Lost Ski Areas are discussed.
Do a Google search for "Lost Ski Areas" and you’ll get 269,000 results and a truckload of discussing about lost or closed ski areas from all across the country. Most of the resulting content seems more related to New England, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rocky Mountain lost ski areas.
Scott Smith of DCSki has devoted an entire section to his website over the last couple of years with some good information. However about a year ago Brad Moretz of Appalachian Ski Mountain called me to suggest that we not only provide some content and insight about this subject but that we actually take it a huge step forward by allowing our readers to go in and post their own stories, input and knowledge, etc.
Brad was relating a wealth of knowledge about some of the ski areas that he knew about and then we assigned the research task to one of our former staffers, Andrea McIntyre. To her credit she dug up a lot of good information. A short time ago we added Sarah Davis to our staff and one of the things that we assigned her to do was to research for whatever ski areas Andrea might have missed and then organize that content such that we could post it to the messageboard.
The result is that she has now posted information on TWENTY NINE ski areas that were once operating in SEVEN states of the Southeast and Mid Atlantic!
As Brad informed us last year, "Mike, there are more ski areas that used to be open and operating that are now closed – than we have open ski areas these days."
He’s correct. The Southeastern Ski Areas Association shares information on 17 ski areas that are currently operating in the region and that includes the new Liberty Snowflex operation in Lynchburg, Virginia.
If you count in Oglebay in West Virginia there are 18 ski areas in the region, but that number pales when compared to the 29 ski areas that used to operate at one time or another which are now closed.
The newest, more notable closures would certainly be Hawksnest Resort in Seven Devils, North Carolina, but in just the last several years North Carolina also lost Scaly Mountain and Mill Ridge as well. Sky Valley in Georgia closed ski ops a decade or so ago.
At some we’ll try to create a timeline of openings and closures as that would probably be telling. (Perhaps one of our more industrious readers will do that and inform us 😉
Now that Sarah has posted her research, we’ll no doubt jump in and add some content. For example we heard about a ski area that was once located in Tennessee or Kentucky that used to boast slope names that were all named after different liquors. (We’ll have to research that and get it posted.)
If you have information that you’d like to share such as your experiences there, jump over on the messageboard, sign up if you haven’t already and share your knowledge and stories with other fans of those ski areas.
Check out that new portion of the messageboard by clicking here> Lost Ski Areas of the Southeast and Mid Atlantic.
Be sure to check back often for more photos being posted as well as our video blog. If you have not yet visited our Ski Messageboard Forum you should do so.
We’ll be sharing TONS more input about our plans for this season, but for a little sneak peek visit:
www.HighCountryWebCams.com
www.HighCountryWeather.com
www.SkiSoutheast.com
Send your comments, photos, videos and trip reports to: [email protected]