It is almost fitting that we have SNOW in the forecast for much of the Southeast ski resort area today through Wednesday. Timberline Resort brought the ski and snowboarding season to a close after they shut down after Sunday, April 5th sessions. They and Wisp Resort in Western Maryland had planned to be open this coming weekend but Wisp decided to "can" those plans after the rains of last week. Timberline decided to go ahead with plans to be open this past weekend but they scrapped plans to be open this coming weekend as well.
…and NOW it snows.
By Wednesday morning, most of the Southeast and Mid Atlantic mountain areas will have between 1"-3" of snow with 3"-7" perhaps falling across more favored snow areas around the mountaintops along the TN/NC line from Madison County south into the Smokies (isolated 8"+ reports there). Look for that kind of snow total for the snow-hungry areas into West Virginia around Snowshoe, Canaan Valley and Timberline Resort as well.
We almost ALWAYS get one more good snow in after the resorts close – and after all of the Spring flowers and trees begin to bloom. Allen Mast from over at The Mast General Store in Valle Crucis had advised us two weeks ago that he still had a few beans in his "snow jar". He told me on that he’s kept a "bean jar" at the store for several years and for every fog in August he drops a bean in the jar. Every time it snows in the winter, he pulls a bean out. He informed me only two weeks ago "Mike, winter isn’t over. We still have four beans left in the jar and I’ll tell you that every season for as long as I can remember that system has only been one or at the most two beans off." He added, "So I think we’ll have AT LEAST two more snows this season."
I HOPE he’s wrong about another one or two snowfalls. Now that the ski areas are all closed up, I’m ready for some golf, tennis and lake weather.
SKISOUTHEAST.com "PARTNERING UP" ???
We had a few people email us last week asking us about "plans for the 2009-2010 season" – however in all honesty, for now, we just want to chill a few weeks. For the first time in several off-seasons we DO have some major plans for growth that we plan to implement beginning in July and August.
However, within just the last two weeks we’ve been contacted by two different groups (one national and one regional) to consider partnering our content. Just what that means is anybody’s guess at this time, but we’re listening to proposals. Chances are we’ll "stand pat" with our independence and simply grow what we are offering, but it IS COOL to get some recognition as a top resource of information for all things skiing and snowboarding in the region. We really only care what you guys (our visitors) and the member ski resort staffers think, but we also received contact from eValid and Free-Press-Release.com – post season – about top awards nominations as one of the best ski related websites nationally. We don’t put a lot of stock in web awards because too often they hand out awards like, "The best ski website, with blue headers, and red logos" and then hand out another "top ski website award" for websites with red headers and blue logos. But these APPEAR to be legit (especially since they weren’t looking for us to "join or pay anything!").
For now – it’s time to relax and sleep in just a little bit later and move on to other pursuits of outdoor enjoyment.
We invite you to keep an eye out for these new websites (as well as some old ones) and check back sometime in September for new information on SkiNorthCarolina.com and SkiSoutheast.com:
www.iGetaways.com – Will be a new travel portal with lots of great vacation ideas
www.GolfNorthCarolina.com – This new website debuts sometime in April.
www.GolfSC.com – South Carolina is huge on golf, and we are too!
www.HighCountryOutdoors.com – This site will be "going under the knife" for a bit of a makeover!
www.HighCountryWebCams.com – We’ll be fixing some old cams, and debuting several new ones!
So stay tuned and have a great Summer! Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your day during this season. We hope you’ll come back this Fall!
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