UPDATE (From the parking lot at Sugar Mountain)
AWESOME conditions and day of skiing at Sugar Mountain today! Sugar has a great base down and the snow is nice and soft. Just a perject day to spend on the slopes with some great early season conditions.
We missed Sugar's opening day this past Wednesday, but you will never guess who I ran into while at Sugar today. This is Tim, he was the first scan and on the first chair up at Sugar on Wednesday around 8:40 AM. So, even though we were not able to catch him coming off the chair like I wanted, here is the first skier of the 2013-14 Southeast ski season
Check out those poles – Tim makes them from bamboo. This is his first year making the poles and we'll have more on them in an upcoming post. In the meantime – congrats Tim on opening the season for us.
It looks like the rain that was originally in the forecast for today is going to hold off until tonight. So, should be a pretty good day to slide down the slopes. They are currently calling for temps in the 50’s today with partly sunny skies at the open resorts – Sugar Mountain and Cataloochee Ski Area.
If you didn’t catch it yesterday, I loaded up the video of riding in the snowcat with Cataloochee’s mountain manager Chris on opening day. I also found and shared a pretty interesting video on the science of snowmaking. You can check out the videos by clicking on the images below.
Riding in the cat at Cataloochee
The Science of Snowmaking
You can see all of our other videos here. Riding in the cat was a real treat for me and I hope you enjoy that perspective as well. I guess I’m a bit of a geek – I am very interested in the, sometimes, background efforts that make the resorts tick as well as the business of skiing in general.
I’m heading up to Sugar today to meet with the folks up there and hopefully get a few turns in. I would love to hear from anyone who will also be on the mountain today. Let’s get some runs in together.
On with the snow report for today…
Cataloochee Ski Area
Not much has changed since yesterday. They are operating with 6 slopes, 2 lifts, and 1 moving carpet. The open slopes are Lower Omigosh, Easy Way, Rabbit Hill, Upper Over Easy, Lower Over Easy, and Beginner’s Luck. The 2 lifts are Omigosh and Easy Way. Their base is 18-36 inches – down 2 inches from yesterday.
Sugar Mountain
Sugar is operating with 2 slopes today, Upper Flying Mile and Lower Flying Mile, being serviced by the yellow lift going 3/4 of the way up the mountain. Sugar has a base of 8-32 inches – down 2 inches from yesterday at sugar as well.
That’s it for today, short post as I’m about to head up the mountain myself. I hope to see a few of you at Sugar today. Drop me an email and let me know if you’re planning on being around.
Tim Bahlke
Drop me an email at [email protected] to let me know what you think or with suggestions on what we could be doing better.