Discovering the Joys of Southeast Skiing with Mike Doble: Innovations, Conditions, and Community

Welcome to the snowy slopes of the southeast and mid-Atlantic. In this episode we're hitting the trails with Mike Doble, the driving force behind SkiSouthEastcom and its family of websites. We'll dive into the heart of the region ski industry, guided by Mike's passion and dedication, from the humble beginnings of his website to their current status as community pillars. Mike's honest reporting has kept skiers and snowboarders informed, with real-time conditions and live camera feeds here about the growth of local resorts and the rise of local talent on the national stage. Like Zeb Pal and Lily Bauer, we'll explore the vital role of snowmaking technology and transform into southeast and mid-Atlantic ski scenes. We'll marvel at the engineering feats that maintain hefty snow bases at mountains like Sugar and Kataluchi, regardless of Mother Nature's whims, and we'll raise a toast to the fantastic conditions and the investments that keep trails pristine and facilities top-notch. But our adventure doesn't stop there. We delve into strategic partnerships and the revival of ski resorts like Timberline Mountain under Chip Perfect's visionary leadership, and we'll also discover the unique bond between ski resorts and meteorologists, with a special nod to Brad Panovich's expertise enhancing our snowy escapades. From tales of Timberline's turnaround to the potential for Hattley Point's revival, we're uncovering the stories that warm the hearts of ski enthusiasts and riders. So grab your boots, layer up and join us for an episode celebrating the chill and thrill of skiing in the southeast and mid-Atlantic. You're listening to Exploration Local, a podcast designed to explore and celebrate the people and places that make the Blue Ridge and Southern Appalachian Mountains special and unique. My name is Mike Andrus, the host of Exploration Local. Join us on our journey to explore these mountains and discover how they fuel a spirit of adventure. We encourage you to wander far, but explore local. Let's go. I'm super excited to have Mike Dobel here with me today. Mike is the editor and co-founder of SkiSouthEastcom, skinorthcarolinacom and resortcamscom. If you are in the southeast, or wherever you are, and you happen to look at a camera checking out the great ski conditions in the southeast, then this is the man and his company that you have to thank for that. So, mike, I know you all have a busy event this weekend, but I do appreciate you taking a couple minutes out of your morning. Welcome to the show, mike.

Well, thank you very much, and thanks for that introduction and for the comment about the big event this weekend. Hopefully we'll chat more about that in a minute, but yeah, I'm pleased to be here.

Well, Mike, let's start out with a little bit of background about you, because you are really kind of a sage when it comes to skiing in the southeast. I think For 28 years you've been involved with Ski Southeast and I'm wanting to know just a little bit about your background, all of the great work that you all are doing at Ski Southeast and Ski NC and Resortcams. Let's just find out a little bit about who you are and what makes you tick, Mike.

I appreciate you saying it that way. Yeah, ski North Carolina, ski NC, we're kind of all of those are kind of married over to SkiSouthEastcom. These days we have 16 ski areas obviously in the southeast of Atlantic. More about maybe that geography in a minute. Yeah, and I also appreciate you mentioning a comment about me kind of being the sage. I guess the older you get, the more time you spend on something. You kind of become that. But truly the real sages of this industry are a lot of the general managers, a lot of the owners, a lot of the marketing crews that a lot of those guys and gals have been at the different ski areas for quite a bit longer than I've been doing this coverage on Ski Southeast. There was really the advent back then. We knew it as the World Wide Web, obviously, but the advent of that that I got involved. But bear in mind most of these skiers have been at it 40 and 50 years or more, so they're the real sages. I'm probably the longest-tenured person to cover skiers with anything official or unofficial. Most all the ski areas these days will kind of tell you if you ask them about where you go to to get the most information. One-stop shop of everything snow reports, conditions, live cameras, those sorts of things. Certainly it's Ski Southeast and Resort Cams. I'm just a sage in this particular case because I'm the oldest guy to have something going for this length of time. But yeah, we started out of Ski North Carolina back in 1995. We thought we were on to something when we started getting a couple of hundred visitors per day. That mutated over into Ski Southeast. We had some input from Snowshoe and Canaan Valley up in West Virginia and they asked us to try to kind of expand. That Same kind of ditto that with Obergatlinburg, which is now Obermountain, over in Gatlinburg, tennessee. So that became Ski Southeast. And then we were blessed to be kind of well accepted by most every ski area in the region. Wisp Resort up in Maryland kind of became our furthest outlier and they don't consider themselves in the Southeast although they're part of the Southeastern Ski Areas Association but there and they kind of think about themselves being more in the mid-Atlantic. So our area of coverage has certainly expanded, that's for sure.

