Lorrie Tomlinson Reports from the Watauga Education Foundation benefit at Hawksnest:
Thursday night, Hawksnest hosted a benefit for the Watauga Education Foundation. They offered free lessons for beginners. Skiers, boarders, and tubing enthusiasts discovered a reduction in lift ticket prices also. ALL money derived from the night session will be donated to the foundation. The General Manager of Hawksnest, Lenny Cottom, told me that "they hope to fill in the gap between what the school board provides and what the teachers need". Hawksnest deserves special recognition for giving back to the community and assisting the local school system.
Daphne Nessler reports from Wolf Laurel:
Hi Mike, Just want you to know that I received my tickets and put them to use! I took the day off from work yesterday and my husband and I went up to Wolf. Great Day! The slope report of 12 open slopes was correct and they had plenty of coverage. It was a beautiful blue sky day but did get a little warm and caused some mushy conditions later in the day. I will take that over ice. It appeared that they were working on the double lift so my guess is that it should be working before the holiday weekend crowd arrives.
Mike Edwards reports from
I was at Sugar Friday. All of the trails were still in pretty good shape despite the warm days they have had. There were a few thin areas and some snow had a brown tint but there weren’t any bare areas except for on the “Sugar Bear” trail. Sugar Bear isn’t open much except for when Mother Nature dumps natural snow. The crowds were relatively thin during the morning but the afternoon was another story. There were lots of skiers and long lift lines. Overall I would give Friday 1 thumb up.
David Long reports from Thursday at Ski Beech:
I was able to snag another day off from work and take advantage of the Men’s Day at Beech. I arrived around 10:30 and the crowd was already gathering. The snow was exactly what was to be expected for a day as warm as today…slow. My first run I went down Oz because I had to see what this run was like. The view was amazing…wish I could say the same for the run. That sounds worse than I meant it. It is a great cruising run and perfect to warm up on but I didn’t feel any challenge from the run. I had fun riding it and was able to ride straight onto the lift. It’s a good run and if I didn’t have to cross that bridge that had no snow on it I would have taken more than one run on it. Rubber mats are not cool. All in all the day was great. I have a knee injury which really limits my time on the hill and I pushed myself today to three hours and then I just couldn’t handle the pain anymore.
This was my third time to Beech and I have fully enjoyed myself each time. Today was great and being free I can’t complain about the resort. Great day…with one huge exception. The terrain park. I have heard many people complain about this area.
Despite the knee injury I went in to see how bad it can possibly be. I have been through many different parks (hence the knee injury) and this was the single worst one I have ever seen. The basic layout was a roller at the top that had a 15′ ish box to its left.
Then it led into a flat down box that fed into the "halfpipe" that had no true vert. On the left of the halfpipe was a table top that, like the top roller, had no lead into it leaving the rider without enough speed to clear the flat.
There were also two other rollers, one of which had no landing!!! Saw a guy go off of it and realize the hard way that the landing was flat ground. Needless to say we had to stop and check on him, he was fine just shaken up from the impact. The bottom of the park had one more kicker/table top with a great landing that fed into a box that looked to be about 30 ft. The single best part of the park was this kicker and box but and I stress that BUT I went through that park 5 times and each time I wanted to hit that bottom kicker but was unable to because of the inconsiderate guys who were sitting on the landing. There was usually about 4-8 of them each of my times through and they never moved. I even went to the base, rode the lift to the top, came over, went through again and the same guys were still sitting there. It’s one thing to wait for the feature to clear but they were just sitting there. If you ever go to any park NEVER sit on the landing of a jump. I saw a skier hit the jump pretty hard, about land on one of the boarders and then start cussing him out.
Thought I would see a fight and get some good pictures as the skier got up in the boarders face but, luckily, the boarder stayed on the ground and said I’m not moving…true to his word my next slide down he was in the same spot about 20 minutes later! So the park was not set up well, not shaped well, and none of the riders gave consideration to others. Just having consideration would have made the experience MUCH better. Oh well…still had a great day!
When I left around 3:00 the crowd was really growing as schools were starting to let out. All in all a great day at Beech and I hope that I get to go again.
On-Snow Reporters:
We will keep a log of the best reporter’s submission, photos and reports. Trust us it is way to time consuming to post every pic…but send them…because we are tallying the scores. The winner of the Best On Snow Reporter for 2005-2006 will win $1000 in cash, a FREE Getaway Vacation and more. The contest will run from now through March 1st and we will choose the winner. Our choice will be based on the following and IN THE ORDER of importance.
Quality of Photos
Quality of Reports (well written, informative, unbiased)
Number of Photo Submissions
Number of Reports
Extra points will be given for getting smiling faces in the photos and including names and cities where you can.
Extra points will be awarded for creative ideas.
We will choose the winner based on how helpful and informative the reports have been.
As of 02/18/2006 here are the top vote getters. (We will only document the top three to five here throughout the season…and we may begin posting the top ten, depending on how close results are.)
We have a very close race going right now with only a few points (a day or two of posts) separately the top three.
1. Lorrie Tomlinson
2. Kent Jackson
3. Mark McKelvy
4. David Long
5. Christian Davies