Brad Panovich says the cold is closing in on us and once it hits later today and into the weekend be sure to wear plenty of layers and cover all exposed parts of your body if you’re hitting the ski slopes because brothers and sisters it is going to be C-O-L-D! Brad is warning (promising) that temps will be some of the coldest that we’ve seen since the 70s and it looks to be hanging around for at least the first fifteen days of January!
Happy New Year! Accompanying this bitter cold will be some Champagne Powder Snow according to Brad Panovich and areas in the mountains of North Carolina up and into the Virginias and Maryland could see yet another burst of snow showers that should bring perhaps 2-4" of snow to the NC Mountains and as much as another 6-7" of snow into Snowshoe, Canaan Valley, Timberline and even Wisp Resort in Maryland.
Gotta LOVE this Global Warming, Climate Change or whatever the heck they were trying to sell us with the now reported falsified data. With these kinds of temps we’re going to see some glaciers building up around ponds, streams and lakes! Snowshoe and Deep Creek Lakes are already frozen and snow covered; they’ll be able to open up for ice skating if they want after this round of cold temps! …and those Polar Bears will have even more ice to hang out on if they want to move to the Southeast. Okay, I might be exaggerating on the Polar Bear thing, but not about the temps that are headed our way!
The skiing and snowboarding is awesome right now! This is kind of a broken record that we’ve been seemingly stuck on lately but that’s a good thing! I was out skiing most all day at Snowshoe on Thursday and my legs can attest to the fact that I’ve pushed every turn possible out of them for the last five days! The day started off with some light underdeveloped snow mist and then we began seeing some awesome "Charlie Brown" snowflakes for awhile and then it kind of danced between snow, sleet, mist, snow and sometimes it was doing all three from the top of the mountain to the bottom!
The skiing was phenomenal and the snow was awesome. After nearly a full day enjoying the Ball Hooter to Soaring Eagle side of the mountain, several of us headed over to Shays Revenge and Cupp Run and the milder temps combined perfectly with the snow and other moisture to create a perfectly carvable surface that made the Western Territory as good as I’ve ever skied it with the possible exception of a deep powder day or two that I’ve lucked into in the past while here.
I’m betting that most visitors would write similar experiences wherever you guys and gals skied or snowboarded this mid-week. The resorts are in great shape and there’s been a lot of snowmaking and some natural snow to make things just right.
The lone exception to this overview/summary would be over at Ober Gatlinburg where temps have not allowed snowmaking crews to do anything for a few days. They dropped a bit of base and a trail and now offer 5 of 8 trails. They will gladly welcome the frigid temps heading our way and be back to pristine shape by Saturday and Sunday.
With Brad’s forecast for the frigid temps I’m looking forward to some great turns at my home mountains of App, Cat, Beech and Wolf as well over the next week or two! Then unfortunately I HAVE to make a return trip next weekend BACK UP HERE TO SNOWSHOE (caps were used to show sarcasm) for their annual media weekend (which they could not have timed any better). That will certainly be another epic three days of skiing!
So if ANY OF YOU have not yet made it to your favorite ski resort then you guys have got to get it together and make it a point to experience these perfect conditions.
It is now 2010 and beginning January 5th, we will be promoting and awarding all of our contest giveaways and good gracious we have a ton of free vacations, free lift passes and more to give away! Be sure to watch for those to post next week! We’ll also be implementing the new video server to display all of the webcams LIVE and that should be awesome. We’ll be talking a lot more about the SkiNC and SkiSoutheast.com Summits beginning next week and we hope to break some records with attendees to these fun events.
January is ALWAYS our peak month in terms of visitor traffic and we’ll be taking advantage of that by sharing some fun ideas with you guys. All of that begins January 5th, so stay tuned!
It is a travel day for yours truly as my crew is having to drag me off the slopes to make the trip back home where I have to be an adult and work for a living! Christmas Ski Getaways are great but man it’s tough to go back to being a grownup when it’s all over!
So CHEERS to all of my fellow snow loving, skiing, snowboarding, kids-of-all-ages. Let’s plan on making more turns than ever before in 2010 and I hope to meet a bunch more of you in the coming new year! I have it on my personal list to ski at more ski areas than ever before so hopefully I’ll see you guys on the slopes!
It’s already snowing AGAIN at MANY of the ski areas reporting this morning and it should be another awesome day to be on the slopes!
Check out the Snow Report at https://www.skisoutheast.com/skireports.php and please send us you favorite ski photos, ski videos, trip reports and comments to [email protected]
Until Next Time…Happy New Year!
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