We updated the slope conditions early and then began attempting to communicate with as many as possible to get information as to how much snow fell over the last 48 hours or so…and where it fell.
To that end, our buddy and SkiSoutheast.com columnist, Joe Stevens helped us compile that information for the West Virginia area.
<Cross Country Skier at White Grass in West Virginia, sent in by Joe Stevens
Stevens’ wrote, "Here is what I found out this morning making some calls to folks that know exactly how much snow has fallen out there in the Mountains of West Virginia.
Snow is still falling throughout West Virginia right now and it’s that nice velvet stuff, what the veterans of the industry call champagne snow. As of 7:30 am this morning Tucker County received 16 inches of snow which started Tuesday and continues. Tucker County is where Timberline and Canaan Valley, along with White Grass Touring Center are located. Further south in the Allegheny Mountains in Pocahontas County where Snowshoe Mountain is located, the storm has dumped 10 inches on the region’s largest wintertime facility. Continuing along the mountain range a little bit more to the south in Raleigh County, Winterplace has received 5 inches from the storm and is open to the top today."
Joe adds, "Even more important than the snowfall are the temperatures that began dropping on Monday and have been in the teens or low single digits throughout the mountains. That has given the state’s veteran snowmakers perfect conditions to make snow around the clock. You will definitely see trail numbers grow and base depths increase due to the natural and man made snow."
Joe also provide us with a great photo of the day shot of White Grass which we have shared with you guys on the front page.
Conditions are GREAT today. Bundle up!
Here’s some numbers…
Canaan Valley – Reported to us of 6° this morning and 6" more natural snow (14" on the 2 day storm) and now 46" on the season! They have 5 trails open today with more opening by the weekend.
Timberline Resort – 6° and 13.7" of snow in the last 2 days and 49.6" on the season. Jessica Scowcroft has been great this season on keeping us up to date with Timberline happenings and they are enjoying some outrageous conditions today on 8 trails.
Snowshoe Mountain – They are at ZERO again this morning. That is two mornings in a row that Snowshoe reached 0°. They reported 6" more snow in the last 24 hours, 12" from the 2 day storm and 48" on the season.
Laura Parquette writes, "It’s another powder day! Get out your fat skis and enjoy a great day on the mountain! Throughout the day yesterday, we picked up another 6" of fresh snow and snow continues to fall this morning. With another inch bring called for today by the National Weather Service, when the storm is over, we could have up to a foot of fresh powder! If you haven’t been skiing yet… then this is the weekend to come. Not only do we have great conditions, but we are also hosting the College Winter Break. The Connection Nightclub will be packed to see the performances of Steel City Funk, Boogieburg and DJ Amaze. The party starts tomorrow and there are great deals still available, so call now! With all of this snow we will be opening our famous 1.5 mile, 1500′ foot Cupp Run on Saturday! Along with Cupp, we plan to open Camp 99, Grabhammer, Yew Pine, Bucksaw, Laurel, Little Spruce and Timberjack runs."
Winterplace Resort – They recorded another 2" of new snow (5" from the 2 day storm) and 23" on the season. 50% of Winterplace’s terrain is open (14 trails) and powder conditions.
Winterplace writes, "Snowtubing Park opens @ 1pm today! The Kiddie Park is currently NOT open – please continue to check back. We will be opening more trails as soon as possible!"
Wisp Resort – Reported a 6° low this morning and another 3" of new snow in the last 24 hours, 12" from the 2+ day storm and 32" on the season. Lori Epp says they have incredible conditions on 18 trails today. They offer snow tubing and terrain parks as well!
None of the Virginia or Tennessee resorts received any snow…but here’s their numbers:
Bryce Resort saw no natural snow other than a TRACE, but added 4" to their base with great snowmaking and has 5 trails, terrain park and tubing open til 9pm.
