QUICK NOTE: If you’re looking at our Snow Reports this morning, we have one glitch that we are working to fix. The MADE SNOW and NATURAL SNOW fields are showing that resorts made and received snow when they did not. We will have that fixed by AM Monday. For today we have added whether a resort made snow or not to the comments field.
I was traveling back to the High Country from watching my USC Gamecocks whip up on Clemson earlier on Saturday and as I came through Banner Elk at about 10pm it was 36°. Driving further on Hwy 105, down the steep grade the temps rose quickly to 44°. Then as the road leveled off at the bottom, near Seven Devils and into the entrance of my neighborhood it dropped back to 36°. I knew then that snowmaking crews around the High Country were not going to making any snow.
As of 7:30am
Cataloochee Ski Area – 46° – Did not make snow – They opened to the 3/4 part of the mountain to the top of the quad on four slopes in only two nights of snowmaking – a Cataloochee first!
On Sunday, they will be skiing on four slopes, Intermediate Rock Island Run and Intermediate Lower Omigosh serviced by the Rock Island Run Quad Chairlift, Beginners Easy Way and Beginners Rabbit Hill serviced by the Easy Way Triple Chairlift on a base of 6-14”. Also, there will be some terrain features available for you to ride located on our Easy Way slope.
On Sunday, they will offer one session of skiing, day skiing from 8:30am-4:30pm, with a morning or afternoon half day rate also available.
Tammy Brown wrote this additional note, "It was another great day here on Saturday! Hope you all had one as well! We will not operate from Monday, November 30 through Thursday, December 3 but will reopen for daily operations beginning on Friday, December 4 at 1pm for skiing and riding from 1pm until 10pm. "
Sugar Mountain – 41° – Did not make snow – They are open with two slopes and one lift. Sugar is charging an Adult Full day lift/slope ticket prices of $32 and adult 1/2 day lift/slope tickets are $24. Sugar has a new lift ticket scan system in place and according to several reports they are scanning your ticket on every trip up. That really slowed things down on Saturday according to emailed reports. The other side of that is that if you lose your ticket now, Sugar will replace it which they have not done in prior years – so there’s a good side to the new system.
Appalachian Ski Mountain – 44° – Did not make snow – Waiting on more cold temps
<Ski Beech this AM
Ski Beech – 45° – Did not make snow – They have made snow and we know a ski areas that would be open with that much snow but hats off to Beech for holding out for more base. They have now announced December 5th as their intended opening date.
Wolf Laurel – 47° – Did not make snow – They have not been able to make snow yet and they are waiting for the cold to come in an allow for some dedicated snowmaking ops and get open in early December.
We received SEVERAL VIDEO SNOW DANCES over the weekend and we’ll be posting those and a winner on Monday or Tuesday. If you have not sent yours, you could win a FREE SKI GETAWAY! Check out the announcements on the front page and enter today!
For the Western North Carolina weather report, click here.
Be sure to check out SkiSoutheast.com for reports from all of the ski areas from West Virginia Ski Resorts, Wisp Ski Resort, the Virginia Ski Areas and Ober Gatlinburg as well. Visit www.SkiSoutheast.com for all of the news that IS NEWS from the Southeast and Mid Atlantic. Send your photos, videos and trip reports and comments to [email protected]