You did mention the 16 ski resorts in the Southeast, which is a lot. I'm wondering if you can kind of just kind of run through the kind of the states you know how many resorts are in each. It's really surprising to me. I didn't realize that there were 16, but yeah, we've got some good things going on here and I also love that you started with Snowshoe. That's where I kind of cut my teeth and long before the days of Silver Creek and Snowshoe combining into what it is today, this great venture. But yeah, let's talk a little bit about the geography and some of those great ski resorts within the Southeast, mike.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, you mentioned Snowshoe. Kind of a brother from another mother, joe Stevens, was the communication and marketing director at Snowshoe For about 16 years. Joe reached out to me early on I was about probably in year four of doing Ski North Carolina and he'd become a fan and undenounced to me and you know he's following us daily and then I found out that you know, most all the ski area managers, the marketing people. They also become followers of what we were doing. We thought we were kind of on to something we being, you know, my team of writers and what have you we kind of assembled where you know we called ourselves, you know, providing no bull ski reports because unfortunately a lot of people from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina that were coming up and going skiing they'd call a ski area and you know they'd say come on up. You know everything's fine and oftentimes you get out there and you'd be skiing around rocks and stuff. So we started putting together that and of course you know in the early days there were no web cameras, that you know. That technology wasn't there yet. So you know, we kind of just told a real story and finally were able to expand it out. But yeah, as far as the answer to your question, here in the state of North Carolina right now we have five ski areas that are open. There's technically six. What was called Wolf Laurel originally then became Wolf Ridge ski area over in the Mars Hill area of Western North Carolina is now called Hatley Point. The husband and wife team purchased that resort. They've spent millions of dollars already. We're hoping to get open this year. They actually had kind of a soft opening with some skiers and snowboarders from Recess Ski Shop about a week or so ago. They made snow and kind of did a test opening. So they're planning on reopening for sure this coming late fall, early winter for 2024, 2025. But we have Appalachian Ski Mountain and Blowing Rock, of course, beach Mountain, the highest ski area in the East at 5,506 feet elevations, and then we have Kataluchi, over towards Western North Carolina. You know Western Carolina University in that area. Sapphire Valley is probably the most southern and western ski area that we have and it's really more of a really nice family resort. It just happens to have a couple of ski slopes in a tubing hill. But Sapphire Valley, and then the largest ski area, probably as busy if not slightly busier than Beach Mountain, would be Sugar Mountain, and of course it's here in Banner Oak, sugar Mountain, literally five minutes away from or 10 minutes away from Ski Beach, the largest with 21 trails. And what have you State of West Virginia? We have four major ski areas, snowshoe being the largest, as you mentioned. They've got 61 slopes and trails. And you have Canane Valley, which is in Davis, west Virginia, with 46 trails when everything's open there. And then Timberline, which they kind of had a resurgence. They went out of business, went bankrupt and then a family out of Ohio Chip Perfect is his name, but anyway he bought Timberline Mountain and got it reopened now three years, three seasons ago. So now we have Canane Valley, snowshoe, timberline and Winter Place, which most people are familiar with, you know, right off the interstate there In the state of Virginia we also have four Bryce Resort, masanutton, which is where we're having our Ski Southeast Summit this weekend. We have Masanutton. Then we have the Omni Homestead Resort which is the oldest and most historic ski area and resort area in the Southeast Mid Atlantic, is always known as the Homestead until, I guess, five or six years ago. Omni International. Omni purchased the mountain and they've sunk millions of dollars in it, of course. Then we also have Winter Green Ski Area, which a lot of people are familiar with in Virginia. And then we have two states with just one ski resort each. That's Obermountain, now in Gatlinburg, tennessee, and then I mentioned earlier Wisp Resort which is in Garrett County, Maryland, which is kind of that little notch of Maryland. It should be West Virginia. That's where Wisp is located in. That's an area called Deep Creek Maryland beautiful area up there and they've got 33 slopes and trails up there. So it is surprising I know I'm rattling on what you mentioned Surprised there's a lot of people to hear that we even have a ski area, and when I mention it, and then, of course, talk about the elevations, you've got sugar and snowshoe, both with 1,400 foot verticals, and snowshoe with a 1,500 foot vertical, and you've got elevations that are approaching, if not exceeding, 4,500 feet and a number of those skiers. So we'll get a fair amount of natural snowfall and, of course, snow making is what drives the business and makes them all able to stay open for sure.

Yeah Well, just hearing you go through those and your intimate knowledge of these ski resorts, it definitely reinforces for me that you may not think you're a sage, but I think you're a sage.

So I appreciate that yeah. It's done it long enough. Done it long enough. It's an everyday thing.

That's right. So real quick on Maryland. Did Wisp Resort open up in the early 90s by any chance?

No, they actually celebrated and I want to say this has been maybe eight or nine years ago. They celebrated their 50th anniversary, so they've been around quite a while. It was a family-owned resort for a long time. We had a big media weekend up there, a giant media weekend up at Whisp Resort, garrett County, a few years back. The family that had first started Whisp Resort. They actually sold it. Obviously, as they tend to happen, they sold it a few years back, but I want to say they started maybe in 1948, something like that. I forget, but it's somewhere in that ballpark.

This is great, the Southeast Ski, one of the things that people you and I were talking a little bit about this before we started recording. There's this tendency sometimes for people to sort of turn their nose up to the ski resorts in the Southeast. As you said, people ask is there even skiing in the Southeast? Heavy focus on the Northeast and obviously out West and so forth. But the Southeast Ski resorts really are a treasure if you live here. Number one but number two it just allows people like us who live in these mountains to still have some really great winter sport recreation places to go. I'd love to hear your take on anybody that starts to sort of look down their nose at skiing in the Southeast and really kind of your philosophy of how the skiing in the Southeast just fits into the whole winter sports scene.

