Pennsylvania’s own Seven Springs resort has placed in the Mountain Sports and Living magazine’s Top 50 ski resort list for 1998/99. (Mountain Sports and Living was formerly known as Snow Country magazine.) For the past 10 years, readers of Snow Country magazine have voted on their favorite North American resorts. Canada’s Whistler/Blackcomb has taken top honors for seven consecutive years. This year, Seven Springs claimed position 50 on the prestigious list.

With a 750-foot vertical and no high-speed lifts, at first it seems unusual that Seven Springs would make the list, which is shared with famous resorts such as Vail, Sunday River, and Alta. But readers had plenty of positive things to say about Seven Springs. The magazine lists Seven Spring’s strong points as an accent on family fun, polite, good-natured crowds, and “Sunny Saturdays on the deck of Foggy Goggle.”

As drawbacks, the magazine points out that the central slope area can become crowded, the lifts are slow, and - something we are all familiar with - winter rain instead of snow.

The magazine also praises Seven Spring’s “sprawling, interconnected base structure,” which houses a 1,500-room hotel, 12 restaurants, racquetball courts, a pool, and even a bowling alley.

Seven Springs, which is family-owned, receives an average annual snowfall of 141 inches, and adds to that with aggressive snowmaking. The resort has been making its own snow since 1960. Seven Springs has a rich history, dating back to 1932 when founder Adolph Dupre built a Bavarian cabin for his family on the mountain. By 1935, the world’s first mechnical rope tow pulled skiers up to the top of the mountain.

Based out of Champion, Pennsylvania, the resort is located off the Pennsylvania Turnpike an hour east of Pittsburgh, and attracts over 300,000 skiers and snowboarders each season. Seven Springs is also a popular weekend retreat for skiers in the D.C. region. Seven Springs is regularly one of the first resorts to open in the area and one of the last to close.