Following a mammoth of a mountain like Vail, this week’s post comes from my dear home of sunny North Carolina. Unfortunately, the warm weather NC is known for doesn’t neccessarily bode well for someone who recently became obsessed with snowboarding. However, one must make do with what they have.
The first (and only) day that I went to the Appalacian Ski Mountain- dubbed “App,” was cloudy and rainy. Compared to the powder of the Colorado mountains, I was dissappointed to find that this mountain was primarily icy man-made snow. Generally in the North Carolina mountains, the overnight temperatures will drop enough to turn the snow blowers on, and by noon-time the man-made snow will melt and re-freeze by night into layers of ice. While this is good for preventing any avalanches, it’s not neccessarily good for a ski experience.
App Ski Mountain comes right off of its parking lot into three hills. As a newbie snowboarder, I hadn’t realized yet that this mountain was really only known for its freestyle terrain (shown on the left of the picture above). The park terrain at App is quite impressive for a NC mountain, with three distinct runs called “Appaljack,” “Appal Jam,” and “AppalTop”. Not entirely sure where they became so into the word “appal,” but we can ignore that.
Other than their park runs, App has three green circle (beginner) runs, three blue square (intermediate) runs, and three black diamond (advanced) runs. The runs took maybe 5 minutes each if you were going slow, and since I (as someone who had been on the mountain for maybe 2 total days) was able to confidently navigate the blue intermediate runs, I’d say that their slope difficulty ratings weren’t the most accurate. Compared to even some of the Pennsylvania mountains, every single run at this mountain would be considered a green circle slope. I’m not sure where they’re able to justify ranking some of these slopes as black diamonds (unless some were mogul runs).
The worst part about the experience that I had driven two hours to get: the tickets. While going on a rainy day wasn’t my ideal plan, the tickets had to be purchased almost a week in advance at the time (during the end of the Covid-19 restrictions) and weren’t allowed to be switched/refunded for weather or any other emergency. While this is slightly more acceptable for a Covid-19 protection procedure, their website still has “Reserve Now” tickets that aren’t transferrable.
Overall, I wouldn’t say that the $70 lift tickets were exactly worth it for someone who wouldn’t spend the whole day at the park. Honestly, even if you spent your day on the rails and pipes of the Appal runs, I wouldn’t spend the money. I’d rather go to Sugar mountain and Beech mountain, which are two ski mountains within the surrounding 20 minutes of App in the NC Appalacian Mountains that I’ll be speaking a lot more positively about in the following two weeks. Stay tuned!