With yesterday’s wrap up of all things west, and Monday’s tour of the east, I suppose it’s time we tour the heartland…start off in the easternmost part of what we’ll call the midwest, that’s Ohio…Boston Mills and Brandywine are still alive and kicking, they’ve been hammered by the recent hot spell but all indicators say they’ll be spinning lifts through Sunday and possibly beyond…over in Indiana, not so good, Paoli Peaks banged it up for the season on Monday…let’s move north a bit, to better news…Wild Mountain up in Minnesota serving up late night fun this coming Friday; $20 gets you a lift ticket from 8:00 PM through 1:00 AM Saturday morning, they’ve got some festivities planned as well and are skiing on most everything…move west just a tad to Lutsen Mountains and they’re enjoying powder left over from the weekend; check out the photo above for a taste of what they’ve got; firing on all cylinders and looking good…same deal over at Mount Bohemia in Michigan, open in the trees, people jumping down cliffs, you name it — conditions are right on…move down to the lower peninsula and Caberfae Peaks has about a four foot base, we’ve got them over there in the right hand column with a hotlink to their webcam, see how good it is.  OK if you’re on a handheld device, you gotta scroll down.  Anyway, Caberfae skiing real well right now and they’ve got a family deal coming up this Sunday for just $59, you get lift tix, ski or board rentals and a beginner group lesson for a family of three from 3 pm to close.  The only catch is you need a coupon to get the deal, that’s found on their website…. back to that Lutsen photo above, damn!  Reminds me of Colorado…moving to about the edge of the midwest, way out on the prairie, shout out and sincere kudos to Terry Peak in the Black Hills, hosting Special Olympics today.  That’s good stuff, and if you ever get an opportunity to volunteer for that, do it, see what pure joy is.  Maybe sometimes we have a tough time expressing the joy of skiing, but our Special Olympians have no problem at all…we’ve been talking about the new Ikon Pass, and recently the Chicago Tribune took up the question of “does it make sense for midwesterners?”  Well they never really answer the question definitively — I suppose so as not to anger any potential advertisers.  So I’ll answer the question for them:   No.