Believe it or not, I found a great ski shop in Indianapolis. After a couple of visits, the guys in the shop talked me into taking a day trip (during the week) to Perfect North Slopes in Lawrenceburg, Indiana in the South East corner of the state.
Things were as advertised: Not too crowded on a Tuesday and excellent use of the land and the 400' vertical they had available.
The resort is laid out along a ridge line. There are a few trails that snake around the ridge but most of them take a pretty direct angle down to the bottom.
The trails are short but you could make a run out of some of them by winding your way around the lower parts. Once the slopes got into any pitch at all you dropped pretty quickly and were done with it but there was an interesting variety of ways to ski back to most of the lifts with whales, trees and other things to ski through over and around.
They make snow on every square inch of this place as shown below. Fan guns are pole-mounted in the woods and there were marked glade runs but I saw people skiing wherever they pleased within the resort boundaries. Most of the trails had interesting little paths, and ledges that you could use to stretch your time on the run.
On this particular day they were laying down high moisture stuff to build base so I found myself in a lot of ungroomed man-made. A little sticky but not too bad. It made me a little hesitant now again as I transitioned from cordorouy to man-made powder and back. It was not bad after you got used to it.
I talked to a number of people on the lifts and got the low down on the operation: around 250 instructors available to them, 150 patrollers, family owned. Started with a guy who installed a tow-rope on a hill and suddenly had 4200 paying people show up 30 years ago. Things went from there. Investment looks slow and steady over the years. 3 main triples and a quad with a newly installed loading carpet. Also what looked like a couple of conveyors in the learning areas. They rotate out 1 groomer in the fleet every year, etc.
Based on the size of the dining area in the main lodge (think Pryor's Porch at Wintergreen and then multiply by about 15) and the ginormous parking lot I would say it is a place to be avoided on weekends.
But for my day, it beat a stick in the eye. Or working for that matter.
Some pics:
Man made blown into the trees:
Short run but a great place to practice skills:
Looks like fun no?
What a blue pitch looks like in Indiana. You can see the lodge at the bottom, the water source and about 1/2 of the available parking.
Here is a run that winds around from the top a bit. People made good use of the terrain skiing in and out of the woods on either side. Ski Patrol did not seem to mind.
