I headed up to Cataloochee with three friends. We had a great day with temperatures in the perfect NC mid-30s. Conditions were surprisingly good after the brief thaw followed by the returning cold. The only real ice to speak of was around the lift area and on the left side of Lower Omigosh, though if you hugged the steeper (and more fun!) side of the trail the snow was great and in the morning held pockets of untouched manmade
Weather wise, it was cloudy all day with the sun trying to peak out a few times. Around lunchtime it started to flurry and by 1:00 it was snowing big flakes and coming down pretty hard at times. Lift lines were never longer than 30 seconds on the double and pretty nonexistent on either of the other lifts. The only trails that ever had many people on them were Upper and Lower Snowbird.Unfortunately when I met my friends in Clayton, GA, I was running late and we were a little rushed and in the transfer between cars I forgot both my boots and my helmet/goggles
I had to rent at the Cat but when I was paying, the really nice cashier only charged me for my lift ticket because she knew I only needed boots. Another excellent example of Cataloochee's top-notch customer service! I will continue to recommend them to anybody I see 
My camera ran out of juice before I could take some pictures of the terrain park, but I have to say that it looked the most professional that I have ever seen it look. It had several boxes and rails as well as one small jump, a corrugated pipe, and a bonk. Hopefully they will get the handle tow and the enlarged park open sometime soon.
On the lift ride up looking at the excellent coverage on both Rock Island and Alley Cat.
Rock Island never had many people on it all day, at least until we left at three.
Alley Cat is only open on skier's left of the towers, but hopefully they will make some snow on the right soon and put in some terrain features (I seem to remember them saying something about having two terrain parks this year).
They have roped off most of the gladed areas to the right of Rock Island
I sure have missed the view from the top of Fie Top. Also, Upper Omigosh was the money trail all day. They are letting it mogul up again and it had great, soft snow conditions.
You can see a little of the mogulling in this photo, but it still has a ways to go. Hopefully they will keep letting it form. I was also impressed by the number of guns that have been added on this trail.
Coverage and conditions on Rock Island were flawless. Later in the afternoon my friend pulled out his GPS and clocked us top to bottom. Once we got to rock Island we would just straightline it to the bottom. We averaged 29mph and did the half a mile run in ~1:30
The snow starting to come down on Upper Snowbird which was narrow and icy in a couple spots.
The bottom half of Upper Snowbird. There were a couple of rollers but the landings were pretty icy.
Looking down Alley Cat which was not icy at all surprisingly.
This is Lower Snowbird which had fine coverage although it was a circus most of the day.
The second half of Lower Snowbird was starting to narrow but was mostly fine other than the people skiing through the woods from Alley Cat that had no business skiing any type of woods. They caused a lot of chaos at the entrance to Short-n-Sweet and I hope they don't cause problems in the future for skiing between the trails.
This thin spot on Short-n-Sweet was the only spot anywhere on the mountain that was starting to look a little rough.
There were a few places on the mountain where you could ski through trees on the edges of trails but the gladed area is completely bare right now.
Turkey Trot had very good coverage, definitely a step up from years past. It seems that Cataloochee sees this trail as a good way to funnel more beginner-level skiers to the base and I have to say that it has made Lower Omigosh much less crowded and enjoyable.
This year they have added a ton of guns to Short-n-Sweet and Turkey Trot as well as lighting both trails.
I got back into the States from Spain on the 4th and was at Cataloochee on the 5th. I think I have my priorities straight
