A Look Back At Sugar Loaf

From abandoned elementary schools to dark, derelict shopping malls, the team at Ruin Road, a Grand Rapids-based YouTube channel, get their kicks exploring “abandoned, haunted, and terrifyingly fun places in the U.S.” From the day the channel started in 2016, though, Ruin Road mastermind Kyle Brooky knew one Michigan spot was at the top of his must-visit list: The old Sugar Loaf ski resort in Leelanau County, which slowly declined from cozy alpine comfort spot to eerie haunt between the time it closed for business in 2000 and when it was finally demolished in 2021.

Over the course of four years and “at least seven trips” to the faded-but-not-forgotten Cleveland Township destination, Brooky got his wish. On New Year’s Eve, Ruin Road published a 37-minute documentary about Sugar Loaf, its tragic rise-and-fall story, and its decline into dilapidation. The video, which describes the now-demolished Sugar Loaf as a “Real Life The Shining” – a reference to the iconic Stephen King novel and its haunted hotel setting – has since garnered nearly 100,000 views. It’s a sobering, deeply-researched look at a place that was once Leelanau County’s crown jewel.

The Ruin Road project began in 2016 when Brooky and a friend started watching online videos of people touring spooky, abandoned buildings. “My friend said, ‘You know, we could do this, and we could do it better,’” Brooky says. “We knew from the start that we wanted to focus more on the history of places, because a lot of what was out there at the time was just people walking through and saying ‘Oh, this is scary!’ or making up stories about places to spook their audiences. I figured that, a lot of the time, the real history is just as cool. So we started doing our own videos with that in mind.”

It was that storyteller’s mindset that put Sugar Loaf at the top of Brooky’s bucket list. Though he’d never visited the resort – either before it closed or after it became an abandoned space – he’d heard tales of the place and its decades-long downward spiral. In 2016, shortly after Ruin Road started, Brooky paid his first visit to Sugar Loaf to see what the fuss was about. Two things, he says, were immediately apparent: first, the abandoned ski resort was precisely the type of history-laden place that Ruin Road had been invented to explore; and second, Brooky and his team were going to need more time to do the sprawling property justice.

So began a multi-year deep dive into Sugar Loaf. Every time he was in northern Michigan, Brooky would head back to the resort and explore a different part of it. From the guest rooms to the empty swimming pools to the restaurant and banquet spaces, Brooky tried to capture as many pieces of Sugar Loaf as possible. At the same time, he spent weeks researching the resort’s rise-and-fall story. That tale plays out in narrative form in the Ruin Road video, taking viewers through the resort’s post-World War II birth, its peak in the 1970s, and its ultimate decline in the 1980s and 1990s, when a series of bankruptcies, ownership changes, and tragic on-premises deaths slowly stripped away the glory of the place.

In making the film, Brooky and his team witnessed further decline of the Sugar Loaf buildings. “The first time we went there, it was still pretty pristine, having been abandoned for 16 years at that point,” Brooky says. But every time the Ruin Road filmmakers returned to Sugar Loaf, it looked a little worse for wear. “I think not too many people knew about it [in 2016],” Brooky tells The Ticker of the abandoned resort. Then, over time, Sugar Loaf became a playground for thrill-seekers and vandals. On one occasion, the Ruin Road video even captures a bachelorette party coming to tour the resort. “It just got hit,” Brooky continues. “So many people were coming through. Each time we came back, it would be a little sadder. There was graffiti everywhere, and the owners had just let firefighters come in and rip out walls and stuff for practice. It was horrible.”

While Brooky ended up with over three hours of Sugar Loaf footage, he didn’t get the last piece of the puzzle that he wanted for his film. “I had wanted to go up and film during the demolition, and maybe see if anybody around wanted to be interviewed,” he says. “But that all just happened really fast.”

In 2021, a (still-anonymous) new owner went ahead with demolition of Sugar Loaf, which means that none of the spaces captured in the Ruin Road video are still there. Now, nearly a year and a half after the teardown, there have yet to be any concrete announcements about what the next chapter could hold for the Sugar Loaf property.

Memories of the resort live on, though, from before it became the haunted, desolate place it is in Brooky’s video. The YouTube comments section for the video is filled with former “Loafers” and their fond recollections of the place. “Some of those old promo videos are pretty much how I remember most of the places to ski in northern Michigan [in the ‘80s and ‘90s],” one commenter wrote. “They were so great.”

Another viewer recalled a time in 1999 when the resort lost power and some skiers got stuck on the chairlifts. “A buddy and I were the last two that were supposed to be repelled off the lift after three hours when the power line was shot in ’99,” that commenter wrote. “We had already kicked off our skis and ditched our poles, but the lift started running right before they were gonna repel us off. Slid on our backs down Awful Awful to grab skis, warmed up at the lodge, and were given two free pitchers of beer for our troubles. We weren't upset but certainly not gonna pass up free beer.”

One commenter on the video even claims to have been “the last skier down Sugar Loaf” on some “rainy day in April 2000.”

“A lot of people have really loved it,” Brooky concludes of the Sugar Loaf video and the response it’s gotten. “I’m glad people can look at this video and see a recording of Sugar Loaf at the end, before it was gone forever. And it’s a reminder of why sharing the history behind places is important to us, because it means those places aren’t just gone and forgotten.”