So I had the fever EXTREMELY bad to get out and ski some REAL snow on some LEGIT terrain. Clear back in August I made reservations at the Cannan Village Inn Motel for the weekend of December 28 checking out on the 30th. My plan was to head down there if they had snow even if it was the high holidays. The snow was looking pretty iffy and I cancelled because as of the 26th Timberline only had 7-8 runs open and Canaan Valley was not yet open and was only going to open 5-7 runs. To drive that far to stand in line for a few open runs just wasn't worth it to me. Instead, we decided to go to Holiday Valley, NY equally far away, but with more snowmaking, natural snow, and high speed lifts, but only 750 ft of vertical at most. Well, our 12.5 hour drive back from Nebraska for xmas turned into 16 hours due to snow. We had to drive 35-40 the last 275 miles
. This led my wife to lose her motivation to go to Holiday Valley. I hit up a friend here in Columbus from Minnesota who was living in Denver the past 5 years, who declined to go with me because he had been out of town the 6 days prior. This led me to plan C. Blue Knob had been on my radar for quite some time, and when I saw the lift lines on the Holiday Valley's webcams coupled with BK all of a sudden getting a ton of snow and opening up the whole mountain it became a no-brainer to go to Blue Knob. I think they received something like 8, 7, 14, and 3 inches since around December 17th.I had heard the BK was a pretty 'rustic' area with antiquated snowmaking, but when they have natural snow (which they did, and is not a given in the Midatlantic) the place has as serious terrain as pretty much anywhere. I was skeptical of what I had read, but having now visited BK, I can definitely say they the terrain here really is PHENOMENAL. I have skied at 40 ski areas all over the country and the terrain at BK legit and skis far bigger than the trail map suggests. Great glades, great sustained steeps, short lines and an awesome, AWESOME old school vibe. I HIGHLY recommend that any serious skier here on skinc.com go check it out when the place is going off. I'm hooked and will get there as much as I can this year when conditions are decent. The drive from Columbus is 4:35 with one short gas stop.
I could not find anybody to go with me, which didn't phase me. My plan was to get on the road by 4:15 am to get first chair and hit the pow leftovers along with what the wind blew in. Sometime after getting on the road I took this pic at 4:44 AM:
The summit from the valley is 2,000 feet higher and was 9 degrees colder. BK is an upside down resort with the lodge facilities at the summit. The road up is no joke and with snow on the road I would not want to try it without AWD/4WD. (pic does not give justice to the road).
I clicked in at 9:02 am and slayed it minus a 20 minute break and skied until 4:09 when I got back to the Subaru. There were still some pow leftovers and I skied my Surface Live Life's until about 1:00 and then switched to my Head Jo Pros. I suggest bringing a more worn pair of skis to BK as there are plenty of rocks waiting to be found.
This glade is what I saw on my first run. The snow was GREAT and steeper than it looks. It also curves to the left and continues for quite a bit more distance than shown.
This is a pic looking up the same run shortly after dropping in. It was technically closed at the time, but opened later in the day.
Here is a lift shot. This run below is VERY steep. BK has a mid-load station where you can hop off instead of going all the way to the top. This mid-load serves about 700 vertical feet of blacks, double blacks and glades. All of which are very steep and tight. At first glance 700 feet does not seem like a ton of vertical, but there was more than one instance that I had to stop because of the burning in my legs and I'm in pretty good shape. There also is not a long run out at the bottom like you will often see so nearly all of the vertical is real skiing instead of lazily cruising to the lift.
Another lift shot:
This is just a slope side pic. As you can see some areas have quite a bit of saplings. While the glades here are great, there could be MANY more. In fact, there are some glades that were previously on the trail map, but they are no longer on there. I checked them out and there was a ton of saplings that made them impassable even if they had 5 more feet of base. I hope they will bring them back even if it is the midatlantic and they simply won't be in play very much.
A pic off some green or blue run off the summit:
This is a shot of Extrovert, one of their double blacks and from what I understand their signature run. Extrovert is steep and sustained! What you see here is really only a fraction of of it. It is steep enough that there are several areas where you cannot come close to seeing the bottom. It was technically closed, but being openly poached the whole day, especially by me
. I rode up with a ski patrolmen who said they were going to focus all snowmaking efforts going forward on the expert terrain until a base is built up. When I was there all expert terrain was open on natural snow only. The forthcoming snowmaking is great because once they get a base down it will be recharged when new snow falls. Of course I hope they have a 250 inch year!This is stembogan bowl. A fun twisty black that had REALLY thin coverage. Luckily it is covered by snowmaking and they planned on blasting it.
Just another pic:
In total I took about a 20 minute break the whole day. I got to the Subaru at 4:09 PM and rolled out of the BK parking lot at 4:20.
All I can say is BK is freaking awesome! It was a LONG, LONG day but totally worth it, even solo. From what I understand conditions can be frequently crummy at BK, but when conditions are solid, you HAVE to get there. They day I was there they technically had something like 31/34 runs open and then next day only 23/34 runs open. You could still poach if you were not too worried about your skis.