Gosh, yeah, that is a great statement question and lead in because it will be shocking, I would think, probably to a lot of your listeners that, first of all, skiing in the Southeast, admit Atlantic. There's kind of an old adage around here if you can ski in the Southeast, admit Atlantic, you can ski anywhere in any condition. Obviously, a lot of people will go look down their nose and say, okay, well, yeah, I've skied in the South, a lot of ice. Well, truth of the matter is I've also skied up in Trumblawn, up in Canada, up above Montreal, and the time that I was there for that week we had a lot of ice. So you can find that out in Colorado, you can find that anywhere. What I will tell you is snow making these days, and something we'll probably talk more about here in a few minutes. But snow making is what drives the ski industry. If we had to depend on natural snowfall for skiers in the Southeast and in Atlantic to be open and even up into Vermont, for that matter you'd only be open maybe a week or two out of each season. So it's snow making and the ability to make snow and now, with snow making technologies advance, so much the skiers in the Southeast and in Atlantic have conditions that can rival pretty much anywhere. In fact, a couple of, just two or three weeks ago now, we had 12 to 13 inches of snow up on Beach Mountain, followed just four days later by another 14 inches of snow. So we had, you know, right at two feet, two and a half feet of snow and a lot of powder. Conditions that would rival pretty much anywhere. The skiing in the Southeast and in Atlantic, first of all, it offers at times a lot of quality. But I'll tell you that the shocking thing that might shock a lot of your listeners is that you know the number one national champion snowboarder in the United States on the collegiate level the last two years running, came from Banner Elk, north Carolina, lily Bauer, who her father is the ski school instructor at Sugar Mountain. Lily Bauer, and the national championship in the entire country, was out in Colorado, brought home the national championship, followed up by another young lady that right now her name escapes me, but also from Lees McCray University here in Banner Elk, north Carolina. Both of those young ladies, two years running, one the nation's national championship snowboarder. So you don't have to come from out West to know and know how to ski and snowboard. Right now, the big name in snowboarding nationwide, if not the world, is a young man by the name of Zeb Powell. And Zeb Powell also came from North Carolina. He's cut his teeth on Appalachian, cattilucci or Floral. He knows these areas very well, and everybody around this region is. We're all big fans of Zeb Powell these days. So you know, there's no question that there's plenty of good terrain and all you have to do is just, you know, stay on the white stuff you know and you can have a good time here in the Southeast.

Not too long ago, you had some of your meteorologists and we will talk about them coming up here in a little bit too. But your meteorologists, yeah, I think you had like 11 or 12 of them on and they all were saying you know last year, that you know next year, next season, next season, that's what we're looking for and so far at least, in these higher elevations it is really panned out. This is. This has been a really good year this year, I think in the Southeast.

Well, it has. And you know it's so crazy because, first of all, everybody wants to talk about climate change et cetera, and there's no question, you know, regardless of how and why, the seasons are more challenging because you have to look for those open windows of you know cold temperatures where people can make, where they can make snow. But what a lot of people don't know is that really all. For example, somebody like Gunther Yoko at Sugar Mountain he's pretty aggressive with snowmaking. You get one cold night where the temperature is 20 degrees and, believe it or not, man, I mean, they can make eight to 10 inches of snow that arrive on man made snow. Now that arrival natural snow, they can make eight to 10 inches of snow across all 21 of his trails on Sugar Mountain in one night. So you give them two or three nights of of around the clock snowmaking temperatures. You know highs around 25 lows in the in the low twenties or teens. You know they can make enough snow to last for a couple of weeks. So you know, right now I mean we're looking at base depths, I'm looking at sugar right now 50 to 99 inches of base. You've got Appalachian reporting 56 to 103 inch base. You know, you do the math on that. You're looking at over eight foot depth there you didn't have snowshoe. With an average base depth across all 61 of their trails They've got 45 inches of snow. So you know, no question about it. I mean, it's been a good season, but it was going to be a good one even if we didn't have the natural snow. You know, last season, I think, snowshoe averages around 180 inches of snowfall per year and last year I think they ended up with like 55 inches of snow for the entire winter. You know, look at it right now, through this morning, they're up at 79.5 inches of snowfall so far this winter. Canane Valley and Timberline are above 100. They're at 101 right now in the season. So, yeah, it's been good for sure. And of course that's showing up. As you know, skier visits, you know, which is what pays these guys, the kind of money that they need to bring in to put up new lifts and, you know, and put out new snow making equipment every single season.

Mike, that is a great lead in actually, because earlier you mentioned the real sages and this being the general managers of these ski resorts and the snow makers. You know who are working, you know all hours of the night to try to bring in the best conditions possible. I love to hear from your perspective, because you are so intimately in the know with all of these resorts, just what kind of a challenge it is for the general managers, for the snow makers, that whole team, the crew. There may not be some of the same challenges they have out west to keep those seasons going. There's a lot of pressure on them and I love to just kind of hear your perspective a little bit about what type of pressure they're under. And that may not be a grid, we'd put it, but maybe it's more like, yeah, just your experience with the general managers and the snow making and just how valuable they are and what they bring to this industry.

Another good question, I would say. First of all, none of them feel any pressure at all. They've done this for way too long. They just understand that it's all about. You know, you can't control the weather, so you might as well deal with whatever you have. And to that end, the real heroes, you know, in the Southeast and in Atlantic and I've written about this a number of times are those in the snow making plant and the people who create and make and farm that snow, and by farming I mean grooming. They're out grooming when everybody's off the slopes at the end of the night you know 10 or 10, 30, everybody clears the slopes. That's when these snow groomers, you know, go out and they'll start running the mountain and you'll see them out, like Chris Bates with Katalucci he's the president, you know Katalucci and Maggie Valley, and yet Chris is in a groomer every single morning. He's out there before sunup and and he's, you know, grooming the snow. So the real heroes are the guys that are out there making the snow and if you ever really want to see what goes on behind the scenes, you can pick up the phone and call pretty much any skier and ask them if you can come in and kind of shadow them for one night. It'll be a real interesting take for you to see what they do. But I tell people all the time and this is by logic. If you think about it, it makes sense the very, very, very best snow making crews in the entire United States is not the world, or right here in the southeast and mid-Atlantic. And you have to ask yourself why. The reason why is because they have to be. We don't have nearly the weather. We don't have nearly the cold temperatures, we don't have nearly the natural snowfall. So these guys have to be and they really are, and I've written about them a number of times. Every ski manager that I know, the owners, the general managers, the marketing people, their riverboat gamblers they really are. And the people, like at Appalachian with Grady Mortz, you know, who founded Appalachian Ski Mountain back in the 60s, and the people who founded Whispazort I think Whispaz founded in like 1958 or 1959, something like that the people who founded these things. They're riverboat gamblers because back then we didn't even have the snow making capabilities that we have now. So they roll the dice every single year and you'll see people like Gunther Yockel and his wife Kim. They've bought and paid for I want to say two, maybe three, I think three new lifts in just the last 10 or 12 years and you know a couple of million dollars a pop. You know 10 million dollars a pop I'd have put new lifts up and they're rolling the dice that that following next two to three seasons. In the face of what everybody else is saying with climate change etc. In the face of that, they're rolling the dice and investing because they believe that it's going to come back to them in the form of using these better technologies. You know to make snow, keep snow on the mountains, and you know snow, whether it's natural snow or manmade snow, and certainly natural snow more so, is white gold. You know if you can keep snow on that mountain, people will come. And it's a testament because just in the North Carolina area alone and I know this because a recent study just came out the six operating ski areas in the state of North Carolina have an annual economic impact on those communities of $244.3 million, so almost a quarter of a billion dollars of economic impact from just those six ski areas. So there's a lot that goes into it and that's what I call those guys the real sages, because, uh, and they've got the guts to pull it off every year.

