Copper Peak, where skiers fly

There’s ski jumping, and then there’s ski flying — a rarer, more extreme cousin where athletes launch off a giant hill and soar the length of a football field and a half through the air. There is exactly one place set up for it in the entire Western Hemisphere, and it’s just north of Ironwood: Copper Peak. When the Gogebic Range iron mines closed in the 1960s and gutted the local economy, the Gogebic Range Ski Club dreamed up something audacious to draw the world to “Big Snow Country,” and in 1969 engineer Lauren Larsen built it in barely a year — a cantilevered tower of 300 tons of weathering steel rising twenty-six stories from the crest of Chippewa Hill.

From the top, the view spans three states and Lake Superior, 1,180 feet below. Between its opening in 1970 and 1994, Copper Peak hosted ten international ski-flying competitions, with flights reaching past 500 feet — distances that simply aren’t possible on an ordinary ski jump, which is exactly why it stands in a class of its own. The flying stopped in 1994 when the aging hill couldn’t meet modern standards, and for thirty years it lived on as a tourist attraction.

But the giant is waking up. A major redevelopment is underway — backed by tens of millions in state funding — to rebuild Copper Peak to International Ski Federation specifications so it can host world-class winter and summer ski jumping again. In the meantime, the Adventure Ride still runs in season: a chairlift up the hill, an elevator up the tower, and a stair climb to the starting gate where the flyers once stood, for one of the most spectacular views in Michigan. Plan a visit at copperpeak.net.