For as long as I've been skiing, there has been controversy over what ski areas report for base depths, annual snowfall and surface conditions. Add another item to the list. Several areas are now only listing open trails on their detailed trail reports, with no mention that trail "X" is closed. Seven Springs is one of the guilty ski areas. (I noticed this last night.)


K-Mart Trail Report

Seven Springs Trail Report

I was reading the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Website yesterday and they had a link/ad to a website:
http://www.skiengine.com

It has info for quite a number of Mid-Atlantic resorts (including Ohio, of all places). Check out the claimed annual snowfall for the Springs at Laurel Mountain - an eye-popping (and I think truth-stretching) 250". Since they're now under the 7 Springs umbrella, and 7 Springs is claiming only 105" per year, I'm a little surprised by that number.

"Flaky"

I was skiing at timberline today and spent my day skiing in the rain all day but the snow was good and I was trying out my brand new skis. I was asking some people who worked at the mountain what was going to be open next week. Right now they have upper white lightning and the bunny hill open. They advertise white out as a seperate trail but for now it basically just the bottom of white lightning. As for what will be open next week-a couple "on hill" employees and locals I talked to said they would probably have salamander and winterset open and maybe lower almost heaven and they suggested full body gear, maybe football or hockey pads-they said with that much holiday traffic and only lightning and salamander open from the top it's going to be downright dangerous. I asked them about upper heaven and upper and lower dew drop and they laughed. I told them it was on the timberline web site that upper heaven and dew drop would be open on the 27th and they laughed harder and then they told me more or less that what goes on at timberline as far as advertising is a bit of a joke and agreed that the customer service is non existent. no kidding, like I needed someone to tell me that- the bar wasn't even open today-on a rain day! The people running the show apparently aren't skiers and don't know much about the skiing industry or more basically what their customers want-why else would you groom on powder days as they have on every powder day i've ever been there skiing. Such a shame-such good terrain and potential. but as for the false advertising we as comsumers have to start holding these resorts accountable!! I just registered for this sight and my good friend owns a condo in canaan and we ski at timberline and canaan all season almost everweekend-i'll be keeping it real this year and posting the inside scoop on these mountains-no false advertising I can gurantee you that.

Oh yeah as I was riding the lift to the top I checked out the new glade runner trail and it looks like they are going to need to either blow a lot of snow in there and prune some branches or move some gnarly looking rocks. If your going to ski on the glade runner early season make sure you stock up on p-tex and watch your eyeballs for low branches. rock on

I looked in the skisoutheast.com archives for the original comments made about resort snow total reporting. I must have looked over it, does anyone have a link to that article?