Skiing in the High Country

North Carolina’s ski season cranked up early this year as cold weather invaded the mountains well before Thanksgiving. This created the perfect scenario for a late November ski trip to the High Country, where I decided to tackle two of the state’s most popular ski resorts: Sugar Mountain and Ski Beech.

I left Raleigh early afternoon on Friday and rolled into Banner Elk three and a half hours later. The 210-mile trip was surprisingly easy, especially the stretch of U.S. 421 from Winston-Salem to Boone, now four lanes all the way.

As darkness descended our party checked into the Blueberry Villa, a posh eight-room Italian villa located at Banner Elk Winery. The villa is run by Dede Walton. Her husband, Dick Wolfe, operates the winery.

By 6:30 p.m., we were in the winery and enjoying a tasting with Wolfe, whose wines have won multiple gold and double-gold medals at the North Carolina State Fair here in Raleigh. We sampled several excellent wines, including Seyval Blanc, Chardonnay, Banner Elk White, Banner Elk Red and the Cabernet Sauvignon. The winery is a pioneer in the High Country and Wolfe works with local tobacco farmers to convert their crops to grapes.

Back at the villa, dinner was catered in and we enjoyed a low-key evening around the table as a fire crackled in the main room.

Saturday morning, we made the 10-minute drive from Banner Elk up to Beech Mountain for a day at Ski Beech. The ascent up Beech Mountain was beautiful as the sun reflected off the snow-covered ground.

Ski Beech, at 5,506 feet, is the highest ski area in Eastern North America. The Costin family, which owns the resort, spent a bunch of money this offseason on new snow guns and snow-grooming equipment, and the results were obvious. The base was already over 20 inches and several trails were open.

The nice thing about Ski Beech is the ride to the summit. A high-speed quad zooms up the mountain, where you unload in a covered chalet. The view is spectacular from the top, although I didn’t make too many runs from there. I preferred the intermediate trails that cut a wide swath across the mountain.

Ski Beech added tubing this year and a second terrain park, where I saw snowboarders taking full advantage of the mounds and features. There’s also an ice skating rink at the center of the resort’s Alpine village.

All in all, Ski Beech provided an excellent skiing experience. The resort has enough open space to handle a lot of skiers so we never felt cramped.

Although Ski Beech offers night skiing, we elected for a cozy fireplace dinner at Jackalope’s View. Located midway down the mountain, Jackalope’s overlooks Banner Elk and Sugar Mountain. We enjoyed a superb meal of pecan-crusted fresh mountain trout, shrimp ziti pasta and all-natural pork tenderloin with black bean puree and chimichuri sauce.

Now I know why the restaurant has the word "view" in its name. We gazed at a 180-degree view highlighted by night skiing at Sugar, our next destination.

Sunday morning, we made the short drive to Sugar Mountain Resort. Sugar has a summit elevation of 5,300 feet, and boasts the most vertical drop in the High Country: 1,200 feet. Sugar also has the only double black diamond run in North Carolina, but I left that to the experts.

Like the day before, plenty of trails were already open so early in the season. I spent a lot of time on the intermediate runs, particularly the upper flying mile. There was a very good base. The resort took advantage of cold temperatures the night before to make a ton of new snow.

Sugar Mountain’s operation – which included a terrain park, ice skating, snowshoeing and tubing – was very efficient. That made for a great day of skiing before making a final run at 2 p.m. and heading for the parking lot.

Less than four hours later we were back in Raleigh, although the High Country was still on our minds.

For detailed info on skiing in the NC High Country, visit http://www.skithehighcountry.com/.