You know you said the natural snow, manmade snow, and one of the words that you hear a lot of time is fake snow. It kind of I kind of cringe whenever I hear that because it doesn't feel fake when I'm on it. And it's not fake, it's the same concept. You got precipitation and cold weather and it might be a little bit of frozen granular, but does that make your skin crawl ever when you kind of hear people talking about fake snow in the southeast?

Occasionally more so when I hear a meteorologist say it because they should know better. You know, occasionally you get the weathermen that. I've heard them, you know, we've been interviewed and uh, well, can you tell me a little bit about the resorts who blow snow? Well, two things about manmade snow. First of all, it's not blowing snow, it's making snow. Blowing snow is what drug dealers do. Making snow is what these guys do. And I've also heard a lot of people talk about, as you said, fake snow. Well, fake snow is in a can that you can get around Christmas time and spray on your windows. You know manmade snow is what these guys do. They make snow. I even heard I used to fuss a little bit about some of the mountain marketing people calling it, you know, packed powder, because in our opinion back in the day, packed powder had to be natural snow. You get a foot of snowfall, the skiers pack it down, the groomers pack it down and now you have packed powder. But I will tell you, with the technology of the snowmaking equipment out there now you know SMI and all the great snowmaking manufacturers they create a snow that rivals what falls from the heavens. The biggest difference is obviously in manmade snow and natural snow is that manmade snow will last longer. You know, snow that comes from heaven is so crystallized and so light that all it takes is, you know, just a 150 degree day and that snow is all but gone, whereas manmade snow is compacted and condensed and compressed a good bit more and it certainly lasts considerably longer. You can have. I think we had, I don't know about a month ago. We had a weekend where almost 6 or 7 inches of rain fell in a two or three day period, and yet we still had all this gear is still maintaining their bases and being able to stay open.

That is a really good point. I remember reading that article and I was having to work as a mountain host up at Kataloochee and watching that rain and really kind of wondering, because it was a deluge and you were spot on. I mean, the thin areas obviously they're going to, you know, they're going to get to grass or dirt pretty quick, but for the most part, even with all of that rain, it did not. And you were, yeah, you were definitely spot on. So kudos to you and obviously you know. You know what you're talking about and you have a lot of experience with it. But the rain also seemed to kind of help bring those water tables up too. So some of these resorts that require on or, excuse me, rely on those reserves and the reservoirs, that even the rain helped them out. So it was kind of a win-win.

To be honest with you, we're you know we're blessed to have enough cold temperatures at night that these skiers can make snow and keep everything open. And you know right now I mean it's, I will say as far as the most challenging weather so far this particular winter being an El Nino winter, as you mentioned earlier would be the ski areas in the state of Virginia. West Virginia has been favored this season Temperatures that are probably six and eight degrees colder than anywhere else in the region, which is pretty normal, but usually what you'll see temperatures, for example, it's no shoe. If you look around Sugar Beach, catalogia you'll see that there's probably only two to three degrees difference, whereas this year West Virginia has been a bit more favored. Virginia has had the most challenge and they've done really well. I mean, I'm looking right now. Bryce Resort is 100% open with all eight trails. Maffinutton has 23 of 23 trails open. Wintergreen is probably the most challenged right now with 19 of 26 trails that they have open. But that's pretty doggone good if you consider that we haven't had any real frigid nights, but it's been cold enough and the last, I think two or three nights out of the last three or four have been temperatures that have allowed all the ski areas to make snow.

Yeah, and I'm so glad to hear that places like Bryce are continuing to be 100% open. And you all have your big weekend. I know this is kind of just an abrupt pivot, but you all have your big ski southeast weekend this weekend in Maffinutton up in Virginia. This is an annual thing that you all do, right.

We tried to. Covid obviously hit, shut us down, but we had 14 straight seasons in a row that we did. A summit started at Snowshoe Mountain. A young lady by the name of Laura, our cat and Bill Rock, who used to be the general manager at Snowshoe, kind of got us started with a big invitation why don't you guys put on a summit and come up? And we did it. And each year we did that over the years and we kept growing our crowd. We had to take off, obviously because of COVID, and, like everybody did a little shutdown. And then we're cranking it back up. This season we're having the summit at I'm sorry, at Maffinutton and we're calling it the summit at the nut. Anyway, it's this Friday, saturday and Sunday and, as of this morning, we have 317 fellow skiers and snowboarders and snow lovers that are joining us from all around the southeast and mid-Atlantic and we're all invading Maffinutton tomorrow. So it should be a big time.

