I was traveling by Blue Knob the other day and decided to stop by and take a hike. I have never been there in the summer so I was curious to see just how bad the damage was as described in other posts here. By the end of the trip I was presently surprised with the slope conditions.

The first thing I noticed was there was a lot of earth movers working a little bit below the beginner slope. I don't know what they were doing but they had built up a big mound of dirt. If this is the site of the incomplete snowmaking pond it looks like they are finally working to finish it. Maybe someone else can give us more details on what is going on here.

Walking around the slopes I noticed they did not seam very eroded at all. The only places where the slopes were rocky were on the roads that go up and down the slopes. Nothing much different then the other ski areas I have hiked in the past. All the Slopes and trails were covered with a healthy patch of green. One thing I did notice was there was less top soil on the slopes then at Seven Springs. While the dirt was a little harder it was still nice and smooth and I noticed nothing that would damage ski bottoms.

I walked over to the Stembogen Bowl and was surprised to see that it appeared nothing like the rocky photos I saw earlier this year. In fact it was a very nice green all across it.

Some other improvements were going on up at Blue Knob too. There was some snow making pipe being replaced at the top of the mountain and a few of the double chairs were removed and laying on the ground.

The pictures from my trip can be found here
Blue Knob Pics

Thanks for the pictures. Very interesting how there is such a contrast in your pictures and previous ones we've seen. Do you see any evidence of that prior destruction?

Great pics! Thanks for sharing with us.

From what I saw on my hike I didn't see any damage to the slopes. I didn't see everything though because it was about 200 degrees and a little hot for an impromptu hike. What I did see was about 80% of the upper mountain and 40% of the lower mountain. I didn't see any of the glades so I can't comment on their conditions. However since the Stembogen bowl was suppose to be one of the worst places on the mountain and the condition I found it in was not so bad I tend to think that maybe the conditions on the rest of the mountain are a bit overstated.

Shearer, that stemboggen bowl looks like fun. Is it steep and where does it go?

It's really just a wide, steep curve part way down the Stembogen trail. The drop is only long enough for a handful of turns, but the entire trail is about a mile long and is a lot of funky fun when there's good snow cover. It's a hard blue or easy black in difficulty. Here's another photo by shearer (that guy's all over the internet ) of Stembogen bowl: http://community.webshots.com/photo/188583353/188583353cvexKG

Thanks guys for all the positive support of my pictures. Most of the skiing pictures I have taken have been posted on various pic hosting sites as I try them out (haven't found one I am total happy with yet). There is one place I have collected almost all my pics. That's my website Ski Shots. On this site I trying to collect pictures from all over the internet of different resorts and place them in one easy to search website. I would also encourage anyone who likes the site to keep checking back because I am in the middle of a complete site redesign. Not only am I redesigning the website I am adding a lot of new content. When I launch the new site it will now have guides on every North American ski area.