Like many who call the mountains of the Southeast and Mid Atlantic "home" – I woke up this morning to a surprise 3-4" of snowfall. On my way in to the office I caught myself simply saying – "wow". As I sat down at my computer to begin filing this report, I attempted to dig up whatever level of journalistic vocabulary that I could to describe the start that we are being blessed with (to the 2008-2009 snow season) and all I could come with was – WOW!
I called around to get some snow totals and you could "hear" the smiles and chuckles through the phone! What an amazing start to the season! Here’s some notables:
Appalachian Ski Mountain – 18° – 4" of natural snow and a 36-58" base on OPENING DAY!!! They are opening for day skiing only right now with 5 trails and no snowmaking on the trails that are open. They are burying those still closed. Most impressive is that one of the five trails open is the Appaljack Terrain park! App hinted that with the improvements in snowmaking that they might be able to open one of their terrain parks simultaneously with the opening of their trail system. I’m not sure we’ve EVER seen that!
Remember that the FIRST 100 people get a FREE SKI TICKET TODAY AT APP!
Cataloochee is reporting 2" of snow in the last 24 hours and they are making snow in preparation for RE-Opening on Saturday!
Hawksnest TUBING – Remember that Hawksnest is a tubing only park now. They open for the season at NOON today with the longest tubing park on the East Coast!
Ski Beech is reporting 4" of new snow (which takes them to 11" on the season already) and they are planning to open for the season on SATURDAY! Bear in mind that Ski Beech, which normally receives about 80" of snowfall each season – only received 38" last year and with today’s 4" of snow they are already approaching one-third of that total!
Sugar Mountain is reporting 12°, 4" of new snow and 7 trails open for today and night skiing tonight! Sugar has already seen 11" of snow in November!
Wolf Ridge is still planning to open early in December. They picked up 3" of snow.
If you’re out and about driving, skiing or riding in the area, snap some photos and video and send them our way. We are also planning to take our crew up to Hawksnest at 2pm today to check out their new Snow Tubing Park. We’ll get some pics and video to share with you later this evening. if you’re up that way – come see us.
Nobody could have expected or hoped for any better start to the 2008-2009 ski and snowboarding season here in North Carolina! If you’ve been thinking about riding up, turn this darn computer off and get up here. The temps are cold, the snow is perfect and slopes are opening all over the place!
Be sure to hop over to SkiSoutheast.com to see the rest of the snow totals and slope openings across the rest of the region! Visit www.SkiSoutheast.com
Send your comments, photos and videos to: [email protected]