Mount Bohemia's Voodoo Mountain Expansion Complete — Midwest's Only Cat Skiing Operation Grows to Nearly 300 Acres

Deep in the snowbelt of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the Midwest's only commercial cat skiing operation just got significantly bigger. Mount Bohemia announced this week that trail expansion work at Voodoo Mountain — its remote, snowcat-accessed sister terrain near Copper Harbor — has officially wrapped, ahead of what's shaping up to be another aggressive year of growth for one of American skiing's most unconventional resorts.

What's new

The newly completed trails push Voodoo Mountain's total skiable terrain to nearly 300 acres, and bring Mount Bohemia's combined terrain — Voodoo plus the original mountain — to nearly 900 acres. The expansion follows work that began after last season, when the resort first began sharing updates on the Voodoo trail-cutting project via social media.

To celebrate, Mount Bohemia is opening the new terrain up to its passholder base at no extra cost: 28 passholders will be selected each day for a free half-day cat skiing trip at Voodoo, according to the resort's announcement.

From 100 acres to a four-peak vision

Voodoo Mountain's growth trajectory has been remarkably fast by any ski-industry standard. The operation opened its first season with roughly 100 acres of skiable terrain and a vertical drop of close to 700 feet — already one of the biggest terrain footprints in the Midwest in its debut year alone. By the time it had been running a few seasons, that figure had grown past 200 acres across two peaks, still with the same 700-foot vertical. For the 2025/26 season, the operation expanded further still, to roughly 450 acres and a third mountain added to the mix. This week's completed work brings the tally to a reported 300 acres specifically at Voodoo — reflecting the resort's practice of expanding and refining terrain incrementally, peak by peak, rather than in one single build-out.

The long-term ambition remains far larger. At full build-out, Voodoo Mountain's owners have said the terrain will stretch nearly 2.5 miles wide and encompass four peaks with skiing on two sides, all overlooking Lake Superior — a footprint that could eventually top 1,400 skiable acres, making it by far the largest ski area in the Midwest. Combined with Mount Bohemia itself, the two properties together are projected to eventually offer more than 2,000 skiable acres, which would rank the pairing as the second-largest skiable acreage east of the Rockies. Voodoo currently sits on roughly 1,800 total acres of property.

How it works — and why the terrain differs from Bohemia

Voodoo operates on a fundamentally different model than its parent mountain. Guests board a heated, roughly 20-person snowcat from a staging area and are driven several miles into the forests of the Keweenaw Peninsula before being dropped at the summit — a cat ride of about 20 minutes each way, with the machine returning to ferry skiers back up after each run. It's a format borrowed from an industry that has thrived out West for more than three decades, but which had never before operated commercially east of the Rockies.

The terrain itself is also intentionally different from Mount Bohemia's famously unforgiving, ungroomed black-diamond slopes. Where Bohemia is known for steep, technical, expert-only lines, Voodoo's north-facing terrain is comparatively mellow — well-manicured glades in its upper third and wide-open runs through the lower two-thirds, suited to a solid intermediate skier or rider rather than an expert-only crowd. Mount Bohemia trail designer Steve Rowe has described Voodoo as a "different development than Bohemia," offering more accessible, intermediate-oriented terrain in contrast to the parent mountain's rugged, steep-and-deep reputation. The trade-off is dramatic scenery either way — virtually every run on Voodoo's north-facing slopes delivers sweeping views of Lake Superior.

The pass that undercuts the industry

Perhaps as notable as the terrain expansion is how Mount Bohemia continues to price access to it. Unlike most North American resorts, which put season passes on sale in spring, Mount Bohemia's pass window runs November 25 through December 5, 2026. A full season pass — valid seven days a week with no blackout dates, and including both cat skiing access at Voodoo and use of the resort's Nordic Spa — costs just $117; a Sunday-through-Thursday version runs $99. Two-year rollover passes and lifetime passes are also available at higher price points, though still well below what comparable multi-day or season products cost at most other North American resorts. Passholders additionally receive free tickets to a roster of partner resorts for 2026-27 that includes Bogus Basin in Idaho, Whitewater Mountain Resort in Canada, and Loveland Ski Area in Colorado, among others.

A mountain built on snow, not machines

None of Mount Bohemia's growth — at either the original mountain or at Voodoo — relies on snowmaking. Located on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the resort is fed by nearly 300 inches of lake-effect snowfall annually, a byproduct of its position on the Keweenaw Peninsula jutting into Lake Superior, one of the snowiest corners of the country outside the traditional mountain West. The main mountain itself sits at a modest 1,465-foot elevation with an 804-foot vertical drop, spread across 95 trails served by just two chairlifts and, deliberately, zero snowmaking or grooming equipment — a purist, natural-snow ethos that has become central to the resort's identity and cult following since it first opened in 2000. That same commitment to natural terrain and off-the-beaten-path character — no grooming, colorful chairlifts, a general refusal to smooth the mountain over for beginners — extends to how the resort talks about itself, even as its footprint keeps expanding at a pace few Midwest ski areas can match.

With Voodoo's latest phase now finished and the 2026-27 pass window opening in late November, Mount Bohemia heads into the coming winter with substantially more terrain to offer a skier base that has, for a quarter-century, been drawn precisely to the mountain's refusal to play by conventional resort rules.