I headed over to Washington DC for New Year to visit the girlfriend's family. I had been eyeing up a few resorts in Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia within a few hours drive of DC, in the hope of fitting in a day or two's boarding.
I packed the snow clothes more in hope than expectation and never bothered taking the board - the east coast had had a ridiculously mild winter to date and the chances weren't looking good. At most resorts it had been too mild to fire up the snow cannons to any great extent, and when I arrived on the 29th December there were only a few runs open on manmade snow in the whole region. On going for a walk about Washington on the 30th December you could comfortably stroll about in a t-shirt, and some locals were wearing shorts!
On the 1st January a blast of cold air suddenly swung down from the north, and snow forecast was telling me there would be about 5-10cm of snow in the West Virginian resorts.
Checking all of the resort websites Timberline
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timberlineresort.com]
seemed to be doing ok on the webcams so we headed there. The Appalachian scenery is stunning, slowly gaining height and climbing over rolling hills and down into valleys over and over again. Fortunately snowforecast was way out as normal, and when we arrived it had been snowing all day, and according to the locals wouldn't be stopping until at least the following night. The resort is small, friendly and welcoming, with a hotel and a few lodges right at the bottom of the slopes.
Next morning it was still snowing heavily, and there had been about 13 or 14 inches of lovely dry powdery snow so far. Given there had been no chance of firing up the snow cannons up until then, they ran constantly for the whole time we were there.
The mountain is at 3000 to 4000 feet, so a respectable 1000ft of vertical, served by a couple of bottom to top chairlifts. We had a cracking day, with fresh falling and powder drifting in all the time. It was so cold we had to buy facemasks, and even then you had to take a break every couple of runs to thaw and get a coffee.
Last run I went for a closed trail that was looking tremendous from the chairlift. Sure enough had a superb deserted run through the trees in loads of fluffy powder.
All in all an excellent experience, and I look forward to returning and trying a different resort next time. Video from the day
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www.youtube.com]
Edited 1 times. Last edit at 01.07hrs Sun 15 Jan 12 by Nelbert.