Post by: Mike Doble
Thanks to Kenny Griffin and other members of our team who have kept the content coming over the last month or so. We’ve promoted some preseason sales going on at Alpine Ski Center and other locales. Appalachian Ski Mountain is in the early stages of 50 days worth of giveaways – which (in case you guys and gals haven’t figured out) is celebrating the 50th anniversary of skiing in the state of North Carolina.
App is already celebrating things with their giveaways (hop over to App’s website at www.AppSkiMtn.com and check it out). They opened December 15th, 1962 and I have to believe they’ll be doing something special for that. Cataloochee was actually the first to open in North Carolina – sometime prior to that – in 1962 so they too are celebrating 50 years this season.
I’ve had a lot of people ask about the first to open in the Southeast and that would be Wisp Resort in Maryland which opened back in 1955.
WE’RE MERE BABIES…
Our little ski network is celebrating our 16th season covering the southeast and mid atlantic ski areas. That is hard for me to fathom. What began in 1996 with M-A-Y-B-E 100 visitors a day by that season’s final days is now seeing so much traffic that this past SATURDAY alone we saw 17,957 unique visitors! We had a burst of snow all across the higher elevations of the mountains of the region. That left anywhere from a DUSTING to one-half an inch of snow at Beech Mountain to 8.3" reported at David Lesher’s Canaan Valley weather center to 9" atop Snowshoe Mountain!
Snow creates traffic – no doubt!
On Wednesday (yesterday) we received 12,596 visitors which is pretty amazing since we’re still perhaps a month or two away from the traditional start of ski and snowboarding season.
SO MANY NEW THINGS TO TALK ABOUT…
I’ll probably start sharing (bragging) more information about our new offerings this season – sometime next week, but suffice to say that we’ve got our team working hard to give you guys EVEN MORE of the kind of interactive news and information that you want and need to make informed decisions about where you want to spend your travel dollars this season.
Our webcam network is expanding seemingly everyday. We’re now offering REAL TIME, STREAMING HD video AND audio on many of our cameras! Check out www.HighCountryWebCams.com to see some of those. You’ll notice the new camera at Massanutten! We’ll be able to watch that large format, HD shot just like watching television this season! We have SEVERAL other resorts opting in on those and hope to make some announcements of such very soon.
We’ve expanded our WEATHER network to include not only www.HighCountryWeather.com but also weather websites dedicated solely to Beech Mountain, Sugar, www.MassanuttenWeather.com , www.WintergreenVAWeather.com , www.CanaanValleyWeather.com , www.DavisWVWeather.com , www.WinterplaceWeather.com , www.SnowshoeWeather.com , www.DeepCreekMarylandWeather.com and more. If you’ll check out each link to our ski areas on www.SkiSoutheast.com you will notice that we’ve replaced the old Weather.com magnets with widgets of our own that are all reporting weather content from the ski areas themselves. We have even more dedicated weather stations in the offing.
THE FIRST WEATHER REPORTING OF ITS KIND…
We’ll still be getting great input from all of our meteorologists in the region – such as our buddy Brad Panovich – however we’re the first ski network with it’s very own on-staff meteorologist who will not only be providing weather content and daily video updates throughout the coming ski and snowboarding season – but Kenny Griffin will ALSO be providing LIVE WEATHER UPDATES via www.HighCountryWeather.com and www.SkiSoutheast.com . So when a good snow event is in the forecast, Kenny will be able to broadcast LIVE via the websites with streaming video/audio to show you where the snow is and what’s happening LIVE!
How cool is that!?!?
There’s much more to share – but perhaps will get to the rest next week. However here’s a hint: We’ve created a dining network that is showing off the best eateries and pubs for each ski area with dedicated dining content!
So for weather, webcams, skicams, ski and snowboarding updates, daily snow reports and accurate assessments of all things skiing and snowboarding in the region – you only need to know of one website – www.SkiSoutheast.com .
FALL COLOR COMMENTS…
I’ll be hanging out at Sugar Mountain this weekend taking in some of the great OctoberFest fun over at Sugar. The colors are beginning to really show up all of a sudden. Beech’s highest elevations and those up around the 4848′ elevation at Snowshoe are looking great. Check out the VIDEO that Snowshoe sent us. They’ve got a lot of color happening up there already!
Down around Banner Elk things are still a week or maybe two weeks from peak color. Things should be quite pretty this weekend and next for the Woolly Worm Festival. We’ll keep you posted, but I have to tell you that you can get a great look at color (especially on sunny days) via www.HighCountryWebCams.com .
That’s it for now. We have some new (and old) partners to announce coming on board with us and we’ll get to those soon. This update is already a bit of a novel!
Drop me an email with your fall color photos and videos at: [email protected]