Oh, that's huge. So talk a little bit more about what this whole event is and why it's bringing so many people into it.

You know we started with ski North Carolina years ago. We had a message board, an old-fashioned bulletin board that, just, you know, people who were passionate about all things snow could go on and register and just kind of communicate. And you know, as with any message board, it was kind of a ghost town at first and we started seeing a bit of a crowd pick up. And next thing we noticed, you know, as people started kind of introducing themselves and saying, hey, where are you going to ski this weekend? So people started kind of meeting up and the very first summit was actually an informal summit that I think 10 or 11 guys did at Hawks Nest in North Carolina, which. Hawks Nest is no longer open, but they started the very first and obviously the idea caught on. The rest of us started talking about it and then we started putting. I think the next one was at Beach Mountain. We had a couple there and then slowly migrated up to Snowshoe. What the summit is is technically just an opportunity. If you actually go on Ski Southeast right now and click on, I think it's up around the tab that says Community. The first tab is called Discord and we have a Discord channel and if your listeners aren't familiar with Discord, a lot of the gaming community is pretty familiar with Discord where you can log on and continue to be able to connect with each other and you can share trip reports and pictures and you know what's going on. You know what happened on your day on the slopes yesterday or whatever, and I think we're up to around 400 members right now on that Discord channel. But what these summits are is just the opportunity of people who have connected on the website and they've kind of found each other, and it's not a dating service or anything else, but it's just we have found so many people. In fact I have a summit this weekend out of these 317 people that are headed that way. I want to say there's a core kind of the OGs. You know the originals. There's probably a core 2025-30 people who met on Ski North Carolina that many years ago and have followed each other and they've gone out west, they've gone to Skiers all over the Southeast and they meet up. And right now on Discord, if you go over there and look at Sugar and Beach and Kataluchia and you click on any individual slopes, you'll see people who are saying, hey, I'm going to be at beach this coming Friday, saturday, if anybody else is riding, love to meet. And they meet and they become friends and the next thing, you know they're longtime family friends and they're sharing, you know, hospital visits and everything else. So it's kind of become a virtual ski club in that sense, and these summits that we do are just the opportunity to introduce more and more people to that. So this coming Friday, saturday, sunday, tomorrow, saturday and Sunday we'll be heading and we'll be skiing out. Friday night We'll be wearing ski southeast gear and having stickers so people can kind of recognize us. We'll probably see a fair amount of people. And then on Saturday we're going to hit the slopes. At lunchtime we're going to meet at the umbrella bar at the bottom of the mountain. They've got us set up with tents and tables and stuff and we're giving away ski southeast hoodies and beanies and t-shirts and sweatshirts and stuff. We're going to be giving away a lot of swag and then on Saturday evening, I think from four to six, massinut is treating us to kind of a free ski party. It's going to be down at the umbrella bar, which is a big yurt at the bottom of the mountain, at the bottom of the slopes, and you can see the slopes and you can also see the snow tubing hill and all the lights. Massinut has got a lot to do there, but we're going to have that from four to six on Saturday night, free drinks and lots of stuff to enjoy. And then Sunday morning we have first tracks where only ski southeast people are going to be on the snow for about 30, 45 minutes with nobody else on the mountain. So it gives us an opportunity to kind of get out there and make turns and try and put first tracks out on some of the slopes that we'll be able to video and film. So just a good time to come out and meet and greet other people who love everything to do with snowboarding and skiing.

I love it. I love it and any idea of where next year is going to be held, not to get ahead of ourselves, but I know I can't go this year.

Yeah, well, we know for certain, the first weekend in March of 2025, we hosting the 15th Steest out the Summit at Snowshoe. So we know that probably going to have a summit in January. The dates are open right now, but probably have a summit in January at Beach Mountain, as far as we know right now, and we're going to try to schedule two or three every single season. See, we can't spread the wealth a little bit?

I love that. I love that. Well, let's stay on your website a little bit in what it can do for people that are interested in coming to ski in the southeast and all the different features and functions you have, because it's an amazing website.

I appreciate that man. We've grown it a lot and you know we kind of say that I lost control of the steering wheel on this website many years ago. The people who visit it I've kind of started driving it and we have more content contributors now than ever. You know people who are coming on and posting stories and people who are now doing the snow report each morning are different. I did it for probably most of the first 20 years, you know, seven days a week, so it's been nice to kind of hand the reins over to some of the other guys. Ski Southeast is pretty cool in that sense, nice community. I got a lot of trip planner things. If you're knowing you're going and you want to get lodging, there's a lot of ways to find good lodging and deals and discounts and things like that. Resort Cams is kind of a life of its own. We started Resort Cams I want to say 17, 18 years ago and we were talking about technology. I'll tell you this real quick the first webcams that we had. A lot of people especially if you've got some older listeners will know what an RCA camcorder is. But there's that old camcorder that's used to hold on your shoulder. Your family probably bought it for around $1,500. And that was what we used to have as a camcorder. Now that's been replaced by iPhones and smartphones and androids or whatever. But back then we had RCA camcorders that we duct-tape plastic bags around. We did we duct-tape plastic bags around them and called them a web camera, hooked it up with a piece of programming called Snappy, which was a capture card. We went through an old computer and that's how we had our first cameras and we were actually on the travel channel and the discovery channel showing we were like two or three of the cameras out of 300 and some out across the nation. Slowly but surely that became high tech access and panasonic cameras, weatherproofed and everything else. And of course now we have a network. We've got cameras in London, we've got cameras in the Virgin Islands, we have cameras all over. And resort cameras is most known, certainly because of the 110 television stations, mostly in the Southeast Mid-Atlantic, that use them to show people who are obviously going to become and skiing in the Southeast Mid-Atlantic. So we're pretty blessed to have a good partnership network with those guys. And because of that, resort cameras I mean we'll have anytime it snows. We'll have 200,000 people go on in one single day. So both of those websites are pretty busy, for sure.

