Eagle Mountain Ski & Camping Area

Eagle Mountain Ski Area near Grey Eagle, Minnesota, sat in the wooded hills of Todd County about six miles east of Grey Eagle on County Road 2, halfway to Upsala and about 35 miles northwest of St. Cloud. Its trail maps marked the top of the hill as the highest point in Todd County. The ski area was started in 1968, and in the fall of 1972 Bob and Ursula Lanners, a couple from Bloomington, bought the struggling young business for $40,000 after seeing it in a want ad. Bob had met Ursula, who grew up on a farm in Germany, while serving with the Army there, and he had skied at Garmisch.

When the Lanners took over there were two runs. They added more until ads in the mid 1970s advertised eleven, served by rope tows and later a Poma lift bought from Inver Hills, on about 200 feet of vertical. They called it the Eagle Mountain Ski and Camping Area, laid out a campground and about ten kilometers of cross-country trails next to a state wildlife management area, ran horse-drawn sleigh rides on Sundays, and kept a bunkhouse for overnight groups. A 1976 SKI magazine item noted the German beer and bratwurst in the chalet, where tractor seats served as bar stools, and the hand-drawn trail map gave the runs Alpine names such as Berchtesgaden, Garmisch, Zugspitze, Brenner Pass and Teufelschlucht.

On October 24, 1976, an uninsured pole barn burned and took the snowmaking machines, grooming tractors, snowmobiles and about 150 pairs of rental skis with it. The Upsala Lions Club, the Grey Eagle Jaycees and neighbors with hand tools helped the Lanners reopen for the season, and they bought a used snowcat. The family ran the place themselves, with their children fitting ski boots and waiting tables. In January 1989 Eagle Mountain was one of the areas in the state that had already opened its slopes to snowboarders.

Downhill skiing ended about 1990. The Lanners said it had become hard to compete with bigger hills that had longer, steeper runs and more amenities, and by November 1989 their ads offered snow tubing and cross-country trails but no downhill skiing. They kept four of the old runs, with their tow ropes, lights and snowmaking, for tubing, which drew about 10,000 people a winter in the late 1990s and was still running on the farm in 2005. Bob Lanners once said he bought a ski resort because Ursula skied; he could not stand up on skis himself.