SNOWSHOE, WV – Snowshoe Mountain Resort in West Virginia has already had more than 175 inches of natural snow this winter and there’s still nearly a month to go.
“This is my 10th winter here at Snowshoe, and this has been by far the best winter in terms of snow for us up here,” Shawn Cassell, the resort’s marketing director said.
If there’s a silver lining to this long, cold winter – it’s the conditions at the slopes.
“I was here last year. It was super icy. But today, you know, there’s a little bit of powder, and I’m enjoying it,” said Chris Liang of Richmond.
On the day I arrived at Snowshoe in late February it was cold, with temperatures in the single digits. And it was snowing hard.
“People in our region know heavy wet snow, we get plenty of that, right? This stuff right here, just absolute light fluffy dry powder,” Cassell said.
Back to that part about it being the most snow they’ve seen in ten years.
While the lifts were full of people enjoying the day… Cassell took me on a tour of places where we could see just how deep the snow is.
“I’m six foot three,” Cassell said holding his hand above his head, well below the top of the ridge of snow behind us. “So this could easily be 12 feet deep.”
And remember, whether it’s the snow from mother nature – or the misty, man made snow creating clouds in the trees-It all counts.
“It’s been fun. Yeah, we love all the powder. Don’t get the ski powder very often in the east,” skier Leslie Johnson said.
Powder - because at 48-hundred feet, Snowshoe triggers lake effect snow when Great Lakes moisture suddenly hits the mountains. What locals call the Cheat Mountain Magic, referring to the geological name for the ridge that includes the resort.
In another spot we skied up to a sign marking the trails. It was about chest high.
“If it was summertime, you come up here, this sign post, we’re probably at about 15-16, feet off the ground right here. You’d need a ladder to get up here and touch these signs in the summertime,” Cassell said.
“It’s fabulous, really, yeah ... Because it’s snowing and it’s not too busy, and it’s awesome!” said snowboarder Alison Moyer. “It’s so much fun.”
But how long will the snow last once the weather warms?
“It’s hard to say. It depends on what the weather does in March,” Cassell said.
One year the resort recorded over 80 inches of snow in March alone. If that happened this year they would be looking at nearly 260 for the season.
The resort is scheduled to close on March 23. But Cassell said if there is still enough snow they will consider extending the season.