Yeah, well, it is amazing and it's. I'm so thankful. You know, I'm like you kind of back in the day when you didn't really have much to rely on and you know you could call up or you can get a report. But you know, in the 80s and 90s especially, we just didn't have technologies and so it was what. You know. You were surprised when you got there, really. And now I find myself you know, my kids, will you know kind of ping me in the middle of the day hey, dad, do you see what's going on at Beach? Or do you see what's going on at Catter Sugar? And I'm like I do, there's nothing like yeah, yeah. So I pop on and I check it out and you know, yeah, it's almost become one of these things that is just a regular current. You know it's part of my flow in the winter is just making sure that I just sort of go through all your different cameras and just check out the different sites and or, excuse me, the different resorts and, you know, dream about being there instead of behind my desk.

It's pretty cool. 20 years ago, and you know, if you think about the progression of digital cameras, we would, we create a network of what we called on snow reporters about 20 years ago, where we just asked anybody who had a digital camera and, if you were out skiing, just take some pictures and send them to us. And there was a time where we would get, you know, 800 to a thousand emails, you know, with photos where people took, and they were very grainy, they weren't very, you know, we weren't very good. They took forever because we were on dial up back then. You know, it was a blessing when we went to DSL, right. So all of that technology's changed, but we used to have a kind of a network of people who would just send us photos and we used to give them, you know, free lift tickets and that sort of thing, and anytime we could get some good stuff to use fast forward to down. You know, man, everybody's got a computer running along with them in their pocket, you know, in the form of an iPhone, smartphone, Android, whatever. And then those who really want to go big, you know, you have your, your go pros and helmet mounted and everything else. So now, man, you know we don't even ask. It's not much question that every single day, you know, we're flooded Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. You know we're flooded with imagery and videos to use. So our job, you know, with Ski Southeast has become so much faster and so much more. We have so much more connectivity, you know, with the end users, a lot more interactive connectivity with them as well. You can FaceTime, you can live stream. Kenny's going to be. Kenny Griffin is going to be up at Masanut this evening and he plans to hit the slopes tomorrow, and the very first thing Kenny will do will break out as GoPro and do a live stream right from the slopes. So the technology has just gone bonkers in what we're able to share and how it used to be that we had to dance through a lot of hoops just to get any kind of a live interview going on the slope side. Now you can do it from pretty much any Ski area in the region.

Speaking of the region and I don't know if this is kind of putting you on the spot or if you even feel comfortable answering the question but you know, as you kind of look over the landscape and the portfolio of all of these resorts in the Southeast, there are a few that are going to really kind of stick out to me as being extremely, you know, family friendly, beginner friendly. You know my kids all started at Bryce. It was just such an amazing experience up there for them and there was enough terrain chains where they can sort of progress up even at just at that one resort. But I'm curious to know how would you sort of say you know, these are some of our resorts that really cater to or have the most for expert skiers. You know Southeast expert skiers and people who are looking to progress from, you know, just being on, all the greens and the beginners and then the places that are really really kind of family friendly and beginner friendly. And you know, hopefully that doesn't discredit any of the resorts, you know whatsoever, because they all embrace what they have and they all embrace their own geography and topography that they can't do anything about. You know, it's just what they have.

Yes, interesting. I really, really, really thought you were going to come at this from a different angle. I thought you were getting ready to talk literally about the fact that which one is the best for beginners, and then you kind of flipped it on me and said which one is the best, that people are looking for expert terrain? So you kind of flipped the question on me because I will tell you that all 16 skier is. It's a very political answer, I'll go ahead and say it up front, but all 16 skier is cater mostly to beginners, and if you don't realize that, all you have to do is look at when they first open up what are the core? trails that they're making snow. Where are they investing all their snow making? And they're doing it on those greens and certainly the easier blues. And that's because, gosh, you know, 75% of their visitors in traffic are people who only ski once or twice, maybe three times a winter. So that's the reverse, is the beginning terrain, beginner terrain. I'll also say every one of the ski mountains, because of that, do a good job of offering good terrain to ski on. I've got a couple of preferences that I tell people. If you're a beginner you probably ought to try first. Certainly, appalachian ski mountain would be one of those. Pound for pound, chris Bates and those guys, drew Stanley, operate the best you know ski area in the Southeast Mid-Atlantic. And I say pound for pound because obviously they're smaller and more compact as far as the reverse of that, which is what you flip the switch on me and surprise me with no not much question, sugar, you know you've got Gunther's way, you've got Tom terrific. You've got Balderdash, boulderdash, whichever way you want to call it. Those are some pretty challenging trails, not much question. I'm not going to say expert wise beach, a little less in terms of you know, if you're really looking as an expert to want to hit that expert terrain white lightning obviously we'll give you a little thrill occasionally if you want to hit that. I think you know. Again, if you're looking at overall areas, I will tell you Whisk Resorts got some real challenging blacks. Timberline Mountain now you know from West Virginia, timberline and right next to Canane Valley over there in Davis, Tucker County, davis, west Virginia. Timberline's got some really, really nice terrain on that mountain and in fact I've talked to some of the marketing directors at several other mountains in the area and they'll all tell you, you know they would love to have the terrain that Timberline has. They've got a couple of double blacks that are legit. So Timberline, probably chief amongst that snowshoe, I'll tell you, man, not too many people should ever be going down lower Shays Revenge, that's Snowshoe Mountain, upper Shays, really nice glide trail, long wide. But man, you hit lower Shays about as expert as you want to probably find in the Southeast going to lower Shays, lower Cup, same thing. You know upper cup, lower cup pretty difficult. Some people would tell you Widder Maker occasionally. But Widder Maker is just you know just steep, that's all it is.