Massanutten is reporting 7° and a TRACE of snow. They did make a ton of snow and added 10" to the base on the 3 trails that they have open. They are open til 10pm tonight and offer 5 lanes of tubing as well. Mass reports that they will have more terrain open for the weekend so this great weather has provided them with a near-miraculous turnaround from last week!
Wintergreen Resort – Reporting 5° this morning. You HAVE to love the enthusiasm of Sara Lovejoy as they wrote, "Making Snow! Making Lots of Snow! 5 degrees at 7am, YEE HAW!!! The Upper Cross Trail, Sunrise, Tequila and the upper part of Tyro are all expected to open this weekend. Eagles Swoop, the Lower Cross Trail, Potato Patch, Discovery Ridge and Dobie are all open today. For those guests that want to tube, The Slide will be open starting at 10am. Tubing tickets are on sale now over the web and in person. The Plunge will be closed for intense snowmaking starting today and should re-open Friday afternoon. The Slide will be open from 10am-6pm Wednesday and Thursday while we have the Plunge closed.
Whenever the temperatures allow, we will continue to make snow on the trails that we have open but plan to move some of our snowmaking capacity to new trails. The best way to stay informed about what is happening up here is on the web. Please check this report prior to your visit for the most up to date snow and slope information."
Wintergreen has 6 trails open today.
Ober Gatlinburg – Kathy Doyle reported 10° this morning and only a dusting of snow. The Smoky Mountain resort has beeb deprived of the natural stuff this season as they have seen a trace a few times on the season for an accumulative 1" of seasonal snow. They are making snow and have 5 trails open.
NORTH CAROLINA RECEIVED UP TO 7" of SNOW!
Appalachian is reporting a low of 5° and a total of about 3" from the 2 day storm. They have 6 trails of packed powder and machine made on their hill and terrain park. They upped their base another 8" in the last 24 hours so conditions at App will be m-a-r-v-e-l-o-u-s!
Cataloochee is reporting 3° this morning and 3" of natural snow. They made a ton of manmade snow as well because they upped their max base depth by 12" in the last 24 hours to 24-48" of packed powder. They have seven slopes open, terrain park features and their Tube World tubing hill is open as well.
Hawksnest is reporting 4° and 5" of natural snow from the past 2 day storm total. They have also blasted the slopes with manmade snow and upped their base depth by 10" to reflect 15-35" of great conditions.
Several people have emailed as to whether Hawksnest has their terrain park open and they do not show it as open. They probably have some features up. Also they have six trails and their tubing park open.
Ski Beech is showing 4° this morning and 5" of snow from the 2 day storm. They are also reporting 5 trails open (up from the 4 that they have had thus far this season) and a base of 8-18".
There has been a lot speculation over Ski Beech talking about upping their terrain park "game". To that end, they are announcing a Rail Jam for this evening.
Ski Beech reports on their website, "Join us for a Rail Jam this Thursday evening at Ski Beech on Freestyle. We will begin our Red Baron Room Thursday Night Park Competitions this Thursday with rails and boxes set-up on Freestyle. Registration for the contest is from 4:30-5:30 at the Red Baron Room Snowboard Shop with the contest beginning at 6:30. Registration is $10 if you already have a slope ticket and $20 for registration plus a slope ticket. The awards ceremony will be at the Beech Tree following the competition at 9:00. It will be an exciting night of competition and fun. Come on out and join us for the inaugural Thursday Night Park Competition.
We have written Beech numerous times asking about different promotions but they are not answering emails.
NOTE: WE’D LOVE TO GET SOME PICS AND VIDEOS FROM THIS…so if you’re up there shoot us some images and email them to [email protected]
Sugar Mountain is showing minus 1° as a low this morning and 2" of new snow (5" for the 2 day storm) and they also made a ton of snow. They upped their base across the entire mountain by 12" from yesterday morning. They are reporting as base of 15-46" on 10 trails (the most in the state) and they have their new 10,000 sf ice skating rink open as well.
Wolf Ridge Resort is showing 8° this morning. They are also reporting a state leading snow total of 6" which coincides with what the National Weather Service reported for their area. They have 6 trails, terrain park features and tubing open today as well.
