Sarah My kids are California-born and Georgia-raised, and without easy access to mountains, they had never tried skiing before. I’ve heard that it’s much easier to learn to ski as a kid, when bumps and falls don’t hurt as much, so I really wanted to get them on skis, but I didn’t want to shell out on a big ski vacation when I wasn’t sure how they would take to it. So I set out to find a way to ski without leaving the southeast, and here’s what worked for me!
After much internet research, I settled on bringing them to the North Carolina mountains, at the ski areas of Beech Mountain and Sugar Mountain. This spot is drivable for our family, appeared online to have adequate slopes for what we needed, and there seemed to be plenty to do in the area should one or both of my children revolt and refuse to get on skis. We didn’t want to take them out of school, so we geared up and went on President’s Day Weekend in February.
Recommendation #1: Don’t go to North Carolina for skiing on President’s Day Weekend. Little did we know that every other family in the Southeastern United States had the same idea as us. We checked Beech Mountain’s availability online and saw that ski school was all booked up, so we headed straight for Sugar Mountain. When we arrived, we discovered that it would be impossible to get the kids into ski school unless we got up at 5 a.m. to wait in a line for hours, which we weren’t going to do. Being the flexible folks we are, however, we quickly pivoted to teaching them ourselves.
It turned out that renting skis for the kids would not be possible–every rental vendor, on mountain and off, was sold out. We briefly considered just the adults skiing, but one look at the lift line stretching across the mountain to the parking lot killed that idea for us. We came to realize we would not be skiing on our ski trip, and headed toward the tubing area, where we found that people had been waiting in the tubing line for over three hours. With skiing and tubing out, we trudged over to the ice skating line. We had to wait over an hour, but our kids did get to ice skate, which they really enjoyed.
Recommendation #2: Go to Sugar Mountain, North Carolina. Our President’s Day Weekend trip was a bust in terms of skiing, but we didn’t let that stop us! The only way to go was up, so we planned to return in a few weeks and resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to pull our kids out of school for a few days. We arrived at the Sugar Mountain on a Wednesday afternoon, and found a veritable ghost town compared to our previous experience. We walked right into the ski school and booked the kids into a group lesson for that afternoon. With no other kids there, it was really more like a private lesson with two instructors for just our two kids, and the instructors couldn’t have been nicer or more patient. They worked with our kids for a couple of hours, and by the end of the afternoon both were riding the magic carpet like pros, and almost able to stay upright down the whole training slope. We reserved a full day of ski school for the next day, and by that afternoon our kids were taking the lift and doing the “Easy Street” green slope with us. My kids aren’t the most athletic, so this progression was basically a miracle, and I really attribute it to how great the Sugar Mountain instructors were.
Recommendation #3: Check out the town of Banner Elk, North Carolina, for meals and apres ski. Nestled between Sugar Mountain and Beech Mountain is the small town of Banner Elk, and I found it to be charming. The rustic stone buildings of Lees-McRae College overlook this one stoplight town, which has many restaurants, shops, and even a couple of breweries scattered between picturesque parks and paths. You can walk around the whole town in less than an hour, which I did–view my Banner Elk city walk here on my YouTube channel.
Our family’s favorite spot to eat was the Banner Elk Cafe & Lodge, which had something for everyone. The kids approved of the chicken fingers and grilled cheese from the kids’ menu, and I had the Cajun Fish & Grits and the Crab Cake Sandwich, both of which were delicious. My husband had the largest hamburger I’ve ever seen, and was very happy with his order.
Recommendation #4: Find an Airbnb with a hot tub. We settled on this Airbnb on Watauga Lake, about 45 minutes northwest of Beech and Sugar. It was perfect for us–plenty of room for the kids, a ping pong table inside, outdoor space for them to explore, and the icing on the cake was a hot tub, which was everyone’s favorite way to end our long days of skiing and driving.
I hope this post helps you plan your next ski trip to North Carolina! For more information about the ski gear we got for the kids, check out my blog post here, and if you’re looking to explore nearby Asheville, check out my blog post about my recent Asheville solo trip here. What’s your favorite place to ski? Leave me a comment below!
xoxo,
S
