Tar Heel Travels

Ski Season
The slopes will open soon, which again reminds us how the sport came South

By Bill F. Hensley

For many North Carolinians, December means that it’s time to head for the mountains to ski and to cut a beautiful, homegrown Christmas tree for the holiday season. But it hasn’t always been that way, since both activities are relatively new to the Tar Heel state.

Skiing, for example, dates back only 41 years — to 1961 — when many Southerners strapped on wooden slats for the first time and traversed down a steep, tree-lined slope high above Maggie Valley. North Carolina’s first ski area, Cataloochee, had been created by the late Tom Alexander, one of those unforgettable, colorful characters who comes along all too rarely to spice up our lives.

Now there are seven ski areas in the state, including an expanded Cataloochee. Others are Appalachian Ski Mountain between Boone and Blowing Rock; Sugar Mountain and Ski Beech near Banner Elk; Hawksnest, off highway 105 in Foscoe; Wolf Laurel, near Mars Hill; and Sapphire Valley, near Cashiers.

The resorts are open for a ski season that usually lasts about 100 days, from December to March. Many offer night skiing, snowboarding and tubing as well as downhill skiing. In a good year, when there is little rain and the weather is cold enough to make enough snow to supplement the natural stuff, the seven areas will attract about 600,000 skiers from all over the South.

It all began with Alexander, who was born in Georgia but moved to the Great Smoky Mountains to become a forester when he was in his early twenties. As rugged, handsome and tough as the “Marlboro Man,” he was an outdoorsman, farmer, ranger and bear hunter without equal, and his bright, innovative mind was always in high gear. He and his petite, city-bred wife, Miss Judy, first started a primitive fish camp deep in the mountains and then created a western-style dude ranch that has existed since 1933.

To help market his resort, the renowned mile-high Cataloochee Ranch on Fie Top Mountain, he staged a variety of unique, crowd-pleasing events that generated national exposure for the new facility. He began an annual muzzle-loading rifle match, bear hunts, square dances and various outdoor contests. In time, countless celebrities, assorted politicians and VIPs attended so they could be captured on film by the horde of press photographers from around the nation, including National Geographic and The Saturday Evening Post.

With the national media flocking to Cataloochee on a regular basis, Alexander and his friends Bill Sharpe, the state’s chief travel promoter, and Hugh Morton, owner of Grandfather Mountain, organized the Honorary Tar Heels to host, entertain and pay tribute to the writers whose stories where putting North Carolina on the travel map.

Alexander’s most famous coup, perhaps, was introducing skiing to the state. Faced with a long winter, no revenue while the ranch was closed, and no work for his employees, his fertile mind began to whirl. He and Miss Judy visited resorts in New England and Virginia to learn how to make artificial snow. There were slopes aplenty on their 1,000-acre ranch site high above Maggie Valley, and idle ranch employees could provide the manpower. If the ski area were successful, it would be a win-win situation for everyone involved. A low-budget, low-key operation, the Cataloochee Ski Area started on a hill behind the ranch house. Alexander built a rope tow that was powered by an automobile engine, bought three snow guns, leased four diesel air compressors, acquired some rental skis and boots, and converted the cow barn into a ski lodge. He hired an Austrian instructor to give ski lessons.

North Carolina’s first ski area opened just before Christmas that year, and Southerners took to the sport with enthusiasm. Again there were national headlines: “Carolina Steps into Ski Boots,” proclaimed the Christian Science Monitor. Stories soon appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post, and the state media followed with lengthy feature stories on the state’s newest winter activity.

Skiers had two slopes to conquer at Cataloochee: a 300-footer for beginners and a 1,000-foot challenge for the more experienced. For $10 a day, participants received rental equipment and a lift ticket. There were 300 skiers on the slopes on New Year’s Day, and 3,000 found their way to the area that year. Thankfully, a tiny profit was realized when the small area closed in March.

That modest beginning gave encouragement to others, however. Two years later, in 1963, a new area opened in Blowing Rock to be followed by the state’s two largest ski resorts, Ski Beech and Sugar Mountain, which opened around 1967. Five years after its debut, Cataloochee expanded to its present site, a little more than a mile from where Tom and Judy Alexander first made snow for the paying public.

Alexander died in 1972 at the age of 72. “There’s never a day that we don’t thank Tom Alexander for bringing skiing to North Carolina,” offers Kim Jochl of Sugar Mountain, president of the North Carolina Ski Association. “The industry continues to grow and has become a vital part of the state’s travel industry.”

For further information on North Carolina skiing, call 828-295-7828 or visit www.goskinc.com.

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