This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Feb. 8. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 15. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below: Who Nathan Birr, Chief Operating Officer of Buck Hill, Minnesota Recorded on January 26, 2024 About Buck Hill Owned by: David and Corrine (Chip) Solner Located in: Burnsville, Minnesota Year founded: 1954 Pass affiliations: * Indy Base Pass – 2 days with 16 holiday blackouts * Indy+ Pass – 2 days with no blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Hyland Hills (:21), Como Park (:33), Afton Alps (:41), Elm Creek (:43), Welch Village (:46) Base elevation: 919 feet Summit elevation: 1,225 feet Vertical drop: 306 feet Skiable Acres: 45 Average annual snowfall: 60 inches Trail count: 14 (2 most difficult, 6 intermediate, 6 beginner), 4 terrain parks Lift count: 9 (2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 4 ropetows, 2 conveyors - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Buck Hill’s lift fleet) View historic Buck Hill trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him Buck Hill rises like a ludicrous contraption, impossible there in the Twin Cities flatlands, like the ski resort knotted into Thneedville’s inflatable glades and shirt-sleeve clime (1:25): How did it get there? What does it do? Did someone build it? At first, I thought someone must have, like Mount Brighton, Michigan. But no. The glaciers made it, a gift to the far future as these ice walls retreated and crumbled. It is the highest point for 200 miles in any direction. Before skiing, Native Americans used the hill as a vantage to stalk deer drinking from Crystal Lake. Thus the name. It has probably been “Buck Hill” for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. Now the lake is covered in ice-fishing shanties all winter, and the hill is hemmed in by an interstate on one side and housing developments on all the rest. And the hill, 45 acres of fall line that erupts from seemingly nowhere for seemingly no reason, is covered with skiers. Good skiers. I am enormously fond of the Midwest’s blue-collar ski scene, its skiers on rental gear in hunter-orange jackets, rat-packing with their buddies as a hootalong thing to do on a Wednesday night. This does not exist everywhere anymore, but in the Midwest skiing is still cheap and so it still does. And these rough fellows dot the slopes of Buck. But they don’t define the place like they do at Spirit or Nub’s Nob or Snowriver. Because what defines Buck Hill is the shin-guard-wearing, speed-suit wrapped, neon-accented-even-though-neon-has-been-over-for-30-years squadrons of velocity-monsters whipping through plastic poles drilled into the snow. It can be hard to square smallness with might. But England once ruled half the world from a nation roughly the size of Louisiana. Some intangible thing. And tiny Buck Hill, through intention, persistence, and a lack of really anything else to do, has established itself, over the decades, as one of the greatest ski-race-training centers on the planet, sending more than 50 athletes to the U.S. Ski Team. Credit founders Chuck and Nancy Stone for the vision; credit confused-upon-arrival Austrian Erich Sailer (“Where’s the hill?” he supposedly asked), for building the race program; credit whatever stalled that glacier on that one spot long enough to leave us a playground that stuck around for 10,000 years until we invented chairlifts. Buck is a spectacular amalgam of luck and circumstance, an improbable place made essential. What we talked about Buck Hill’s brand-new quad; party up top; the tallest point in 200 miles; Chuck and Nancy Stone, who started a ski area on a farmer’s pasture; a glacier’s present to skiers; the hazards of interstate-adjacent snowmaking; why the resort’s founders and long-term owners finally sold the bump in 2015; Erich Sailer and Buck’s incredible ski racing legacy; Lindsay Vonn; a