Last winter we did a long ski weekend with friends in Winterplace, West Virginia. We wanted to do another ski weekend this year with the same friends, and our priority was to find a ski-in/ski-out rental. We liked Winterplace and did have a ski-in/ski-out condo there but it was so tiny that we just couldn’t stay there again with 8 people. We quickly found that there are not a lot of ski-in/ski-out places in NC. The mountains in NC just aren’t that big so there really aren’t a lot of places to put slope-side houses.
We opened our search up to pretty much any long weekend in the winter and finally found something in Beech Mountain. We had to wait until the last weekend in February to find something with availability, which was cutting it close weather-wise, but we were excited to try a new place.
Beech Mountain is the highest ski resort in the eastern United States. It has 17 trails and 8 lifts. In the battle for title of best skiing in North Carolina, Sugar Mountain offers more and longer trails but Beech’s high altitude often comes with more snow (and better views!). The cute alpine town at the foot of the slopes gives Beech a unique feel as well.
The week before our trip, the weather was looking perfect for our ski weekend. Fresh snow was supposed to fall on Friday, leading into a weekend with perfect skiing conditions. But as the weekend drew closer, the weather forecast got progressively worse. By the time we arrived Thursday night, it was supposed to rain all Friday and Saturday and then be unseasonably warm on Sunday.
And unfortunately that forecast held. We woke up to a pretty sunrise on Friday but the clouds rolled in quickly.
A few hours later, this was the view from the same spot:
My husband was the only one who braved the rain in the morning and went out for a few runs. After lunch, the rain let up a bit (but not the fog!) so I decided to go out with him. We did two runs and honestly it was terrifying. I had never been on the mountain before and skiing down completely unfamiliar trails when you couldn’t see 3 feet in front of you was scary. We definitely didn’t want the kids out in these conditions.
Saturday was overcast but not as foggy so we got the kids geared up and headed out for a few runs. A few runs turned into one run once we got a look at the lift lines. To start the day, we were able to walk to the top of lift 1 from our house and take the green trails down. The slope itself didn’t seem crowded but when we got to the bottom there were insane lift lines. I have never seen anything like it. The wait was so long that it actually wrapped back uphill and people took off their skis for the wait.
We waited an hour to get on the lift and the kids were completely over it. Nobody was willing to ski back down on a run that was only about 10 minutes long and then wait another hour to take a lift back up to get home. The math just didn’t work out. So in the first two days, the kids did exactly one run.
At this point my impression of Beech Mountain was not the greatest. Of course the weather is unpredictable and shouldn’t be held against a place but the overcrowding was a definite knock against it. I never like crowds but am especially sensitive to them during a pandemic. Mask wearing wasn’t really enforced, which bothered me even though it was outside simply because it was so insanely crowded. I felt like Appalachian Ski Mountain, which we visited in January, had done a much better job of limiting crowds and enforcing masks and social distancing.
Part of me was tempted to just get up and leave on Sunday morning but it was a much nicer day and we weren’t quite ready to give up on Beech Mountain yet. We walked down to the top of lift 1 before opening and waited for the go-ahead from the lift operator to head down. It was a neat experience to be the first one down the slope in the morning.
What a difference a day makes! We skied for about 3 hours and had an incredible time. The slopes were empty, the lift lines were short, and the weather was great. Beech Mountain totally redeemed itself on the last day.
Once we finally got to actually ski, we really liked Beech. It has a decent variety of trails for beginners and intermediates. The blue runs (especially the ones that start at the top of the mountain) are a little more challenging than they were at Winterplace or App but not too difficult for the kids once they got warmed up. The Oz Run that went down the side of the mountain was our favorite. It didn’t go back down to the base but was an isolated trial that ended at its own lift to get back up. We would definitely come back to Beech under the right conditions – which means not super foggy or super crowded!
