Copper Peak, where skiers fly

There’s ski jumping, and then there’s ski flying. It’s a rarer, more extreme cousin. Athletes launch off a giant hill and soar the length of a football field and a half through the air. Exactly one place in the entire Western Hemisphere is set up for it, and it’s just north of Ironwood: Copper Peak. The Gogebic Range iron mines closed in the 1960s and gutted the local economy. So the Gogebic Range Ski Club dreamed up something audacious to draw the world to “Big Snow Country.” 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. Flights reached past 500 feet — distances that simply aren’t possible on an ordinary ski jump. That’s exactly why it stands in a class of its own. The flying stopped in 1994, when the aging hill couldn’t meet modern standards. 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. The goal is to rebuild Copper Peak to International Ski Federation specifications, so it can host international 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. The view from up there is one of the most spectacular in Michigan.