David Long Reports from Ober Gatlinburg:
Hard Pack and Frozen Granular…just how I like it. Yeah right. Today was like many days at Ober Gatlinburg where the ground is hard and choppy in the morning where the groomers have been and in the afternoon is very mushy where the sun and skier traffic has been. Mogul actually looked like conditions you would find on the olympic race courses…extremely hard packed and VERY fast. It was great to take a couple of runs down but I stayed mostly on Grizzly again today riding it as much as possible before the end of the season. The snow was very fast in the morning hours as I was lucky enough to get a few runs in before my first snowboarding class. First time in a while I have been able to fully enjoy first tracks this seaon. The day was very hot causing a lot of melting on the snow. But once the sun went down the snow very quickly firmed back up and became the frozen granular we have come to love at Ober. Oh yeah the hard pack was back as well just below the surface…oh yeah that’s right it never went away during the day. Sorry for the sarcasm. I honestly do like to ride on hard pack because I think it is one of the most difficult surface conditions to ride. I was even able to take some brief time out to play with my camera and my fellow instructor Jason as he played on an alpine board. Hopefully tomorrow will be great at Cataloochee. Too bad I can’t make it to Beech for the SkiNC Summit but I guess someone should sacrifice and tell them what Cat will be like on Sunday for them.
Christian Davies reports from Ski Beech:
I haven’t been a part of the messageboard as yet, but I saw you guys at Beech on Saturday. What a crowd! I did get to meet Mike (admin) on the board and it was good to put a face with the name of the guy who runs this great website. I’ll get involved in the board area this next year and then I won’t have to crash the party!
Conditions were really very variable at Beech on Saturday! Some areas were great, some were heavy corn and some were icy. Southern Star was all three! I loved the moguls and that trail was better late in the day. The Oz trail was open and was great until the very end of the trail where it went from nice conditions to heavy loose gran. White Lightning was the best trail all day and it was made even better by the fact that less people were on it!
Lorrie Tomlinson reports from App on Saturday:
Made it to App Friday and Saturday. Friday was a perfectly clear day without a cloud in the sky. Saturday was a warmer day, although the wind kicked in around lunch. There were some strong wind gusts at times. Saturday was also a lot more crowded. As usual, App’s lift ops did a great job of maintaining minimum lift lines. There’s been a lot of discussion, from other on snow reporters, about poor grooming at some other resorts in the past week. The groomers at App know what they are doing and conditions were great.
Dana Montgomery reports from Snowshoe Resort:
I was here all day today and staying at Highland House in the village. Conditions were a nine on a scale from one to ten! Surface conditions varied early in the day and the best trails were the blacks because less people had scraped those to heavy granular. Where the snow bottles up it was varied from sweet to heavy back to great and those transitions make you work! As the temps got colder late yesterday the snow seemed to firm up. There was a good crowd but nothing that took more than 10-15 minutes for the most part. This is my first trip to Snowshoe. I kept reading about all of the snow that SkiSoutheast.com was reporting and boy you guys know what you’re talking about! There is plenty of snow hanging around in the woods from previous snowfalls. They are calling for some flurries on Sunday and cold temperatures so things will be continued GREAT for the week ahead that we are here. I’ll send more reports.
Robert Trent reports from Winterplace:
This is my second post to SkiSoutheast.com. Great job with the stories this season guys. It’s been fun following all the stuff going on. Conditions here at Winterplace were pretty good today. Notice I didn’t say great. Just pretty good. They could use some snowmaking and grooming but all in all the conditions were pretty good. No thin coverage to speak of and no bare areas so don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I didn’t expect so much heavy granular and corn type conditions. I expect that the cold in the forecast for Sunday will help there. I love the trails here but the church groups made for a busy day on the lift lines.
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 02/26/2006 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