Some massive snowmaking has been ongoing at all Southeast resorts. Some base depths rocketed upwards as well. Most resorts added a couple of inches, some stayed status quo and a few went skyward! Massanutten Resort in Virginia raised their base depth since yesterday’s report by 8”. Is that possible – yes. Probable…??? Nevertheless, they and all resorts are looking quite nice today.
The Homestead Resort, which is more of a resort than a ski area, has been very quiet in the last few weeks and have posted little or no information about base depths or conditions decided to report today. They are calling their surface conditions POWDER even though they have had no snow. I can see Joe Stevens’ face turn bright red. They say that they made 6-8” of snow on the two open trails and that is definitely doable. Let’s call their conditions Manmade Powder-like conditions for today. Great – but not the kind of powder that God makes.
Wintergreen Resort does it right! The great news for today is that their York snowmaking system was able to cover the trails with another couple of inches of snow on the trails to add to our average base of 20" – 38". Wintergreen’s trails are in fantastic condition for you to come enjoy the weekend at Wintergreen. All trails have been groomed overnight and have a packed powder surface. Today, they will be skiing and riding on 21 trails and 5 lifts will be running. The Plunge and the Slide will be open with 2 hour sessions starting at 10:00 am for some exciting tubing.
Snowshoe Mountain is probably the pick of the Southeast right now with all of the natural snow and snowmaking that went down there this week. A total of 15" of snow fell from the recent storm – that took their season to date snowfall total up to 97." Around the clock snowmaking also took place most of the week. Expect great conditions there and great weather to enjoy it today!
Timberline Resort is another top pick since they are in the same “snow belt” as Canaan, Snowshoe and Wisp for that matter. Timberline has groomed about 80% of the mountains and with 29 sweet looking trails they will be a great place to be today.
Winterplace opened up the rest of their trails so they are 100% open today with Packed Powder conditions.
Wisp Resort has seen some awesome snowmaking over the last few days and with that and lots of snow they are in primo shape for all of the events planned for this weekend. Get us some photos if you’re skiing up that way.
Ober Gatlinburg was not able to make snow last night, but still looks quite nice with all of the snowmaking that they were able to do this week. They are reporting Frozen Granular conditions on five trails today.
Ski Beech, Sugar and Wolf Laurel made snow last night and as of 6am this morning Sugar and Beech were, but the guns are already off now at 8am so it will be a great day on the slopes no matter where you go in the state.
Appalachian Ski Mountain took a page out of Snowshoe’s Terrain Gardens and they have created a new Beginner Terrain Park area on Thin Slice. That’s pretty cool. Appalachian arguably has the best terrain park in the state and some would say in the Southeast. Admittedly I have only see Appalachian’s, Hawksnest’s, Sugar’s, Snowshoe’s and Wisp’s and while I’d have to say that Appalachian’s is better than the other North Carolina resorts, it’s not quite on par with Snowshoe’s and Wisp’s. There was some messageboard commentaries posted by a few overly zealous Appalachian fans claiming that App had scored a top 10 in the east ranking by some magazine for the quality of their terrain park. Not so…but it is a nice one. If you’re into tricks, App is the place in NC. If you haven’t been over there, you ought to visit because you’d be amazed at some of the talent that we have in this area.
Hawksnest didn’t make snow as far as we can tell, but they are looking pretty nice for today. They have tubing open as well. We were up there yesterday afternoon and the crowd was having a ball.
Sapphire Valley finally remembered that they needed to tell somebody that they were running a ski resort. They posted an update to their website yesterday (not this morning) after 8 days of quiet. They have made some snow in the last 72 hours and they have bother slopes open. They DID mention on their website that they would be open today and Sunday, so we’re guessing yesterday’s report will be IT for a while again.
As mentioned before, Ski Beech was making snow as late as 6am this morning. So expect some very nice conditions today. The groomers were doing their thing as we watched this morning so riding the snow today at Ski Beech should be great. Get us some photos.
Sugar Mountain made snow last night but the guns are already off. They also have three lanes of tubing going as well. Conditions look really sweet at Sugar this morning as the sun was coming up on the mountain.
Wolf Laurel got an early start to today and posted a report nice and early (thanks guys). Wolf made snow last nice and their webcam shows a winter wonderland at the base areas. Expect very nice conditions today.
Get out and enjoy it today because some showers are moving into the region tomorrow.
Until Next Time!
Be sure to email photos, snow reports and comments to: [email protected]