You never know where an idea can take you.
Bob Frye’s idea came on a frigid ski trip to Wyoming in a 1973 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon. That spark began a 52-year journey that has led to today, when Bob and his wife, Lynne, can rightly claim to have started an internationally known destination for thousands of people who come to northern Michigan each winter to enjoy the shop and trail system that’s known as Cross Country Ski Headquarters, located east of Higgins Lake about 5 miles west of Roscommon.
From November to early April, you still might see Bob, regarded as the godfather of cross-country skiing in Michigan, and Lynne helping fit skis and boots for customers in the shop they built into one of the sport’s top retailers. They’re more absent from the store nowadays, however, as their time is spent watching their grandkids while their daughter, Mariah, her husband, Stu Collie, and their son, George, run the operations.
But the couple’s years dedicated to signing kids and their parents up for lessons and offering the sage advice Team Frye has been known for since 1974 still echoes off the original wood-burning stove in the center of their shop, and around the huge stone fireplace in the dining area. Although some of the faces have changed, the tone the couple set when they opened their business continues.
When you walk into XCSKIHQ, as frequent visitors and users of its 19 kilometers of trails call it, and whether you’re a newbie or a veteran to skiing uphill, down, or on flat land, prepare to be pampered, educated, and wowed with the totality of what you’re about to experience. If you’ve never stepped into a pair of cross-country skis, this is the place to do it.
It’s always been that way under the Fryes and continues with the newest generation. But this story is about Frye 1.0 and how the ride began, helped by a bit of serendipity.
“It pretty much started with a friend whose dad was a car dealer. We were taking a trip to go downhill skiing in Jackson Hole, Wyo. My uncle had a little house in Aspen, but we thought this time we’d try Jackson Hole because we heard it had a lot of powder,” Bob Frye recalls. He and his friend drove together, nonstop, in that 1973 station wagon. They planned to sleep in the back of the vehicle when they arrived at their skiing destination, rather than paying for a motel room.
Photo Courtesy of Denise Semion
“Just before we got into town, we hit a deer, which didn’t hurt the station wagon. We put the deer on top of the car, not wanting it to go to waste even though it was January, way past deer season, and we went to dinner,” he says. They were soon visited by a state game officer with questions. He took the deer and the two were allowed to press on. That evening they found a spot to settle into their sleeping bags. The trouble was, the temperature dropped to -40F.
“We pretty much nearly froze. We went to the ski resort in the morning to get lift tickets and were told the lifts wouldn’t work because the hydraulic fluid was frozen. That day we wandered around, found a shop, and rented cross-country skis.
“Although it was below zero, we had a great time and it inspired the thought that this would be great in Michigan. You get the thrill of going downhill, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to stay warm and have some fun,” Frye explains. So, if it wasn’t for that chairlift not working, he says, XCSKIHQ might never have been a thing.
Back in Michigan, Frye says, “I was making boundary markers for surveyors. I never had anything to do in winter. A neighbor at Higgins Lake was part-owner of a sporting goods store in Midland, and I asked him where I could get some (cross-country) skis,” he recalls. That led to a conversation with an importer of Norwegian Kongsberg wooden skis, which you can still find on the internet.
“He also had a line on a boot called Alfa, made from the bellies of the finest Norwegian cows,” he jokes. “The skis were compressed beechwood-edged, and you had to pine-tar them to season the wood.”
Frye bought 20 pairs of skis and 30 pairs of boots. He rented a corner in a gasoline and oil fume-filled snowmobile shop that would eventually become the neighbor of the current store.
“I hung out a sign that said, ‘Cross Country Ski Headquarters.’ Nobody here knew what cross-country skiing was at the time, although Yoopers have been cross-country skiing for years. We put some ads in the papers and offered free lessons,” he says. And thus, the seed was planted.
“The snowmobile shop got so stinky with exhaust, we built our own little store in 1978,” he says. It was a 30- by 44-foot, half-log cabin that’s been added onto at least four times since the start.
“In 1977, I married Lynne and she not only learned about selling and fitting skis, but she also became the hero of the second floor” — the loft that still houses ski clothing, that is. She also claimed the title of Michigan’s cross-country godmother, to match her husband’s godfather identity.
Then came the ski revolution.
“This guy, Bill Danner, did a master’s degree project. He didn’t like waxing skis, so he figured out how to make a fish scale pattern into a plastic ski base. That pretty much revolutionized the cross-country business, and we were on the ground floor of that. That’s what gave us a big start. We also found out that après ski is just as much fun as skiing, so that worked out well,” Frye adds.
A small upstairs lunch nook morphed into the Stone Turtle Day Lodge in the late 1980s, and the Fryes secured crosscountryski.com for their business’s Internet presence in the 1990s.
“Around the year 2000, we thought we’d try snowmaking, for those times when nature doesn’t provide, and that involved another building. We also made another decision on (putting up a) building for shipping,” he says.
Then came the question of how to move snow around to cover 2 kilometers of XCSKIHQ’s 19 kilometers of trails. The Fryes decided to take snow from a 30-foot-high mound using a farm manure spreader — a simple solution they learned from the Huron Meadows cross-country area, near Brighton. “We’ve made advances in how to make better snow and move it and not go broke, because it’s very expensive to do.”
New additions to the operation have included having a trained chef in the kitchen, who offers lunches and occasional winter specialty dinners, along with hosting annual weekend cookouts and entertainment. There’s also a Sunday afternoon guitar player, a Ribs and Blues fest, a Bavarian Festival, and the Paella Weekend — the meal is cooked outside — that always sells out. They also added a liquor license. Saturday mornings feature free beginner lessons, a XCSKIHQ trademark; all you have to do is walk in and sign up.
In 2017, USA Today named the Frye family’s location the No. 2 best cross-country ski area in the country. Nowadays, even AI rates XCSKIHQ as the best in the Midwest.
In 2016, daughter Mariah and her husband, Stu Collie, purchased the business, ensuring it would continue in the family. Last summer, Bob’s son, George, bought the company after working five years as an apprentice.
Bob Frye continues his involvement as president of the Great Lakes Winter Trails Council, which he co-founded in 1988. In 2016, he was inducted into the Michigan Ski Hall of Fame.
“Cross-country skiing has been around for 3,000 years, and any time is a good time to get into the sport. If you’ve got old skis, we have a great try-before-you-buy demo program for new skis. We’ve had people who have come from Alaska and Colorado just to try out new stuff,” he says.
“I think sometimes you just get lucky, but sometimes, if you believe in something, that’s part of it, too. The bottom line is we never started (the business) to make a lot of money. It was so much fun and a wonderful way for people to get outside. It has made the world a little better place. We have a great kids’ trade-in program and we’re now selling skis to the great-grandchildren of the people we sold skis to originally. I see my old customers and see how much love there is. It’s great.”
Plan It!
Cross Country Ski Headquarters
crosscountryski.com
