searchmont ski resort

My wife and I just spent a couple of wonderful days skiing at Searchmont Resort. For the past 5 years we have made it an annual trip. Whether a beginner or expert skier there is a hill for every one. All the hills were very well groomed. The lodge provided excellent choice of food and beverage service. We skied mid week and there were no crowds. Great to see however a fair number buses with loads of school kids taken advantage of this ski hill. Special thanks to guest services and especially the to guys running the double chair. Hats' off to Darren and Jake for making days entertaining.

My wife and I had a horrible weekend here right after new years. Arrived on Friday afternoon, and as season ticket holders my wife had to stand in line outside and get daily tickets??? Saturday morning, we arrive, wait outside for a daily ticket again, grrrrr. The quad lift is broken, the only lift running is the triple. We gear up and start skiing, but a ski club has half the hill set up with gates, and there are the rest of us using the other half the hill......on a Saturday morning! The double lift does not start running until 1pm. I complained to Paul, the GM, three times, and ended up leaving after finding the GM in the ticket office finishing a two hour meeting while the lift lines were backed up to the condos and the double lift had not started yet. I complained via the websites email directly to the GM and asked for my money back, and after a week, no response. Don't make the effort to ski here, not well run at all.

I spent most of the time on the bunny hill teaching a 7 and 9 year old to ski which was great. I like that the bunny hill is completely free to use and it wasn't too busy. We decided to try a run on the bigger hill...big mistake! There is no easy run down the hill, it is intermediate and it was icy...it would be great to have something between the bunny and the big hill for when the bunny gets too easy. I found the conditions to be icy and not well groomed.

No high speed lifts or fancy terrain parks, just good old fashioned skiing. Perfect groomed trails and real snow. Quaint chalet with European charm and a real wood burning fireplace. Look forwArd to our return visit.

Only place around in a secluded area so no crowds. Reasonable price, lower cost skiing than in Michigan but comparable hills. Better chance for snow. Mostly intermediate slopes. Easy to get to from northern Michigan.

We made a trip to Searchmont in February 2013 and it was the best skiing we have ever had! The trails are so much fun and there is so much variety, it is fantastic. We skied for 2 days strait and wished we could stay for a third. Like any ski resort, the skiing is better when mother nature lends a hand and she was a happy lady during our visit. We had tons of snow. We are planning another trip in a few weeks and cannot wait! (We are Michigan skiers, so if you are use to skiing out west, the vertical of course is much smaller. If you are Michigan skier, this place is the highest and the BEST!!!)

I will start off with positives. Wedding was gorgeous, the hall was beautiful and the staff were great at the wedding. It is a gorgeous setting and a beautiful place to get married. The NEGATIVES (brace yourselves, there's a lot)- NO WATER! They turn off the clean water system in the summer so there was no water to drink. We were not told there was no water, thank god we brought some, it was brown! They left 6 bottles in the fridge, not enough to drink and brush your teeth with for 2 nights. Not a good experience considering we paid $200/night for the chalet.- FILTHY! Our chalet was filthy, the carpet STUNK, there were pretzels in the couch so we couldn't use the sofa bed, there were ants and bugs everywhere, it was pretty obvious we got the party chalet. There was a tray on top of the fireplace to catch all the water leaking through the roof. The beds upstairs however were comfortable to sleep in and the bathrooms were clean.- HOT as an oven in our chalet and there are NO screens on the windows but the bugs were SO BAD (not their fault obviously) that we couldn't open the windows. The screens were in our chalet utility room but perhaps staff did not feel like putting them up. We also had no fans, we had to track down staff the next day to ask for fans because we were so hot we couldn't sleep. They told us there should be fans in every chalet but we had none. Bring bug spray and a lot of it.- Lastly, there is no staff our there at night time. Now it is a winter destination but we had no staff to ask questions to or get the things we needed.Overall it seems as though because it is of the off season they do not put much care into the resort. There was plenty of notice (over a year) that there was going to be a wedding there and it sure did not seem anyone went through it to make sure all the necessities were needed. We had a REALLY hard time booking our reservation, it wasn't even confirmed until four days before the wedding as the management never got back to us. GREAT hall for the wedding but not worth the accommodations, get a shuttle to the city and stay at the water tower.

It's a beautiful place to go skiing or snowboarding. Clean and cozy chalet, rentals and lift tickets are fair prices. The staff is always amazing, whether you need lessons or not they are great.

What a great place more people need to discover and visit. Lift lines were minimal and we skied hard all day. Searchmont has a great hill with plenty of variety to please all. The only complaint we had was the Quad not operating. This costs a star (sorry). The back area is the best and the long tuck run back to the double really helps to tire one out. Hope they fix it for next year. We almost did not visit due to this, but luckily we did as we had a great day anyway. The food was good, the staff friendly, and the facilities pleasant. Sault Ste. Marie where we stayed is a friendly town and made the experience even more enjoyable. Discover a superb place to ski, Searchmont!

Skip the long flight and seemly even longer wait times at lift line-ups. Season sure to start soon. Very friendly to families. Reasonable ticket prices. 40-45 minute ride north of Sault Ste. Marie (a city filled with many hotel and dining options... even a Delta) along a picturque route of rolling hills and lakes. Watch for new signage along Hwy 17.

I just got back from Searchmont (02/20/10) I have to say that it was well worth the 7-8hr drive from Milwaukee, WI. The reviews say its about an hr north of Sault Sainte Marie, though it really didn't seem like it was an hour, but all the same it was a nice drive. The skiing was great, I was planning on going to Bohemia instead, but thought we would try something different, this is like Bohemia just in a smaller scale, meaning that there is some great ungroomed sections including a great tree skiing section, but the nice thing is that you can bring people that aren't as good and they will have something to ski as well. The tree skiing in the experts area is great. The food options are good too, if you want something healthy there are wraps and salads along with all your standards. There was no waiting for the lifts and every lift was running nothing was shut down. I would come back here again and bring more friends to enjoy the 7 hr drive with me. Just know that there is NOTHING out here other then the hill, if you have enough people then there would be no need to stay in town, if not town is going to be really your only option.