The Pine Mountain ski jump, where Americans learned to fly

Every February, Iron Mountain hosts something you can’t see anywhere else in Michigan: world-class ski jumping. The Pine Mountain Ski Jump was first built in 1937, and the volunteer Kiwanis Ski Club has been putting on tournaments here since 1939 — today an FIS Continental Cup event, the elite international circuit one rung below the World Cup, that organizers call the biggest ski jumping tournament in the United States. Jumpers from across Europe and North America come to a hill that many of them rate among the most challenging anywhere, partly because the top of the scaffold stands nearly six hundred feet above the surrounding countryside, with all of Iron Mountain spread out below.

The records back up the reputation. The longest ski jump ever made in the United States on a regular jumping hill — 144 meters, about 472 feet — was flown here in 2018, and the American World Cup distance record belongs to Pine Mountain too. The old wooden scaffold has been rebuilt in gleaming galvanized steel, 176 feet tall, built by the same volunteer club that has run the hill for generations. On tournament weekends, thousands of fans pack the outrun with cowbells and bonfires — admission is still sold the old way, with a button pinned to your coat.

And you don’t have to wait for winter: in summer you can drive Kramer Drive right to the top of the jump platform, where the U.P. Veterans Memorial sits at the base and the view goes on forever. Follow the Kiwanis Ski Club for tournament dates.