Yeah.

Hopefully that answers your question. But they're all great. I think you know I don't care. I mean Whisp Resorts also got a lot of easy green glide trails. So does Timberline. Timberline's got Salamander, which is the longest trail in the region. It's two miles long.

Whoa.

If you're a snowboarder you're going to cuss it a little bit because you've got to really get some momentum to make it all the way down without having to skate some. They've all got good terrain. My favorite now is probably Twister at Timberline Mountain. Top to bottom. That is a very long, almost gives you the feeling that you're doing you know the super G or whatever it is. You watch the Olympics. Wow you have a lot of gravity, you know type skiing where you can. You know left right, left right, all the way through, and it ends going through a couple of tunnels. Oh, the end of the mountain said that they're all it's. They're all great, but I'd say probably expert sugar's got a couple, two or three. I mentioned Gunther's I'm terrific and Boulder Dash and of course I mentioned lower shades Is about as difficult as it gets. And then Timberline's got a couple of doubles that are pretty sweet.

Nice Timberline is the one that is the top on my bucket list. Actually I've skied nine of the sixteen in the southeast and the and the middle of ink, but the Timberline is the one I think they didn't. They undergo like a major renovation you might have alluded to that like in the last couple of years, or maybe even last year was a first year they opened up under the new renovation.

Yeah, won't go into the back story or history, but that mountain really fell apart with the previous ownership, unfortunately, and they were operating and on a literal shoestring budget and community up there really started complaining and they filed for bankruptcy and they shut it down. They had a lift accident that actually kind of exacerbated their downfall but then, due to some legal issues up there, the mountain was shut down. A couple made bids on it and the highest bid that one Was actually contacted within an hour of actually having the winning bid to purchase the mountain. He was contacted by a, chip perfect. It's a great name to have as a, as a new owner of the perfect family. But anyway, chip perfect in his entire family, made a phone call to the guy who made the highest bid and said Would you allow us to give you an extra little chunk of money and let us win the bid because we think we'd be better at running it? And they, they sold a guy who made the highest bid. They sold them on allowing them to do so and so, yeah, three seasons ago, chip perfect came in. They immediately put in a brand new Couple of brand new lifts, brand new lifts at the bottom of the mountain to service the entire area immediately, did millions of dollars in snow making upgrades which includes compressors and pipes and everything else immediately spent a ton of money in the base area for the Lodge and in restaurants and everything else, and then opened it up literally in Less than a year and two or three months they went from zero to hero and I kid you not, man, what they, what they did, was astonishing, and we can only hope that Deborah Hadley and her husband over at Hadley Point, which you used to be wolf, will floral right right only hope that they're doing the same thing at Hadley Point. All indications seem to say you know the look that way. So but yeah, that was a complete turnaround. And Timberline is now I mean it's arguably it's a go-to place in West Virginia for sure cool.

Well, that reinforces it for me and, yeah, that's definitely top of top of my bucket list right now. And, and I agree about Hadley Point, I really hoping all the best for that, because it seems like what they're doing in terms of the investment Changing the, the entire you know face of that lodge and you know, replacing all of the, the pipes for the water, for the snow making yeah, there's a huge investment. I'm I think we're all rooting for them, you know, no doubt, and I think they're doing the right thing too with the mountain bike trails as well, as I understand it. So I'm really stoked to hear that too. So, well, good, well, listen, I know we've been on for a while and you've got a ski southeast event at Massa, nothing that you're trying to get to. But before we let you go, the meteorologist I know Brad Panovich. I don't know if I said that name right, brad, I'm sorry if I butchered it, but they're a big part of what you do. You engage them, they use your resources, and I wonder if you could just, maybe just get kind of give a little bit of a shout out about your partnership with meteorologist in the area.

Yeah, we're blessed. Long time ago we started putting these cameras up. You know they, they. I'll tell you a little funny real story back story. I think it was 1999, maybe 2000, I put up the very first web cameras. The website was highcountry webcamscom. I didn't announce it to anybody, I just put it up and had it running and it was almost like the field of dreams movie. You know, though, kevin Costner movie, build it and they will come. I put it up and it was Thanksgiving weekend. I was over visiting with my brother and my mom was in the living room watching the Macy's Parade and a commercial came on and all of a sudden my mom screamed At the top of her voice and we all ran in to see what had happened to mom. And what had happened was is on the television screen. She saw WBT out of Charlotte was featuring showing high-country web cameras on screen cool and. Eric Thomas, which was, you know, chief meteorologist there and still is, was featuring high-country web cam and you know to ask how in the world would he know? Well, we had already put up cameras. We just didn't have them on an official website. But we had evidently had enough following with with ski North Carolina that people realized there was cameras around. But yeah, we're really blessed to have right now I think we're over 120 Television meteorologist Joe Murgo and the guys up in the Altoona Pennsylvania. They feature Wisp a lot. We have a lot of WB AL out of Baltimore. You mentioned Brad Panovich and you did pronounce his name right. Yeah but Brad. Brad is probably the the meteorologist in the southeast man Atlantic that has the biggest following. He is literally a man of Charlotte. He's been voted that by Charlotte, charlotte teens everywhere in the Queen City. But Brad's got something like a hundred and eighty thousand Facebook followers I think he's over 200 and some odd thousand Instagram. He's big on, you know, all of the social media and he is also ski southeast Chief meteorologist. He puts up studio quality video every single week for us and does the skiers forecast. So we're really blessed with that. Jim Ken Torrey and Paul Goodlow with the weather channel been blessed ski with both of those guys and their families or kids. And you know we kind of love our television network people because they're out there showing us and it's unsolicited. It's a great synergy. We don't have to spend a penny for it and they love it and we love them. So, uh, so yeah, we're blessed to have a big Network of TV media that shows us for sure.

