on a par with the more serious ski areas further north, such as Boyne Mountain, Boyne Highlands, and Thunder Mountain.

In July, as we drove up the hill to Skyline and arrived at the deserted base area (yes, the base area is on top), things seemed familiar but a bit strange. But most ski areas do seem a bit strange when seen out of season with no snow on the ground. When I parked and jumped out of the car with my camera, it was threatening rain. Figure 1 shows the main lodge as seen from the parking lot.

Figure 1

Across the way a guy on a large riding mower was cutting the lawn. He diverted over to my side, stopped the mower and got off. Hoping he wasn’t a caretaker who would run us off, I explained that I was an old Skyline skier who had come to contemplate times gone by. He wasn’t; in fact, he was the current owner of Skyline and seemed overjoyed to show us around and talk of old times. Figures 2 and 3 are of the interior of the main lodge. He explained that he had had some vandalism problems as was obvious from broken windows and graffiti.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Gary, today’s owner of Skyline Ski Area, is an engineer who owns a successful high-tech company down state. Like me, he skied at Skyline as a kid and his family owned a cottage on Higgins Lake. His cottage was in the American Legion Park at the north end of the lake, now apparently called Camp Curnalia.

From what I’ve heard and read, I believe that Skyline started as an informal area for skiing in the late ‘40’s and became an actual commercial operation in the early ’50’s. It reached its peak level of its development in the early ‘60’s with some 10 slopes, a chairlift, and 8 rope tows. The vertical was 210 ft. In the ‘90’s, the area fell upon financial hard times and changed hands. In the early 2000’s a golf course, Hawk Ridge, was added to broaden its financial base, but by the end of that decade, it failed anyway. Gary bought the property at auction for back taxes in 2012. He was later able to sell the cell tower located on “the mountain” (or the rights associated with it) for enough to cover the initial purchase price. Gary has finished the interior of the Ski Patrol hut, which you see in Figure 4 in front of the top of the old chairlift, making it a cozy onsite place to stay.

Figure 4

He and his family keep the slopes mowed, an example seen in Figure 5 includes a lower portion of the chairlift, and they ski them in the winter using a snowmobile to return to the “summit”. He does not seem to have any near-term intention to return the area to any kind of commercial operation.

Figure 5

Figures 6, 7 & 8 are frame grabs from 8 mm family movies of the early ‘60’s showing, respectively, me with my younger brother Mark, then my other brother Brent alone, and finally my best friend in those days, Bill, and his girlfriend, later wife, Barbara. All are riding that same chairlift that now stands idle, in Figures 4 and 5, more than a half century later.