Traverse City Winter Season

BELLAIRE, MI – Like many traditional ski areas, Michigan’s Shanty Creek Resorts has found itself scrambling to adapt to changing tastes and trends in the winter sports industry. This year, they seem to be taking things to a whole new level.

Responding to the explosive growth of snowboarding and acrobatic freeskiing, the popular northern Michigan resort is dramatically expanding its existing terrain park and planning a whole series of new winter events and ski-related promotions for the 2012-2013 ski season.

The new “Monster Energy Park” will encompass three adjacent ski runs (Purple Daze, Village Way, and the Natty Park) with more than 150 feet of new equipment, including a battleship box, S-rails, two rainbow rails, C-rails, a 20-foot picnic table and more. In addition, the resort is installing a jump line through Village Way and more natural features within the Natty Park.

Chris Hale, Shanty Creek’s vice president of sales & marketing, says the new facility will make the resort competitive with the Midwest’s top terrain parks.

“With the evolution of snowboarding and freeskiing, resorts must continue to develop their park areas to attract riders,” says Hale.

A 4,500-acre recreational complex perched above the village of Bellaire, about 30 miles northeast of Traverse City, Shanty is the region’s leading full-service winter resort for skiing, tubing and snowboarding. (Ski Magazine rates it the Midwest’s number-one ski destination in value, dining, lodging, weather and après ski activities.)

Sprawling across an undulating plateau in Michigan’s Chain of Lakes region, Shanty Creek is actually a complex of three interlocking “villages” — Summit, Cedar River, and Schuss — connected by trail systems and serviced by a shuttle system. Its ski areas feature a 450-foot vertical with 55 runs.

Founded in the postwar years as an American version of Europe’s classic ski areas, Shanty Creek was purchased in 2006 by Trinidad Resort & Club, which spent $10 million on renovation and redesign work. Ski writer Mike Terrell of onthesnow.com calls Shanty “one of the more unusual snow sports resorts in the Heartland” — a combination of classic and contemporary encased in forested hills with panoramic overlooks of Lake Bellaire and northern Michigan.

Thanks to a new partnership agreement with Monster Energy Drinks, the resort is also planning to offer lift ticket specials, pre-season promotions and special events on the winter calendar. In addition, Monster Energy will be the sponsor of Schuss Mountain’s most offbeat spring event: the Slush Cup. Plans are also being made for a rail jam and big air competition — tentatively scheduled for January 26.

Other improvements for the 2012-2013 season include installation of Big Air  ramps and landings on Shanty’s Elf Shelf – replacing an elderly half-pipe system that’s being retired – as well as two new ski runs: “Run, Forest, Run,” which connects the top of the Red lift with the base of the Purple lift, and  a beginner’s terrain park called “Low Rider” that features small jumps and low set short rails and boxes.

The resort’s popular Tubing Park is also getting a facelift. The park’s contours have been reshaped, creating space for another handle tow and and expansion to eight lanes. Shanty is also reintroducing snowmobiling tours and rentals this season, with guided “introductory” tours and longer 4- and 8-hour rentals with map access to the state’s nearby Jordan Valley trail system, and has doubled the number of lights on its Moonlite Run nighttime cross-country ski trail.

For more information about Shanty Creek Resorts and a list of passes and promotions for the 2012-2013 season, visit www.shantycreek.com  or call 866-901-8631. To learn more about other winter attractions and events in Michigan’s Traverse City area – and for a complete listing of lodging and dining options – contact the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau at 1-800-TRAVERSE or on line at www.TraverseCity.com
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This is a press-ready travel feature from the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau. Please feel free to use it in any way you like. You may run it in part or in its entirety (with or without byline), or use it as a source for stories of your own. And if I can be of any additional help, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Mike Norton, Media Relations 
Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau
E: mike@traversecity.com
P: (231) 995-3909
F: (231) 947-2621