You probably had no idea Way, way, way back when the impact that ski southeast and resort cams and all of this would have in today, in 2024, did you? I mean, how would you know right?

None, none, none.

None whatsoever.

You know it's just a passion. And you know I actually remember when, when we started building our first websites Of course I'm located in here in God's country, in the high country, uh, where we have, you know, a year-round mountain biking, whitewater rafting, golf, skiing, you know, you name it. So I started contacting some of the chambers and this was back in 95, started contacting some of the chambers about. You know, we've got some great ski resorts around here. We ought to build a website to feature skiing, and I would do the same thing with golf and I'd do the same thing with hiking and whatever. And None of them really Got it. They were all saying, you know, sounds like a good idea, but you know, nobody was really Moving on it. So I went out and I looked and you know, golf north carolinacom was available. So we built that and promoted 550 golf courses in the state and then we Did ski north carolina and I called a few of the ski areas and you know they went well. You know we've got our own website. I don't know why we would need to do this. So there was no real recognition Of the value of it. They were still doing radio when you know you'd listen at 11 o'clock in the morning, you'd hear Some guy come on and read the ski report for all 16 skiers on the radio. You know took about four or five minutes and it was just. You know, appalachia ski mountains got a base of 55 inches and all nine trails open and they go through all of them and that was the only thing that they were doing. So, uh, it was just a passion when we first started it and I don't know if it's okay to say it might, but hell, no, I had no clue, you know how big it would bloom to be. So we're very blessed and, you know, tickle the depth to have the message spread and we're kind of the unofficial official. You know, everybody kind of looks at us. As you know, we're here to stay now and, and um, you know we, we have good synergies with all the ski area management crews and Presidents and owners, etc.

So bless to say so as a consumer of ski southeast and somebody who just found you all recently, uh, last few years I thank you for all the work that you do and you know I know you have one family here that we all are looking at Many of your cameras and if it wasn't for the work that you all have done and the groundwork that you've laid, I don't think many of us would have the kind of the experience that we have. You know I'm kind of reminded of. Sometimes we go and we do the experience and I'm thinking of especially a lot of the families and a lot of the, the beginners and people who are coming up. You know there's anticipation about their first ski trip and, you know, for them to be able to go on to ski southeast or see the webcams. It's just so cool that to me it just kind of gets them hyped up before they actually get there and then as they go home, you know they look back on their experience and I think they're always Probably looking back at the cameras and it just kind of drums up great memories of a great experience. So From a consumer, I can't thank you enough. As a podcast host, I cannot thank you enough. I have thoroughly enjoyed this and, again, thanks for your time. I know that you have a big event this weekend and ski southeast. We didn't even talk about this, but it's not like your full-time job. You actually have a real job, you know, and and this is you you would not know and I was completely blown away and surprised to hear that. But, mike man, thanks for taking time with me this morning. I hope it's not the last time you and I have a chance to to talk and hopefully you and I can actually get out there and Make some turns and I apologize for not hitting you up last night to have been able to make that possible, so hopefully there will be another time for us.

Yeah, we will definitely any time and I'll just share with your listeners, anybody who's listening in. If you haven't skied before, you haven't snowboarded before snowtubed, you know you need to get out and check it out. I think you get hooking and snowboarding. It's a culture. It's more of a feeling that a community that you can become part of, and everybody is looking, especially nowadays with so much volatility going on in America. People are looking for an opportunity to become a part of a community and part of somebody who gives a flip about each other. And I'll tell you the community and skiing and snowboarding, it's just natural. There's no fake in it. You either love it or you don't. So I would tell you we're trying to grow the sport, we're trying to grow the industry, and the best way we know how to grow it is to invite anybody. If you listen to this and you have not skied or snowboarded before, give it a shot. It's a lot easier than you think. Get a lesson. That's an easy way to find out whether or not you have any. You know any DNA, the talent in that DNA that will allow you to do so and enjoy it. But you know, we're trying to grow it. So I appreciate the opportunity to come on here and share that message with Exploration Local for sure.

Thanks for joining us on this exhilarating journey through the snow-covered slopes of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. I hope you've enjoyed our conversation with Mike Doble, the visionary behind southeastcom and, as you've heard, the family of all their websites. As we wrap up this episode, I want to extend a huge thank you to Mike for sharing his passion and insights into the region's vibrant skiing and snowboarding industry. We've explored the transformative role of snow-making technology and we've celebrated the fantastic conditions that make skiing and snowboarding in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic such a thrill. If you're new to Ski Southeast and you'd like to find out more, check them out at ski southeastcom and you're going to join thousands of others there that have come to depend on ski southeastcom for all the information needed to make a ski vacation or getaway the best that it can be, by providing dependable condition reports, weather and more. That's going to do it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Please consider leaving a review wherever you listen to this episode. It truly does help us reach more people. Join me on Instagram and Facebook and drop me a note at mike at explorationlocalcom if you ever have a suggestion for a future episode or you just want to connect and say what's up Until next time. I encourage you to wander far, but explore local.

Thanks.