Good to Great Conditions Across the Southeast Ski Resorts!

First Trax

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In my ten years of posting morning updates to SkiNorthCarolina.com and SkiSoutheast.com I have never seen a pattern of weather quite like the one we’ve been in for a few days.  As we wrote within the weather updates this morning over on www.SkiSoutheast.com the weather in the Southeast is usually a lot more consistent from top to bottom than we’re seeing right now.  We called it the “The Tale of Two Regions”.

Typically you can generalize the weather of the Southeast’s highest elevations into one weather forecast and just add or subtract a few degrees and a few inches of snow, etc.  That has NOT been the case recently.  While the North Carolina Mountains are “enjoying” Spring-like 63° highs for today, other areas – like Wisp Resort at Deep Creek in Maryland are some 20° colder…today!  Skip over to SkiSoutheast.com and look at the weather forecasts for the region and you’ll see an amazing difference in forecasts from North to South.  Some areas will be getting MUCH colder temps and snow, some will be getting cold temps and no snow, some will be getting neither cold temps nor snow!  Pretty varied indeed.

Resort Notes and Highlights:

Someone over at Appalachian probably let out a HUGE GROAN yesterday when they F-I-N-A-L-L-Y saw that they had left the message “Ski Season Coming Soon” on the front page of their website ALL SEASON LONG.  We’d written them a few times, mentioned it to staffers at App on a few occasions and left messages but it has stayed there all season long.  It was getting ready to announce that there was only a few days til NEXT SKI SEASON!  However, someone finally caught the blooper when they posted their GREAT DEAL in Season Passes for the 2006-2007 season.

If you purchase your 2006-2007 season pass NOW…you can ski FREE for the rest of THIS SKI SEASON TOO! Season passes are a great deal at Appalachian for a number of reasons chief among them is the fact that you will ALWAYS find the best snow at Appalachian AND they have a longer season that most all of the other resorts.  App is typically among the first resorts to open and one of the last to close.  Adults can get an individual season pass for $400 and right NOW you’d get almost a FULL MONTH of additional skiing!  Family season passes are even better bargains.  Check out that information by visiting www.AppSkiMtn.com

SAPPHIRE VALLEY – They are open Wed/Thur/Friday 5pm to 10pm, and Sat/Sun 9am to 10pm, weather permitting. We’d CALL AHEAD.

TIMBERLINE RESORT – They not only have 30 trails open, but 100% of their back country trails are open with more than 5” of natural snow base right now.  Timberline received 7” of snow in the last 30+ hours and conditions are sweet!

Articles Are Us!

Someone wrote yesterday that they noticed that we had written 192 stories thus far this winter and they were amazed at how much information is on our websites.  Actually if she was amazed at what she saw then she’d be even more impressed with the fact that we have actually posted 380 stories thus far THIS SEASON.  If we throw in Joe Stevens’ “Joe Knows Snow” articles we have posted 390. What Sylvia saw (the 192) was only the First Trax stories. We have posted 123 weather updates, 56 On Snow Daily Compilations of On Snow Reporters updates, and 9 Business Spotlights. Thanks for noticing Sylvia and for allowing us to brag! I guarantee you that you will not find ANOTHER source for ski area information in this region that has posted that many articles this season alone.

Other Visitor Notes:

Tom Barnette of Hampton, GA wrote, “I noticed in today’s (Tuesday) morning update that you included a shot of Hawksnest Ski resort in the body of the morning story.  You guys need to do that more often because it allows us readers to know what the slopes look like THE SAME DAY.  Great job to your staff.  Just get us more photos!”

Tom, since I asked and you replied that it was okay to use your name this morning, I will be nice in the way that I answer your statement.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

I hope that Tom was being facetious because what do you think the photos that prominently make up the top of the front page each and every day are?  Those are not promotional images like you’d find on some individual ski resort sites, or other regional ski site.  They are “P-h-o-t-o-s  O-f  T-h-e  D-a-y”. 

SkiNC and SkiSoutheast.com have posted what I would guess is probably close to 10,000 times more images of most all of the ski areas that are located in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic THAN any other ski website anywhere.  So photos are what we do best!  Sometimes we get images that people send us that are a week or so old, and most often unless they are great we only get them into the photo archives and we don’t allow them to display on the front BECAUSE we want our visitors to KNOW what the conditions look like TODAY…or yesterday to be more accurate.

I think it’s funny sometimes that we’ve set such a standard of posting DAILY images that some people must genuinely wonder how recent they are, because another email came in yesterday from a visitor on SkiSoutheast.com who asked, “I noticed the picnic table snow shot at Snowshoe on the website today; could you tell me how long ago that shot was taken?”  I answered her back in terms of HOURS and not days.  Andrea Smith at Snowshoe Mountain had taken that just hours before we posted it.

That IS the cool thing about this website.  Thanks to people like Lorrie Tomlinson, Kent Jackson and Mark McKelvy, David Long (among many others) who are On-Snow reporters…and thanks to people like Andrea Smith, Lori Epp, Tiffany Keith and others at many of the ski areas…we get tons of updated images that can show you what conditions are like RIGHT NOW.  You can’t BUY that kind of information that will help you make your trip a perfectly timed one in terms of good snow and conditions.

When you add our LIVE CAMS to that mix…Photos are what we do best!


Until Next Time!

Be sure to check out www.SkiSoutheast.com  for more news and stories for all of the Southeast’s ski areas.

Be sure to email photos, snow reports and comments to: [email protected]

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