This weekend is shaping up to be a LOT of fun if you have a ski trip planned to any of the ski resorts of the Mid Atlantic and Southeast. Today will be almost Springlike with highs in the 40° across much of West Virginia and Maryland – and temps into the 50° range into Virginia and North Carolina. The snow is PLENTIFUL on the slopes, tons of terrain is open with many ski areas at 100% and the snow will be a nice carvable, soft variety that yours truly loves to make turns on!
Saturday and Sunday also look FABULOUS for all of the Winterfest activities in Blowing Rock and up on Beech Mountain. Both days should be sunny with highs in the mid to upper 30s (much more like it) and lows overnight in the low to mid 20s and THAT, my snow loving friends, means that the resorts will be making more snow and adding to already impressive bases. Remember that Snowshoe is hosting the WV Open, and with $4,000 up for grabs the competition could get fierce. The event starts at 5PM on Skidder slope. Today Snowshoe will also begin offering backcountry snowmobile tours for a truly unique perspective of the resort. Please call 1-877-441-4FUN to make your reservations today!
There’s some light snow in the forecast for this afternoon and evening for the WV and Maryland mountains. Nothing huge, but perhaps another inch of powder to add to what is already great conditions everywhere. No precip is in the mix for resorts from Virginia, Tennessee and down through North Carolina but the forecast is for perfect weather, perfect snow and great fun!
Thanks to Meteorologist Matthew East of Carolina News 14 for posting his latest forecast for the weekend.
If you want Matthew’s take on next week, there is some good video where he talks about some chances of wintry weather coming up Tuesday and into Wednesday of next week. You can check that out by clicking here> Skier’s Forecast for the Southeast.
We were supposed to be hearing from our buddy Brad Panovich this morning as we always like to get Brad’s input for the weekend, but since there’s a bunch of sunshine and no snow in the weekend forecast, Brad is probably off somewhere waxing up his skis!
DON’t FORGET THAT SKI BEECH IS HOSTING WINTERFEST THIS WEEKEND!
Instead of rehashing all of the activities, simply click here to see yesterday’s post.
According to our tracking data we had 47,672 people read the article yesterday that shared the Winterfest activities and three photos of bathing beauties. Of all of those readers we had ONE (I repeat ONE) person complain that we run a ski website and that we shouldn’t be posting photos of scantily clad, bathing beauties on it. That ONE person? A 20-something year old guy! What IS this world coming to?
Anyway, Ski Beech is not hosting a – "Here’s your grandma in coveralls, creaking down the slopes" contest". They are hosting a bathing beauty contest and it is my guess that there won’t be too many people running for the woods to avoid looking at what should be some of God’s beautiful creations skiing or snowboarding in their favorite bathing suits. By the way, my MOTHER, my wife and several of her friends read this column almost daily and they all know me to be relatively pure of heart, mind and soul – and they also know me to be a red-blooded, man who believes that God does some wonderful – W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L work!
If you guys and gals are up their on Saturday & Sunday and could snap me few photos or video of the bathing beauties and the cardboard box derby races, I’d love to post them. I may be over at the Winterfest activities in Blowing Rock unless I can convince my wife that it would be more "educational" to go to Ski Beech on Saturday! (Just kidding, heck my wife wants to go to Beech!) They have some waiter/waitresses races and a Village Rail Jam that rumor has it several participants will be hitting the stair rails over there!
Beech has posted a nice page if activities as well that is printable if you need it – click here
SNOWSHOE GOES TO 100%!