Sapphire Valley – Still no report. We called over there and their snowline is reporting them as "closed until they can make snow". We have to assume they have been able to make snow over the last couple of days and that they will probably be open this weekend. We’ll try to contact them again later today.
THE MONT IS OPEN! Cloudmont in A-L-A-B-A-M-A is open. The southernmost ski resort in the Southeast has a 6-12" base with one-half of one trail open. No, we are not kidding, they are reporting 1/2 slope open.
BASE DEPTHS CLIMBING…maybe too fast…
There is no question that all of the state’s ski areas will have their best conditions of the entire season to date…this coming weekend. If you have been delaying your ski trip awaiting good conditions…then this weekend is going to be BOMBER. Hit your favorite resort and you will not be disappointed. Conditions will be wonderful and while none of the resorts will have all of their terrain open, there will certainly be more terrain than we’ve seen all season long. It should be primo conditions with comfortable temps and no snowmaking while you’re skiing. Make plans and make the trip…you’ll thank us.
Now that I’ve remarked about how nice conditions ARE…I want to spotlight the fact that bases have grown way more than reasonable over the last three days at some resorts which certainly gives the impression that some of the bases being reported are more "marketing numbers" than an actual count.
A growth of 6-8" per day is reasonable to expect over a 24 hour period with temps near zero, which is what we’ve had. However to see some bases going up by 12-15" in a 24 hour period across all of a resort’s trails is probably an inflated figure. In one case we saw a resort jump their base depth nearly 22" in the last 48 hours.
This has been a tough season to date and resorts have done a remarkable job of providing the conditions that we’ve seen thus far. We’re just hopeful that we won’t see the kind of marketing bases that were so common years ago.
Only a couple of years ago we seemed to be complaining regularly about inflated base depths and the truth is that you can only ski on TOP of whatever is there. The fact that 40" might be under you only means that there will be enough snow to last out a warm spell. Thankfully all of the resorts have good bases with the possible exception of Ski Beech which has had more difficulty keeping snow on their terrain than all of the other resorts this season. They are now reporting 8-18" and that should make for great conditions for now through the next week as they are still making snow. Beech and all of the resorts should be able to make snow around the clock today and tonight. Snowmaking will stop sometime on Friday, but Friday night looks great with lows around 18°. Then the snowguns will be off until LATE next week.
The long range forecast shows no snowmaking through Wednesday night…and more winter weather returning for next weekend. So AGAIN…conditions should be great for the next period…and things look good for us to finally get away from the roller coaster conditions that we’ve seen thus far this season and actually get TO some normal, mid-season conditions will ALL of the terrain open.
That will be great to see!
SNOW TOTALS THUS FAR.
Numerous people have emailed asking how much snow that our resorts have seen thus far. That information is always accessible on our website as we are the only source as far as we know that documents snowfall for each of the ski areas. We have done so for four straight seasons now and you can see snowtotals for last year, 2005 and of course for this season as well.
To see that information anytime…simply click on the resort link on the front page and then that information is viewable on the middle column.
However, since so many have asked that question over the last couple of days, we have displayed it below.
2007-2008 Season Snow Total per resort:
West Virginia Resorts:
Canaan Vallery – 46"
Snowshoe Mtn – 48"
Timberline – 49.6"
Winterplace – 23"
Wisp Resort in Maryland – 32"
Virginia Resorts:
Bryce Resort – 4"
Massanutten – 3"
Wintergreen – 3"
Ober Gatlinburg – 1"
North Carolina Resorts:
Appalachian – 7"
Cataloochee – 6"
Hawksnest – 11"
Ski Beech – 13"
Sugar Mtn – 11"
Wolf Ridge – 8"
Until Next Time…Send your comments, photos and videos to: [email protected]
For resort news, photos and videos from ALL of the Southeast and Mid Atlantic ski areas, visit www.SkiSoutheast.com
See You On The Slopes!