The 2006-2007 Ski Season is in the Book!

First Trax

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…and then there was NONE. I was glad to see that nobody was fooled too badly with our Sunday morning April Fool’s Joke! I received a couple of emails and two calls from people that responded with “You Got Me” but I didn’t receive even one email from anyone that was fooled enough to write me.

Well, that’s it for the 2006-2007 season! The four remaining ski areas that were open on Sunday, ended their season after day skiing sessions.

It was a strange season to say the least. Cataloochee got us going again on November 4th by opening for day skiing that weekend. (Sorry to Tammy and gang for incorrectly stating Nov 10th earlier today!) Snow was sub par all season except at a couple of Southeast and Mid Atlantic resorts and “perception” was AGAIN the toughest sale all season. First, the perception was that our ski areas had a bad season and that is not the case. Several ski areas actually ended up with skier visit totals that placed this season as one of the top ten seasons ever.

We had several people ask us about total snowfall for the season, so we’ll post the final tallies this morning to answer those queries. Here’s the season snowfall totals from greatest to least…and we’ve included the percentage of normal attained.

Timberline Resort – 148.5” or 99% of normal
Canaan Valley – 144” or 90%
Wisp Resort – 124” or 124% (3rd season in a row above average)
Snowshoe – 122” or 68%
Winterplace – 61” or 61%
Ski Beech – 40” or 50%
Sugar Mtn – 39” or 50%
Hawksnest – 35” or 54%
Wolf Ridge – 29” or 45%
Cataloochee – 24” or 60%
Bryce Resort – 23” or 77%
Appalachian – 21” or 42%
Wintergreen – 19” or 56%
Massanutten – 16” or 46%
Ober Gatlinburg – 12” or 34%
Sapphire Valley – 12” or 40%
The Homestead – 9” or 18%

It should also be noted that a good portion of the West Virginia and Maryland snowfall fell in February. Additionally, the North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee ski areas never saw a substantial snowfall of 10” or more.

All of the pre-season prognosticators such as the Woolly Worm, Ray Russell, Herb Stevens, The Farmers Almanac and numerous others were WAY off. Oh yea, I was wrong twice over. Before the season began I used all of the compiled weather commentaries and forecasted 20-25% more snow than normal for our area. Of course that didn’t happen. Then sometime in February I predicted that our ski areas would see a snowfall of 16” or more before the end of March and of course that didn’t happen either.

To his credit, our new found weatherman, Mike Stinneford of Washington, D.C. was pretty much right on target all season. He began emailing me regular updates early in the season and he was pretty accurate all season long, so here’s a tip of our cap to Mike.

PUTTING THE WRAPS ON THIS SEASON –

I have quite a lot going on right now, so I have no clue how soon I will be able to wrap up the season in terms of comments from numerous of the ski area managers. We’ll try to get you guys some feel for the numbers, etc. I also have plans to incorporate a new “report card” function for all of the ski areas and I’ll share that with you guys as soon as we can.

Most of the resorts of the Southeast are four-season resorts with tons of activities going on all summer and we invite you to check out some of these great places to visit during the time when no snow is on their trails. Many feature great golf getaways, hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding and more…so be sure to take a look when you have an opportunity.

Until then…thanks to all of you who made SkiNC and SkiSoutheast.com your home for all of the accurate slope conditions, road conditions, live cams and daily updates. We’ll try to do an even better job next season!

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