Wintergreen Resort

Wintergreen provides one of the better ski experiences in the mid-Atlantic US.  The key to a good day here is picking your dates carefully for crowd avoidance.  It is a four season resort with quite a bit of infrastructure, housing, amenities, food service, indoor pool, snowtubing, etc, all situated on top of a scenic mountain at an elevation close to 4000’.  It is located about 30 minutes west of Charlottesville, VA and can be unpleasantly busy on prime winter weekends and holidays.  Wintergreen also draws strongly from southern Virginia and north-central NC.

The ski layout is divided into three areas; intermediate runs to skiers right, beginner stuff and terrain park in center, and advanced runs to skiers left.  The advanced area includes about a half dozen single black diamond level runs descending the full 1000’ vertical over an elevation of approx 3500-2500’ above sea level.  Nothing is hair-raisingly steep, but some moguls usually sprout by midseason.  The advanced area, called The Highlands, is served by a dedicated high speed six person chair.  You can rack up some fun mileage here on a quiet day.  Wintergreen has a superb, automated snowmaking system that can blow snow over the entire mountain (about 25 trails) simultaneously and make big improvements to surface conditions in just one night. 

Trip report from 2006: