Mike Edwards reports from Sugar on Saturday:
I arrived at Sugar this morning and it was raining. I was hoping the rain would turn to snow but I had my doubts as it was about 50 degrees. The rain continued and about 9:30 the thunder and lightning was in the air. Sugar closed the lifts for about an hour while the storm passed. I spoke to one guy that was on the lift when the first lightning was seen. He said the lift stopped and he thought to himself, oh shucks! Luckily the lift resumed almost immediately and he made it to shelter safely. The rain continued throughout the day until about 2 PM and then started to change to snow. The trails surface was very wet, soft frozen granular and there were a lot of thin and bare areas. Some places you could actually water ski. I didn’t ski much today due to the conditions and a lot of other folks stayed indoors as well. One good thing about today there is there were either short or no lift lines. I plan to go back on Sunday and hopefully the conditions will be better. Today was 2 thumbs down.
Elsa Barnes reports from Snowshoe:
Just got back from 3 days at Snowshoe yesterday. It is always an excellent experience on the mountain and I highly recommend it if you just can’t afford to go west. This year was the warmest I remember, especially Thursday. We skied at Silver Creek Weds. AM and the conditions were great-we always enjoy SC because of less crowds and the terrain on Bear Claw and Flying Eagle. They have added lots of jumps and on several of the slopes this year which was fun. Then we headed over to Snowshoe in the afternoon and hit some moguls as several trails were ungroomed. Thursday we went out to Western Territory. Cupp and Shay’s were sweet, the temperature was probably near 50 degrees so it was time to shed some layers at the bottom at Arbuckle’s. We covered the rest of the resort till afternoon. Friday was departure day and the overnight rain definitely put a damper on things as well as the fog. We just took a few runs and packed it up. Highly recommend Foxfire Grille as a dining choice and extremely fun place. This is an annual trip so we can’t wait to be back next year!
1/26/05 report at Massanutten By Gordon (fastsk8r) White
We decided to try snow tubing at Massanutten after a day of hiking the trails at the resort. The conditions were absolutely GREAT and I have to admit, I have found a new favorite SE snowtubing run. Massanutten has done a GREAT job putting together their snow tubing run. The trails are fast and fun without beating you to death. The Magic Carpet used to take you to the top has a well-built wooden walkway with handrails on each side. It is well staffed to keep the tubing safe for all involved. They also allow double tubes for those occasions when the run is slow enough to warrant it. That wasn’t the case the night we tubed, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless.
1/27/06
Other than snow tubing, we gave Thursday a rest and let Massanutten do their thing. They started blowing snow heavy early in the evening on Wed night and continued on through Friday morning. By Friday the coverage was pretty darn good and the greens had become slow enough to be unbearable. Our beginner found the greens too slow for her liking. That put us up on the blues for the first half of the day. She really enjoyed that and found their blues a bit more challenging than what she skied previously at Wintergreen.
Once she was done skiing, we moved up the mountain to the blacks. Diamond Jim was open and I found that trail to my liking. The bumps and knolls made it a lot of fun and challenged me a little to take the tougher lines. For some reason most skiers and boarders were afraid of Diamond Jim, making it the quietest and most covered trail on the mountain. Paradice got icy quicker thanks to everyone using that one. It was still skiable, but not as much fun as Diamond Jim. Dixie Dare was closed while we were there, so we never got to try it.
Apres’ ski found us at the Encounters Lounge to listen and dance to the sounds of Faded Image. It was an awesome party and a fitting end to our trip. One thing I will say, Massanutten puts on a great show overall and everyone in our group had a great time.
Christian Davies reports from Snowshoe:
We didn’t get to do much skiing today. We had planned on skiing at Wisp or Snowshoe, but with conditions looking very wet, we decided to trek over to Snowshoe for the heck of it. We ended up spending more time in the Foxfire Grill than we did on the slopes. The rain fell HARD at times and then things eased up and we did a few turns. The snow was understandably wet and not ideal for the best of times. Things got cold quickly and turned to snow and I’d imagine that conditions quickly firmed up, but we had to pack it up and head home. No reports from me til Monday now.
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 02/5/2006 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. Joe Harmon
5. Gresham Barker
6. Christian Davies