Sugar Loaf - Abandoned Ski Resort (MI)

Overview

There's not many places you can explore where you're confronted with the actual history of the site rather than the depth of your spray paint cans or scope of your camera lens. This abandoned ski lodge, still filled with hastily-scribbled paperwork, snow-stained lift tickets, slightly-faded race bibs, and sun-washed vintage posters brings to mind the memories of a real, living and breathing business in the way that a completely-trashed elementary school hopelessly covered in graffiti does not. The bedrooms here are still made up - sheets tucked in and trash cans emptied as if they could accept residents tomorrow. The room that was once the dining hall still has empty cases of soft pretzels and slushie machines, logos familiar enough to be seen in a modern cafeteria. The route map outside proclaims most of the runs to be open and plowed, despite being closed and empty for years. This place was abandoned, it seems, instantaneously - leaving an ever-present snapshot of that moment in history. Finds like these are a gem in urban exploration, rare to exist and even rarer to find. Welcome to Sugar Loaf mountain.

Location Layout

The resort itself is fairly large with an open reception center and banquet hall in the front, ski rentals and dining hall in the basement, hotel rooms in a wing to the left, and a sad-looking outdoor pool to the back. Behind the initial lodge is the mountain, which boasts black diamond runs on the facing side and easier slopes over the back edge. 

The Resort Lodge

There are tons of doors on the lodge that appear as if they could be opened fairly easily with the right tools, but you don't need anything other than yourself to climb through the back window on the mountain-facing side of the resort. You will find yourself inside of an old office-type room once entering, filled with closets of vintage memorabilia and more scattered paperwork than they use for the school's-out scene of a high school movie. After digging around for souvenirs to take home, the door opposite from the window should lead you into the rest of the building.

The Mountain

The interior of Sugar Loaf is cool enough to be its own adventure, but don't leave before climbing to the top of the mountain itself. You're going to have to make the hike up a black diamond slope without the help of automated lifts (although five of them sit, vacant, to mock you), but the view at the top is worth it. Bring paint pens or Sharpies to deface the old lift lodges with dozens of other young explorers, adding to the list of inspirational messages along the lines of "hit me up if you like it in the butt" and "dude, call your mom."

The Pool

This isn't extremely interesting, especially with all of the other things to look at, but Sugar Loaf's outdoor pool is left open to allow explorers to dig around in abandoned bathrooms and changing areas - as well as the underground heater room. Not extremely exciting, but another option if you made the trip out there.

Sugar Loaf History 

The resort and mountain closed down in 2000, most likely due to heightened competition on nearby Michigan slopes. The placed used to employ over 300 people, bringing traffic, travelers, and revenue to the now-vacant region. Today, it sits, eerily empty, beside mediocre apartment buildings.