Living in the south, we are not in a Mecca of ski resorts. I grew up skiing in Vermont every winter and in my 20s stepped it up to skiing out west in Utah and Colorado. Neither of those options are quick or easy (or cheap!) from NC so we have to settle for the local ski “hills” when we want to take the kids skiing. Last year we travelled a bit further to spend a weekend in Winterplace, WV, where we both skied and snow tubed. This year we are staying more local, with a day trip to Appalachian Ski Mountain in early January and a long weekend later in the winter at Beech Mountain.
My oldest turned 13 (!) in early January and we decided to celebrate with a day trip to Appalachian. He and my husband had been there once a few years ago, when an ill-timed case of flu kept me and my youngest at home. So this was my first experience with North Carolina skiing. I went into it with an open mind and ready for a fun day, but I was also prepared to be somewhat underwhelmed.
Appalachian Ski Mountain is one of the three main ski resorts in the NC mountains, with Sugar Mountain and Beech Mountain rounding out the trifecta. Sugar is the largest and Beech is the highest. Appalachian, with 12 trails and 3 chair lifts, is the smallest. Only 90 miles from Charlotte, it is also the closest and makes for the easiest day trip.
Due to Covid-19, Appalachian is limiting its capacity and requiring reservations for the 2020-21 season. We made our reservations and purchased our lift tickets online ahead of time. In order to save time and avoid crowds in the lodge, we also rented our equipment in Charlotte. So when we arrived at the mountain a little before 10am, we were ready to hit the slopes.
We were lucky that snow had recently fallen. Although the mountain can (and does) make its own snow, it is always better to have some of the real stuff too. Not only did it make for better skiing, but it made for some beautiful scenery too.
The official stats say Appalachian has 6 “lifts” but two are magic carpets and one is a handle pull. Because it had been a year since we skied and it was only the kids 2nd and 3rd times skiing respectively, we started out on one of the conveyor lifts. That was a big mistake because it took forever. The line was long and the conveyor moved super slowly and stopped frequently. From getting on the lift line to the end of the run, this probably was our longest run of the day, even though it only took about 60 seconds to actually ski to the bottom of the slope.
Thankfully all the kids (we went with friends who had two boys the same ages as ours) felt ready to go after that short warm-up run and we headed to one of the three real lifts. App seems to do everything in 3s – there are 3 chair lifts, 3 conveyors, 3 green trails, 3 blue trails, 3 black trails, and 3 freestyle terrains. Beforehand I thought this would provide us enough variety but when we got there and I realized that the green trails are just the super short conveyor trails, I was worried that the kids would get bored of doing the 3 blue trails over and over.
We headed up the A lift first and came down Strudel, a blue trail. It was a decent trail and a good starting point for the kids. We did it a twice before the boys wanted to move on to the other side of the mountain. We headed over to the other two lifts to check out that area.
I felt like having two lifts here was a little deceiving. They started and ended at almost exactly the same place and ran parallel to each other. So they basically serviced the same trails, and only one of them was blue one. (There was a spot to get off one of the lifts midway up the mountain so you could join the trail where it changed from a black to a blue but the boys weren’t really comfortable with getting off at an unmanned lift exit and joining a trail in the middle of traffic.) So we had two lift choices that only led to one trail we could ski (Orchard Run). Fortunately it was the longest trail on the mountain and the boys liked it best so we went up again and again, alternating which lift we used just for variety’s sake.
I had gone into this trip knowing that Appalachian was a small mountain. But the reality is that the portion that was skiable for our group was even smaller than I realized. We literally did 2 trails and probably did one of them about 75% of the time. We fell into a tricky demographic I guess – the greens were too easy and the blacks were too hard. I’m not sure how long App has had the three freestyle runs but I assume at some point those were regular ski runs and their repurposing to freestyle took away from other options for intermediate skiers.
On the plus side, we felt like this was a very covid safe experience. They enforced mask wearing, even stopping the lift when they spotted people in line with their face covering down. It was nearly impossible to enforce 6 feet of social distancing on the lift line, but with the heavy mask enforcement and being outdoors, that didn’t feel like an issue to me. They also seemed to do a really good job limiting the crowd. We went on a Sunday, which probably helped, but there was never a big crowd or long wait on the lift lines.
At the end of the day, the kids were thrilled to be out there and had no issue doing the same run multiple times. The adults were pretty bored… but also just happy to be out there. Until the kids can ski black diamonds though, I don’t know if we’d come back. Two trails is just not enough to even fill a day. We had an 8 hour flex lift ticket but barely made it to 6 hours. I think App is a great place for true beginners and a good place for a day trip for more advanced skiers who can do black diamonds. But for those in-betweeners, it doesn’t offer a whole lot of variety. Still… all in all it was a very happy day for our new teenager!
