"John" wrote in message thlink.net...
hey gang, i'm a boarder who was spoiled with three years of riding in
southern germany/austria. now i'm in washington DC and i'm looking for a
good place to ride. it seems like snowshoe is the only decent place within
a 3-hour drive. any comments, good or bad? or does anyone know of a closer
place that won't just depress and disappoint me? thanks...

-john

John, -send me some email and we'll get together and ride.

Yes, the riding sucks around here, but, if you go into it knowing what
you're dealing with, it isn't that bad.

At nights we hit Whitetail a lot. It is small, but, they have good
snowmaking and a high speed quad and zero lines at night. So, you get
a lot of runs in and even their expert runs, which are still short, at
least offer some challenge and no lines. If you're here on the weekend
get a 4 hour ticket in the morning and board before the crowds come.

For weekends, check out 7 Springs. It is about half the distance of
snowshoe...well, 2 hours if you drive fast, and its pretty good. It is
a wide mountain, not a tall one. Look at the map and the north face runs
are pretty good. A few glade runs that are nice when you have snow and
some fun natural snow areas under lifts. Lots of bars at the resort.
Free shuttle service if you stay in the area. Snows there often.
www.7springs.com

Barring that, look for cheap airfare. You can usually run out to Utah
or Denver pretty easily. Stay and ski cheap. So, budget a couple of
those in for the season and you'll do okay. The good thing is we have
3 major airports all within 30 minutes of each other so your plane
fare options are pretty good.

Set your standards low and you'll have a good time locally!
But yeah, its not Austria.

-todd