BEST CONDITIONS OF THE SEASON RIGHT NOW AT WEST VIRGINIA RESORTS

Greetings –

West Virginia Ski Resorts have taken advantage of the return of winter conditions since early January to create the best conditions of the season. Skiers and snowboarders are now finding 96 percent of the slopes open in West Virginia as 158 of the state’s 165 ski and snowboard trails are available for downhill fun. Visitors to the resorts will also find the three snow tubing hills 100 percent open at Canaan Valley, Snowshoe Mountain and Winterplace.

After natural snowfall totals were lagging in November and December all of the resorts in West Virginia have made up for lost time by receiving at least three-feet of snow in January. In some cases even more as snowfall in Tucker County where Canaan Valley Timberline Resorts are located and in Pocahontas County where Snowshoe Mountain is located, topped the four-foot mark for 2008’s first month. Along with the natural snowfall have come the lowest temperatures of the season, as the thermometer dropped into the single digits at all of the resorts during many over night periods. The cold temperatures allowed all of the resorts’ snowguns to operate around the clock, which has been vital to opening additional skiing and snowboarding terrain for visitors coming in from the various mid-Atlantic and southeast states.

The resort’s snowmakers used the cold temperatures to create manmade blizzards from north to south across the Allegheny Mountains, producing 20,000 tons of snow per hour when the temperature dropped into the teens (when combining all five resort’s snowmaking efforts at once), that’s enough snow to cover 20 football fields with a foot of snow each hour. This month’s natural snowfall also has benefited the various Nordic areas that offer cross-country and snowshoeing to visitors to the mountains of West Virginia.

Skiers and snowboarders have no excuses now to make turns on the slopes of West Virginia Ski Resorts because the conditions are great and there are still over two months left in the season.