Over the course of the Martin Luther King weekend, Timberline received over 20 inches of snow, bringing the season total to 122 inches. All of this snow is making 2002-2003 a season to remember in the Canaan Valley. If you haven’t experienced the epic conditions in the valley yet, you have no excuses. GO! Timberline opened all of its trails this past weekend, including its venerable double black terrain. On Saturday and Sunday, I focused a lot of my energies on two of these double black trails: Off the Wall and the Drop. The Drop is just to your left as you exit the Silver Queen double. Timberline blows some snow on this trail and also grooms it occasionally. As a result, it is less challenging than its neighbor, Off The Wall, an ungroomed bump trail. The Drop reminds me a little of Lower Cupp at Snowshoe. It is fairly steep, but manageable for most advanced skiers. It does not require the expert mogul skills demanded by its neighbor Off The Wall or Lower Shay’s at Snowshoe. That being said, I enjoyed the trail immensely. It’s double black rating kept most of the intermediates away and that allowed me to relax and pick my own lines down a reasonably uncrowded slope. At one point, I tried to match a ski patroller’s descent turn for turn. I came close to mimicking his impressive performance, but unfortunately caught an edge near the end of the trail and went down. I guess that’s why he is on the patrol and not me. Off the Wall proved even more difficult than The Drop, but its thin cover in spots compelled my wife and I to abandon it after just a couple of runs to preserve our edges. Signs warned skiers of thin cover and those signs were accurate on Saturday and Sunday.
Monday was a different story. It snowed most of Sunday night and all day Monday, so I suspect Off the Wall had plenty of cover by then. However, we never made it to those trails on MLK day because the single blacks at Timberline bumped up so much, making them as challenging as the double black terrain just a day earlier. Monday was a Warren Miller experience. Snow everywhere and bumps, bumps, and more bumps! I noticed the Canaan-Timberline ski team coach, Mark Fiorini, using the bumps as make-shift gates. He would pick a tough line down a mogul field on the double black Silver Streak trail and compel some of his best racers to follow him turn for turn. As for me, I picked my own, less challenging line and had a blast. Even the blue Almost Heaven trail challenged me on Monday. It’s amazing how different a trail can ski when ungroomed and filled with powder. As is always the case with holiday weekends, the crowds were out in full on Saturday and Sunday, creating waits of almost 30 minutes at the Thunder Draft triple. Lines at the Silver Queen double, however, never got above the 15 minute mark except late Saturday afternoon, when the Thunder Draft went down for a couple of hours. No one ended up getting trapped on the lift, but the shutdown upset many skiers and created a bottleneck at the Silver Queen double. In defense of the resort, extreme cold weather often causes mechanical things to break down and the resort did make repairs in time for the Saturday night session.

On Monday, there were hardly any skiers at the mountain, so those frustrated with Saturday’s lines had an opportunity to make up for lost vertical. I certainly did. Thus far this season, I have skied 13 times on my Timberline season pass. I’m hoping to push that number well over 20 by the end of the season. With all the snow West Virginia is receiving this year, I may just meet this improbable goal.

Photos by John Sherwood.