North Carolina skiing

The first week of January my family went skiing in North Carolina. We wanted to introduce our children to skiing and make sure they enjoyed it before booking an expensive trip out west. The temperatures over New Years weekend were getting pretty warm and we were concerned they wouldn't have any snow on the slopes. Luckily they were able to make snow the two days before we arrived.

The first day we went to Ski Beech and put our children into a one-hour lesson. After that my wife and I walked up a short slope with the kids and gave them our own private lessons, getting them to make snowplow turns.

The conditions were actually better than we expected in the morning and Ski Beech had two slopes open. But as the day progressed temperatures in the 40s created some thin coverage across the mountain.

The next day we figured there would have been too much melt at Ski Beech to make it pleasant. We looked at the web cam at Sugar Mountain and headed over there instead. We were glad we made that decision, as they obviously had more snow on the ground. But by the end of that day the Easy Street run we had our children on was turning into a mud hole. Luckily we got to ski it most of the day. The other run they had open, Flying Mile, looked like it might survive for another day of skiing. More photos from the trip can be seen in this gallery.

We're glad we made our reservations at the last minute. We were able to get a discount on lodging. I don't think I'd ever plan a trip in advance to any of the North Carolina slopes. It's just too hard to predict in advance what the conditions will be like. We certainly had a lot of fun teaching our kids to ski and the mountains were good for that.