Where: Snowshoe, West Virginia
When: winter, summer
If you like: the outdoors and sports
Why you should go: Every March, as temperatures climb and days grow longer, Snowshoe Mountain throws a blow-out bash. On the final day of its winter season, which starts in early December, West Virginia residents can ski for free, a tradition that has become something of a statewide holiday. It’s not only a bargain, but a great time of year to ski, says Andy Rice, a Presbyterian minister who also serves as the resort’s race team coach. “It’s a little nicer to be outside, it’s getting warmer, but there’s still lots of great skiing to be had.”
Snowshoe, which opened in 1974, has developed a reputation for some of the best skiing in the mid-Atlantic, with 1,500 feet of vertical drop and a range of run difficulties. Its signature Cupp Run, designed by legendary French skier Jean-Claude Killy, stretches a mile and a half. For this year’s closing day, scheduled for March 22, expect the resort to be laid-back and relaxed, with skiers wearing T-shirts, Rice says. There will be music at the mountaintop ski village and a party at the Flume Shack slopeside bar. “It can be a silly, easygoing dynamic,” he says. “It’s worth the trip.”
G&G tip: There’s plenty to do at Snowshoe in the summer, too. Mountain bikers fly down over forty trails serviced by two high-speed chairlifts, and in July, the 4848 Festival—its name a nod to the elevation of the second-highest peak in West Virginia—offers a weekend of live music, craft beer, and scenic chairlift rides.
Larry Bleiberg is a Virginia native and past president of the Society of American Travel Writers. He served on a Pulitzer Prize–winning team and has won ten Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards. He has contributed to the BBC, National Geographic, The Washington Post, CNN, Fodors, Afar, AARP, and Atlas Obscura, among others. A former travel editor of the Dallas Morning News and Coastal Living, he’s also the founder of CivilRightsTravel.com, a guide to visiting historic sites from the civil rights movement.
