SNOW FUN
Snow Tubing Offered at Half of Midwest Ski Areas

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Whether you call them the ultimate sledding hills or a winter cousin to water slides, be sure to call snow tubing hills at Midwest ski areas a thrill for all ages. "People are laughing and yelling all the way down the hill," says Chuck Heist, snow tubing manager at Indiana's Perfect North Slopes, where snow tubers reach speeds of up to 40mph sliding down one of 24 "lanes" on an oversized inner tube. "They get to the bottom and say, 'I can't believe it, that was so much fun!'"

More than half of Midwest ski areas now offer lift-served snow tubing hills where people can slide on special inner tubes. New snow tubing hills continue to open, while existing snow tubing operations expand their capacity by adding more lifts, terrain and tubes. "Our tubing hill has continued to grow in popularity every year," says Heist from Perfect North Slopes. "We started in 2003 and now we're up to 100,000 snow tubing visitors each winter."

At Minnesota's Elm Creek Winter Recreation Area, Wayne Iseri says he "immediately sees the joy on people's faces. You hear them yelling and having fun all the way down the hill. We knew it would be popular, but it's been even more popular than we thought. There has been such a huge demand for it."

The snow tubing hill at Elm Creek is about 900 feet long with 80 feet of vertical drop and features
20 "lanes" or chutes that are separated by snow berms. To ride back up, snow tubers simply stand on one of two surface conveyor lifts, which are similar to a moving sidewalk. Snow tubers can purchase two-hour passes for $12. "Families with young children have been our main business," says Iseri. "But now we're also bringing in a lot of groups from churches, Scouts, schools and businesses." In part because of the success of the snow tubing hill, a spacious new timber-and-fieldstone lodge was built at Elm Creek in 2007 with a cathedral-style ceiling and large glass windows overlooking the area.

Sunburst Ski and Recreation Area in Wisconsin was one of the pioneers in snow tubing, opening its tubing hill in the late 1990s. "People are sliding at up to 40 mph, and they love the speed and the sheer joy of sliding on snow," says Meg Sedgwick, who helps run the tubing hill at Sunburst, which is about 900 feet long with 100 feet of vertical, a dozen lanes and a surface conveyor lift. "And even though they get a thrill, they know it's not a difficult activity."

Sunburst has also turned its snow tubing hill into a laboratory for local high school students to study the laws of physics. "Science students have done projects on the physics of roller coasters for years," says Sunburst general manager Steve Voss. "So we worked with a retired physics teacher to develop a winter program, using our snow tubing hill." More than 2,500 students from about 20 Wisconsin and Illinois high schools take half-day field trips to Sunburst, where they learn first-hand about force and coefficient of friction, kinetic energy, instantaneous speed and other laws of physics. "The kids love it," says Voss. "They're having fun and learning something too."

At Perfect North Slopes, the snow tubing hill has 20 regular lanes, which are 13 feet wide, and four "super lanes," which are 20 feet wide. These wider lanes allow more people to slide down the lane at the same time, "linking" together by holding on to each other's tubes. "People really like being able to have their whole group slide down together," says Chuck Heist. "They can do seven or eight people together in a regular lane, but our record in a super lane is 50 people. They love it."

Another Indiana ski area, Paoli Peaks, opened its "Arctic Blast" snow tubing hill in 2007 and met a lot of pent-up demand. "We had been wanting to add snow tubing for several years," says Brandi Ream. "We were getting at least five phone calls a day all winter. There was definitely a demand for it." Although Paoli Peaks is in Indiana, many of its customers come from Louisville, Kentucky, which is less than an hour away and some even make the three-hour-plus drive from Nashville, Tennessee.

At Ski Snowstar Winter Sports Park in Illinois, which even changed its name to reflect the growing popularity of snow tubing, it's a sport for the entire family. "We thought our snow tubing hill would be a magnet for kids," says Todd Kempf. "But what has surprised us is the number of teens, parents and event grandparents. The grandparents are having as much fun as the grandkids."

In Minnesota, Buck Hill general manager Don McClure sees his 10-lane snow tubing hill as a way to "reach out to more of the population and introduce them to the excitement of winter sports." McClure says snow tubing is "open to 90 percent of the population from age 5 to age 90. You don't need any skills or special equipment. It's another way to enjoy winter, and it's fast enough to get a thrill, but not scary or generally dangerous. Our snow tubing has been wildly popular."

Many ski areas also see their snow tubing hills as a way to entice visitors into trying skiing or snowboarding. "We're getting them on the hill and they're enjoying the ambience of being at a ski area," says Sunburst's Sedgwick. Or as Kempf of Ski Snowstar puts it, "After tubing, they're sitting in our lodge having a hot chocolate and they see all the fun that people are having skiing or snowboarding, and then they want to try it." Echoes Iseri at Elm Creek: "We are seeing crossover. We know that kids are on the tubing hill and they look over and see our ski area and other kids having fun in the terrain park, and we know they're going to try it and become future snowboarders and skiers."

For a list of Midwest ski areas with snow tubing, click here.

For more information on Midwest ski areas and to find a ski area near you, visit snowplaces.com.