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Snowfall Excites Ski Resorts in High Country, Various Snow Totals Atop Beech, Sugar and Appalachian Ski Mtn

App Ski Mountain on Friday morning - Photo by Drew Stanley
App Ski Mountain on Friday morning – Photo by Drew Stanley

By Jesse Wood

Oct. 25, 2013. The High Country woke up to some white this morning, and the ski resorts are getting excited with these snowmaking temperatures. However, the snow guns won’t start blowing until a sustained cold snap occurs after Halloween.

While the weather station at Fred’s General Mercantile, where reportedly Beech Mountain Resort received the first snow in North Carolina on Wednesday morning, recorded an official half an inch of snow, Kim Jochl at Sugar Mountain Resort said, “We’re calling it two inches.” 

Each year after Oktoberfest, Sugar Mountain Resort begins switching modes. Folks start filling applications for the winter season, preparations for the ice skating rink begin, and starting Monday, the golf course will close to get ready for tubing.

“The ball continues to roll,” Jochl said.

On the other side of the High Country, Appalachian Ski Mountain received “not quite an inch” but much more than a dusting. 

“It was definitely nice to wake up to,” Drew Stanley of App Ski Mountain said Friday morning. “If this was just a few weeks later, we’d be all over it. If nothing else, it will cool off our ground and water to help when the times comes to start making snow soon.”

A still from Sugar Mountain Resort's summit cam at about 10:30 a.m. on Friday.
A still from Sugar Mountain Resort’s summit cam at about 10:30 a.m. on Friday.

 

From the Beech Mountain Resort Facebook page, this image depicts the sunrise at Beech Mountain Resort on Friday morning.
From the Beech Mountain Resort Facebook page, this image depicts the sunrise at Beech Mountain Resort on Friday morning.