We ventured out in the heavy snows on Saturday around 11am with intentions to run one of our friend’s child up to Sugar Mountain and then head to Beech Mountain in time to film the Bathing Beauty contest. Due to cars all over the highway heading up to both Sugar and Beech, we didn’t make it to Beech until around 12:25pm and by that time the contest was over.
Of course heavy snow falling and temperatures in the 10° range with wind chills at or below zero made for a pretty short contest according to most that we spoke with upon our arrival.
<Liz Lott and Robin Adams posed for me (at least I got that and a little video!) They won!
Yankee Pete from 95.1 FM in Charlotte was there at the base of the mountain. He was packing up to be taken down to his vehicle as he was not able to get up to Beech without some assistance from Beech staffers. He and others reported that the bathing beauty contest was pretty short (and sweet) as Beech Ski Patroller Liz Lott and Robin Adams won the $300 first prize. This was Liz’s second straight year winning the top prize. She says she’s retiring after this season.
Don’t know about you guys but you can check out the video and share your thoughts as to whether she should be retiring just yet.
We drove over to Sugar and Beech today and while traffic was brisk, there is no question that the heavy snow road conditions held crowds down considerably. Only the top parking lot at Beech was full and only the couple closest to Sugar were as well. On a typical mid January weekend we’d see cars lining Hwy 184 at Sugar. Not so today.
Sometimes we can get too much of a good thing. Everyone wants deep powder, but timing is everything and having 18" of snowfall in the last three days at Beech was good, however the fact that it was still bombing snow today such that the DOT crews haven’t been able to do their thing…makes for not so good timing.
That said, more powder is forecasted for this evening in the Western North Carolina mountains and up through Snowshoe and the WV resorts with 3-5" more snow accumulation possible. I’m not sure how much more snow has fallen since this morning, but we’ll get you those number AM Sunday.
We’ll be post this last week-plus video blog later this evening and as a teaser, we’ll show you some snow, snow skiing at Sugar and some skin.
Check out the videos at https://www.skisoutheast.com/videos/ and we’ll post up the newest video later today.
Email me at [email protected] and tell me about the snow in your area. Send pics when you can!