DCSki Editorial Overview
The story in brief
Near Charlottesville’s Pantops Mountain, a small ski area remembered as Skiland offered an unusual answer to Virginia’s unreliable winters. Accounts place its opening in 1973, with at least part of the 1974-75 season reportedly operating. The hill used white Astroturf and polyethylene pellets marketed as “PolySnow,” allowing skiing in any weather. Night skiing and uphill service — variously recalled as a rope tow, Poma, and pony lift — complemented the single small slope, with plans for expansion that apparently never materialized.
The surface could provide surprisingly effective, consistent skiing and was especially useful for instruction, but it demanded constant maintenance. Silicone was sprayed to reduce friction, skis and turf wore quickly, and pellets had to be returned uphill after collecting at the bottom. Instructors recall teaching technical skiing, freestyle, and even aerials on the unusual surface. Visitors remember the pellets turning up in their boots, cars, and homes for years afterward. By roughly two decades after its brief operation, the site had become a housing development, ending the story of one of Virginia’s strangest ski experiments.
Generated from DCSki's historical profile and reader-contributed memories.
Chuck L. in Northern Virginia provides this recollection of a Lost Ski Area in Virginia that used polyethylene “snow” in an attempt to offer year-round skiing:
“Unfortunately, I don’t recall the name of this single-bunny-slope “resort,” but for one season in the early 1970’s there was an operating ski area just northeast of Charlottesville, Virginia. It was a few miles from the University of Virginia, on what is known as Pantops Mountain. I tried to find the location again about twenty years ago, but it had become a housing development.
The hill’s claim to fame was that it was not dependent upon the weather. It used plastic snow. In what would today be considered an environmental nightmare, they coated the slope with white astroturf and dumped on truckloads of slightly oblong, white, plastic BB’s. The claim was that you could ski in any weather, but natural snow would make it better. I remember lights for night skiing, and a rope tow. I don’t think there was snowmaking, but they had to redistribute all those plastic beads that got pushed to the bottom of the hill each day.
I skied there only once, but white pellets of polyethylene “snow” continued to fall out of my ski boots for years afterwards.”
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