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NEWS
Fifth W.Va. ski resort to open Saturday
Excellent snowmaking conditions have helped West Virginia ski resorts open additional terrain as the busy holiday season approaches. Snowguns at Timberline Resort in Tucker County cover the slopes with manmade snow as natural snow also falls.
CHARLESTON -- The fifth West Virginia Ski Resort will be opening for the season on Saturday as Canaan Valley Resort opens its ski terrain, according to a press release.
The Tucker County facility will join Oglebay Resort, Snowshoe Mountain, Timberline Resort and Winterplace Ski Resort in offering skiing and snowboarding for the 2007-08 season. The recent snowfall throughout the state's mountains has helped cover the resort's slopes as the all-important holiday season quickly approaches.
Assisting the resort's snowmakers getting the slopes covered for the holiday period have been the cold temperatures keeping the snow guns operating around the clock. West Virginia ski areas are now providing the most open terrain in the mid-Atlantic and southeast regions.
The snowmakers have been generating manmade blizzards at the resorts, producing 20,000 tons of snow per hour (when combining all five resort's snowmaking efforts). That's enough snow to cover 20 football fields with a foot of snow each hour. This week's snowfall has also benefited the various Nordic areas that offer cross-country and snowshoeing to visitors to the mountains of West Virginia.
Additional skiing and snowboarding terrain, plus snow tubing parks, will be opening virtually every day at all of the resorts, weather permitting.
"The conditions have improved drastically the last couple of days at all of the resorts," says Terry Pfeiffer, president of the West Virginia Ski Areas Association. "Getting all of the resorts open for the season shows skiers, snowboarders and snowtubers that they can rely on West Virginia resorts to offer the best holiday season conditions."
The majority of the skiers and snowboarders visiting West Virginia slopes during the holiday season are from Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio.
The five-month long ski season in West Virginia has an estimated economic impact of more than $250 million and 5,000 jobs at the resorts and other related companies.
For more information on skiing and snowboarding in West Virginia, go online at www.herald-dispatch.com. Click onto Entertainment and then Outdoors for the region's largest collection of outdoors stories, photos, video and winter sports calendar.
