Lutsen Mountains — Attraction in Lutsen Township

This review is strictly for winter skiing.

As a kid growing up in MN I had always heard of and considered Lutsen to be a high end ski resort. After visiting for the first time with my wife and 4 kids this year I was honestly a little disappointed. It has some features of a high end ski resort. Ski in Ski out lodging, with pools and hot tubs. Local restaurants. Gondola. RFID lift tickets. But honestly the skiing experience was just OK.

Ski in ski out: We stayed in a caribou highland townhome. It was great. Nothing bad to say about it. And really appreciate the ski out access to moose mountain.

The gondola. Cool idea, but not very practical. A good gondola can make a cold day on the mountain still be fun. This isn't one of them. It provides access to moose mountain. This is the only resort I can think of where you can't ski from the top of the gondola back to the base of it for your next ride. Moose return will take you back to Bridge chair which you can then ride up and ski back to the gondola. Moose return was closed (broken bridge?) meaning from the top of the gondola your only two options are to ride the gondola back down or continue on to moose mountain. a couple locals said moose return (when open) is pretty flat and you spend a fair amount of time skating your way back.

Moose mountain: Lutsen's saving grace. If you actually want to get some substantial laps in this is the place. Accessed via the gondola or moose access. The 6 person high speed lift on moose mountain was great! The runs on moose mountain were pretty good, however they were all pretty similar. lots of room to spread out a crowd. Side country and glades we're fun and varied in difficulty for the kids. Skiing the groomed runs was fine. I'ld be curious to see how well moose mountain would ski with a bit of snow. There are a number of flats that seem like they would be hard to get through with any amount of snow slowing you down. Speaking of flats, be prepared to bomb the last bit of the run so you have enough speed to make it back to the lift without skating. Our second day the gondola wasn't running due to high winds (can't and won't blame lutsen for the weather) so we actually rode a sleigh towed behind a snowcat back to the main area. While the kids thought it was neat, it was pretty inefficient (20-30min). For the gas they spend running the snow cat they should just fix the bridge on moose return so people actually have the option to ski back... It is after all a ski resort right?

Mystery mountain was closed while we were there. No idea why and I didn't ask.

Ullr mountain was ok. Nice easy runs for the beginners. Lots of flat sections. Be prepared to skate back to the lift. The lift is slow and annoying. We skied with our kids 4, 7, 9, 11. Older kids had no problems. 7 yr old was hit or miss loading and the 4 yr old needs help on any lift. The problem is there is a giant bar in-between the two seats so you can't help load your kids. You MUST rely on the lifty to help load your kids if they need help. Not a problem for our four year old as they could obviously see she would need help and we were always with her to ask the lifty for help. They would hit the button to slow down the lift pick her up and put her on. With our 7yr old (on the short side) it was hit or miss. Sometimes they would help and sometimes not. This lift is slow. I get it, it probably should be slow for the easy mountain, but compound it with the fact that every time a little needs help loading they slow it down again. Be prepared to spend a lot of time on the lift.

Eagle Mountain: Decent skiing with variety of runs in different skill levels. Brought down by the lift which is the same as Ullr mountain slow and difficult to load. This really could use an updated lift.

All in all, given the higher cost and 4+hr drive from Minneapolis, I'm not sure we'll ski here again. Maybe we'll try again in a couple years when the kids are older. Spirit mountain is cheaper, can be a long day trip for us, and the terrain is...

Overall, we had a good time skiing here...I will go over the reasons for deducting two stars at the end of the review.

First off, we've enjoyed visiting in the summer and fall. The views from the Summit Chalet are outstanding, and there's no better place for fall colors on the north shore.

As far as the skiing, we visited in a low snow year which presents some challenges (as it would anywhere else in the country). Overall, the mountain rose to the occasion with these challenges the best they could. There is a good variety of runs, and the snowmaking and grooming team had done a great job given the challenges. They had a good number of runs open with good coverage, while blowing snow on more runs to get them open as soon as possible. As a result, the groomers were fast and fun. Hats off the the snowmaking crew for their hard work.

Another plus is that all of the employees we interacted with were very friendly; from the retail shop to lift ops and ski patrol.

Now for the star deductions: I deducted one star for the 8% "service and green surcharge" at the restaurants. Just don't do this and don't try to justify it. It pisses customers off; just be transparent with your pricing rather that posting a lower price and adding garbage fees to it

The second star deduction was due to the poor handling of a wind chill hold, resulting in a delayed opening. This was completely understandable as the wind chill was very cold; however there was zero communication with guests. Nothing posted on social media (despite posting about these delays a couple of days earlier), no signage in front of the gondola (not even an a-frame), no message boards, nothing. The gondola also wasn't ready to go at 10:30 when the opening was announced...it took several tries for the lift operations staff to get it going. Given the delayed opening, they had plenty of time to have it ready to go. Your guests paid for full day lift tickets; the least you can do is make sure everything is up and running as soon as it is safe to do so.

Overall we had a good time and parts of the operation were very well run, but others need improvement especially given the prices...

It's a beautiful site so good on whoever selected to open a ski resort here but that seems to be the end of the good customer friendly decisions that upper management seems to have made.

Came here to ski last weekend and while it was cold, it seems that this company certainly has to have encountered such temperatures before, so should know what to do in the event that they can't keep the resort open that day. But lo and behold, after already delaying to a noon open, they then decided to shut it all down at 12:30, leaving NO CLEAR direction as to what customers who were left high and dry were supposed to do. Ever heard of a crisis decision tree? Seems doubtful based off the fact they had countless paying customers stand OUTSIDE for over an hour to inquire about next steps - it wasn't even clear if rain checks would be offered to anyone standing in line, because not once did any resort staff say that there would be. This is no knock on the employees - I understand there is only so much one person can do. But moreso seems to be a failure at the top not being able to clearly communicate orders from top to bottom, endangering customers in the process. Not to mention they took my $6 for a locker rental that I used for all of 5 minutes before they announced the place closing and there was no mechanism to get a refund - thanks! I'll inherently be back at some point because well, I have a rain check because the company is unwilling to offer refunds, but I would definitely advise any prospective customers to maybe consider other ski locations where management actually seems to care about the customer experience. Shame a company that thinks calling a customer 7 hours after a closure to offer a rain check instead of, oh I don't know putting out ANY SORT OF PUBLIC COMMUNICATION in the meantime runs such a beautiful...