In a quick Friday afternoon decision, I decided to surprise Shannon with a trip to Snowshoe, West Virginia. We talked about hitting the slopes all week, and the weather forecast looked great. There is no time like the present, so I began to make phone calls to find a place to stay. Everything was booked. I checked Canaan Valley first and then thought of Snowshoe. The conditions were much better at Snowshoe and the forecast called for 6 new inches of powder over the weekend. Sweet. Luckily, there was one room available at the lone bed and breakfast, the Morning Glory Inn, at the base of the mountain. We were going boarding.
Shannon came home and I told her the news. She was excited. It had been a few weeks since we had done something just the two of us, because I was busy playing in the kayak. We went to bed early and got up even earlier. The alarm rang at three o'clock in the morning... we wanted to try and leave by four. Shan slept the first two hours of the trip, while I methodically drove in a straight line down 66 and 81. I was getting sleepy by the time we hit Staunton, so Shannon took over. The most difficult part of the drive is the forty miles from Staunton to a little town called Monterey. You must cross the Alleghenies through a treacherous section of road that twists and turns its way through mountain pass after mountain pass. It is a crumpled terrain, left over from geologic activity hundreds of millions of years ago. I woke up up in the middle of some hairpin turn, feeling the gravity gently plastering my face and complimentary drool over the passenger side window.
We were chagrined to find snow covered valleys as we passed through Monterey in Highland County. The winds were fierce and drifting snow covered the road a few inches thick in many places. The sun filled the valley with the onset of morning and we stopped to take a few pictures. The region is quite remote, filled with livestock, abandoned roadside houses, and oddities such as the largest steerable radio telescope in the world, in Greenback, West Virginia. Its collecting dish occupies a space of 2.3 acres!
The weather looked great. We stepped out of the Jeep to blue skies and a chill in the air. We purchased our lift tickets and met Rusty, a former health and biology teacher from New Jersey who since retired in the paradise of West Virginia. We had much in common and he seemed to like the two of us, going so far as to offer Shannon a complimentary snowboard demo. His arms were dribbled with tattoos and told us of his adventures in the local mountains riding Harley Davidson motorcycles. He had long gray hair in a pony tail. I could have sworn I was having a conversation with my Uncle Doug.
I skied the first few runs of the day, only to discover I longed to snowboard. Plus, if we were both snowboarding, it would be more fun. Around lunch time, I rented a snowboard from Rusty and we were on our way. We spent some time on Cupp Run, but there were hoards of injuries. Every time we went down there was more blood on the slopes. We found out later that evening, two people actually lost their ability to walk, paralyzed from the waist down. They ultimately closed that side of the mountain due to unsafe slope conditions because of high traffic. It was open on Sunday again and the conditions were much better. Many people on the slopes comport themselves with a reckless abandon that proves dangerous to other riders. Skiing or riding down the mountain at mach speed, failing to make single turn, does not make you a good rider, and it incessantly annoying to folks who are trying to simply enjoy themselves.
In any case, by three o'clock we were beat, so we made our way down the mountain to our bed and breakfast. It was perfect, a wrap around front porch, fireplace, and hot tub in the room. I was already looking forward to the breakfast in the morning. I decided the bed was quite positively the best bed I ever slept in, most likely due to my exaggerated tiredness. We took a quick nap and made our way back to the top of the mountain to have dinner. We were greeted with a colorful display of fireworks. We sipped a few beers, Shanon had a burger, and I had trout, while we made a new friend with our waiter Cesar. He and his girlfriend were from Brazil on vacation from school. We liked him so much, we invited them both to stay with us if they wanted to visit the nation's capital.
We crashed hard. Shannon woke up first and quickly dragged me out of bed. Breakfast was stuffed french toast, strawberries and pecans, sausage, coffee and orange juice, and our new favorite Victorian cream with fruit. We grinned through breakfast as the snow fell beyond the warmth of the picture window.
Sunday was perfect ski weather. It snowed nearly the entire day, with pockets of blue skies here and there. The slopes were covered with a few inches of fresh powder making it easy to carve turns. We spend a lot of time in the Western Territory on some good long runs. We found another favorite area called the Northern Tract that had some nice long cruisers with a few banked turns.
Alas, the day had to come to an end. We faced a long drive home, so we got off the slopes at three thirty. After a bite to eat we were on the road again. It was slow going for the first two hours. The temperature hovered around twenty and the roads were covered in snow.
We decided it's hard to find a better time than 4848'...
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