Day one of the Summit happened to be day 99 of the 2009-2010 ski and snowboarding season for the Southeast and Mid Atlantic and if day 100 (today) is anything like yesterday then it will be one gorgeous day to be on the slopes.
I met up with a few dozen messageboard friends for the 5:30pm Satellite Shoot that turned out to be a major BUST, but if I heard it once I heard it a dozen times – "Man was the snow great on the mountain today?!?!"
IT WAS…
I had an opportunity to do some snowmobiling with Snowshoe’s outdoor adventure team last night and hats off to those guys. I’ve had the pleasure of snowmobiling with them on numerous occasions but I have to say that those guys were off the hook last night! It started out resembling one of those horseback trail rides that we’ve all been on – you know with half dead horses and a line moving so slow that you wanted to get off and help the horse along. Then about 20 minutes into it I began wondering if Robbie Knievel had kidnapped our trail leader because we were doing everything but jumping 16 double decker busses!
We began doing some crazy speed runs and I and several others left the ground more times that all of my previous snowmobile tours combined. One of our crew got lost (her fault) as she fell back far enough that she missed a turn. After waiting for her and the back guide to find her, we hit it hard again and about ten minutes before we ended the tour BoarderGirl on the messageboard (and Lisa in our office) flipped her snowmobile. I knew Lisa was a great snowboarder, but I had no idea how fearless she was. She crawled out from under the machine, had her fiancee flip it back up, and she was doing top speed again within seconds.
Again – hats off to the snowmobile guides last night. That was awesome! AWESOME. If you have an opportunity to do one of their outdoor adventure programs – you really need to take advantage of it. Here at Snowshoe they offer snowcat tours, snowshoeing and backcounty hut tours – which adds a great dining experience to the mix.
I’m wrapping up things early again this morning to head out and take some quick photos and do some videos of whatever portion of our 170+ in attendance meets up for a 9am photo op. We’re planning on doing some early turns and then I’m meeting up with Snowshoe’s fearless leader, Bill Rock who is always a positive force to be reckoned with. Bill’s one of the resort management guys in this region that truly is stoked about being on the mountain. He’s a great skier and enjoys hitting the snow as much and perhaps more than a lot of the people that he skis right past on the slopes. You can’t always say that at every mountain.
Later in the day my youngest daughters are doing a photo shoot with Snowshoe’s marketing peeps to be on some of their 2011 promotional material. They’re excited and that’s pretty cool. Speaking of promotional material – thanks tons to Snowshoe for including our SkiSoutheast.com Summit and the website in general in their on mountain video loops. We were at The Junction mid day on Friday and every few minutes there’s a clip that shows us, some of our members and a very nice prompt for people all over the mountain to learn more about skiSoutheast.com.
Very cool Bill, Laura, Ed and the entire Snowshoe marketing staff. As usual, you guys are B-O-M-B-E-R.
Saturday should be another spectacular day to ride! The high around the WV resorts should be in the 32° range with chamber-of-commerce-like blue skies – perfect for all sorts of Kodak moments. We’ll be certain to get as many as possible today and post them up.
Highs on Saturday across the Virginia, NC and Tennessee ski areas looks a bit milder today with highs reaching to near 40-45°. Overnight lows will be cold enough across the entire region tonight to make snow for those that wish to do so. There’s plenty of base for resorts NOT to make snow but some are still teasing the slopes with a little manmade powder. A few resorts are making snow overnight – just because they can. They certainly don’t have to!
Conditions will be awesome for skiing and snowboarding today and for the next two to three days and then we are looking at a little rain that is heading our way. This has been a three month stretch of near perfect (and snowy) weather so I don’t think you’ll hear even the toughest critic complain. However if you have not yet been on the slopes, do it today. Do it Sunday. Heck even do it Monday.
ONE CLOSING COMMENT BEFORE I HEAD OUT TO THE VERY FEW SLEEPYHEADS THAT MAKE IT UP TO GET IN ON OUR GROUP PHOTO…
One of the things that I was hoping to be able to comment on at our failed satellite broadcast yesterday was the fact that there is a TON of natural snow laying around up here. We drove past the biggest piles of snow that I’ve ever seen here at Snowshoe and the same can be said for Beech Mountain and many spots in the Southeast and Mid Alantic. Will Mauney (one of our team that also works at Sugar) was telling me last night of some of the backcountry skiing that he and some friends were doing on Friday that allowed them to ski terrain that perhaps only a dozen people ever have … in the high country of western North Carolina. Simply i-n-c-r-e-d-i-b-l-e!
To put this in perspective…Snowshoe, Canaan, Timberline and even Wisp Resort in Maryland have now seen TWENTY FEET OF SNOW ON THE SEASON. (Okay Snowshoe and Wisp are slightly under that mark but closing fast.) TWENTY FEET OF SNOW. Beech Mountain just passed the TEN FOOT MARK last week.
People that is a lot of snowfall. …and we still have 37 more days of snowy opportunities as Snowshoe has extended their season to April 5th and Appalachian will ski and ride til April 11th. Several other ski areas WILL CLOSE in the coming couple of weeks – narrowing our choices a bit. GET OUT and ride what are some EPIC conditions across the region. Enough can’t be said about how great it is right now – March 6th – DAY 100 of the 2009-2010 ski season.
OKAY ONE MORE CLOSING COMMENT…
By now, as I close this morning’s post, MedicSkier (Austin Beeghley) should have finished proposing to his girlfriend this morning. Snowshoe’s team are giving Austin a little assist by painting the slopes with "Will you marry me?" on them just for our snow-loving buddy. We’ll know in a few moments if she said "yes" and we’ll pass it along. Man I HOPE so because Austin is seven feet tall and one BIGGGG guy. So if he’s depressed it will tough to "pick him up".
Later…
We’re on day 100 and there are 37 more days of opportunities to enjoy the snow for the 2009-2010 ski and snowboarding season!
That’s it for today. Go enjoy the snow! Check out the Snow Report at Southeast Snow Report and please send us your favorite ski photos, ski videos, trip reports and comments to [email protected]