Snowshoe Mountain is officially 100% open across the resort with all 60 trails! Laura Parquette writes, "Lower Shay’s Revenge will be making its debut this morning thanks in part to the hard work of their expert snowmaking and grooming crews. Please be aware, Lower Shay’s will have a delayed 10AM opening this morning and is a double black diamond slope, so please ski or ride to your ability. Temperatures will be quite mild throughout the day with highs in the lower 40’s, but this warming trend will not last long. Temperatures will drop back into the 20’s for the remainder of the weekend with the chance for some flakes on Saturday morning. This should help us surpass last year’s season snowfall total of 133” and it’s not even February! The grooming and park teams were hard at work last night re-cutting the half pipe at Silver Creek, so it should be in perfect shape for throwing down. Speaking of throwing down, tomorrow Snowshoe is hosting the WV Open, and with $4,000 up for grabs the competition could get fierce. The event starts at 5PM on Skidder slope. Today Snowshoe will also begin offering backcountry snowmobile tours for a truly unique perspective of the resort. Please call x5982 for more info. With all of our terrain and activities open, there is no reason not to book your Snowshoe escape right now. Call 1-877-441-4FUN to make your reservation today!"
Anne Marie Jones reported from Wintergreen Resort, "We have a HUGE weekend coming up with great weather forecasted, incredible snow conditions, 100% of our slopes open, Tubing, Ridgely’s Fun Park and more! Wounded Warriors begin arriving today and will spend all weekend with us learning to ski and ride with The Wintergreen Adaptive Sports Staff. More information can be found at: www.skiwas.org . You should come up and get in on the fun. Our snow conditions are the best around! Thanks to fully automated snowmaking, we can open terrain lightning fast and cover our open trails with a fresh layer of the best quality snow overnight. This is something our loyal customers know they can count on and often rave about.
Skiing and Riding: Today we have 26 slopes and trails open and 4 lifts. We will be open for day and night sessions, skiing and riding from 9AM-10PM. The average snow base depth throughout the resort is 30”- 50”."
Canaan Valley goes to one short of 100% open with 38 trails today and super conditions with a little burst of snow expected this afternoon. Only "Swivel" is left to get open.
SKI BEECH / SKINC SUMMIT IS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21st – BE THERE!
Yesterday I received a call from Jeb Brown up at Ski Beech questioning whether or not we might have 15 people attending the SkiNC / Ski Beech Summit in February and I had to plead ignorance. While I was aware that some of our messageboard crew was initiating some plans, I had no idea how many might be attending so I hopped over to the board and made a couple of inquiries and it appeared that we might have close to 40 people already attending. If so, that will surpass the SkiNC Beech Summit of two years or so ago wherein maybe 35 people showed up. After checking my personal messages, which I rarely do, it was obvious that "Zone Driven" (one of our messageboard members) had made a few contacts at Ski Beech and he had worked out a deal with Beech to provide all Messageboard Members with ONE-HALF LIFT PASS PRICING for that one day! I spoke with Rhyne Garris of Ski Beech this morning and we’ve confirmed and shored up the deal and here’s what’s happening:
We are going to create a MEMBERS ONLY COUPON for the SkiNC / SkiSoutheast Messageboard crew that you can print out and take to any ticket window on the day of the Summit and you will automatically be given a 50% discount on your lift ticket. Lifties are normally $60 on that Saturday, so our members will get a lift ticket for $30! That’s basically buy one and get one free if you’re bringing your wife, friend, kids, etc.
We will create that coupon later today and post it! REMEMBER THAT YOU HAVE TO BE A MEMBER and all you have to do is jump over on the messageboard and join if you have not already done so. The messageboard is a great place to meet and join up with mutual snow lovers and we’ve got some colorful characters from all walks of life on there! Let’s try to BLOW THIS THING UP and set some records for the biggest North Carolina Summit yet. Who knows, we might set a record!
Look for that information later today; join and be a part of history! Here’s your chance to meet some of the more notable messageboard members, do some turns with some fun peeps, and as we get closer we will see about making some arrangements to meet up with and do so turns with some of the Ski Beech hierarchy. We’ll also want to have a meet and greet so that we can get a group photo, etc. Stay tuned!
Go enjoy the great conditions…
Until Next time…
Send your snow photos, videos, comments or emails to: [email protected]