It appears that for the most part the weather that moved in last night took the form of freezing rain and other stages of underdeveloped snow. Quite a few weather advisories are still with us this morning. Wisp and Canaan are under a Winter Weather Advisory until 10am, Massanutten has a Freezing Rain Advisory until 9am, and Ober has a High Wind Watch. It’s one of those pick your mountain and pick your fate type of days.
A majority of our ski areas where quiet over night with a few changes to share. First the good – Snowshoe has opened a couple more runs including the double black diamond Lower Shay’s Revenge. Snowshoe is also having their 24 hours of Snowshoe event this weekend. Winterplace has 26 or their 27 runs open today are has announced that they will be 100% open this weekend! To make skiing on all that open terrain a little easier, Winterplace has the coupon below for $10 off a single day lift ticket. You need to print it out and show it when purchasing your ticket.
On the flip side, Appalachian closed some terrain including 2 of their 3 parks, the diamond Thin Slice, and the blue Strudel.
There are a couple of events happening this weekend to further entice you out to the slopes. The second race in the High Country Junior Race Series takes place on Sunday at Sugar Mountain. Registration starts at 7am with the race starting at 9am. Wintergreen resort, in conjunction with Wintergreen Adaptive Sports, is having their inaugural Snowfest celebration this weekend. Wintergreen is donating $5 from for every lift ticket sold to the nonprofit Wintergreen Adaptive Sports, which is the local chapter of Disabled Sports USA.
Appalachian is having their second Burton Riglet Park Tour tomorrow (Saturday, Jan. 11) as well as the Burton Ladies Park Session. Ober is also having a Ladies Day/Belle to Belle on Saturday. And finally, Massanutten is having Demo Days on Saturday and Sunday from 9-3.
In some SkiSoutheast/ResortCams news, we have a new camera setup at the base of Wolf Ridge.
The new group over there is really starting to make a difference and we look forward to seeing Wolf grow under their leadership.
Now on to the most important news for today – the 2014 SkiSoutheast.com Summit. Mike and I have been tossing around ideas for a couple of weeks and we believe we’re getting close and want to get your feedback. We’re thinking about having the Summit at Canaan Valley this year. We thought we’d change it up to give people the opportunity to potentially ski a new area. Plus, given how close Canaan and Timberline are to one another, we are going to try to put together a package where we ski/ride a different mountain each day of the weekend. How cool is that!
As for the weekend, we’re thinking either February 21-23, the weekend after President’s Day, or February 28-March 2nd. We would like to hear from you as to your weekend of preference. I personally like February 21-23 as it is the last days of the Olympics and will coincide with the Women’s and Men’s Slalom, among others (any hockey fans out there?).
Please let us know what you think soon so we can start to solidify the plans.
Take care out there today. Like I mentioned above, it might be wet depending on where you find yourself and you can just about guarantee that wherever you are the clouds will be there with you.
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.