Winterplace Ski Resort is a ski resort located in Ghent, West Virginia on Raleigh County’s Flat Top Mountain. The southernmost ski resort in West Virginia, Winterplace is a popular attraction due to its proximity to Interstate 77. It operates in conjunction with The Resort at Glade Springs, a four season golf resort and spa.
Winterplace is nearly equidistant between Beckley, West Virginia to the north on Interstate 77 and Princeton, West Virginia to the south. The resort’s southern location and proximity to the north-south I-77 corridor draws visitors from North and South Carolina as well as local skiers fromVirginia and West Virginia. The Southern West Virginia visitor’s bureau promotes the resort as “the most accessible, affordable ski resort in the Southeast.”
The resort’s top elevation is 3,600 feet (1,100 m) with a vertical descent of 603 feet (184 m). It has 90 acres (360,000 m2) of skiable area, 28 trails, a terrain park, and nine lifts. The average snowfall for the resort is 100 inches (2.5 m). A fifty million gallon reservoir lake enables supplementary snowmaking at a rate of 7,000 gallons of water per minute. The resort’s 16-lane snow tubing facility is cited as the largest in West Virginia.
The resort’s ski trails extend up the northern slope of Huff Knob, in the curve of I-77. The terrain in front of the resort complex is devoted to beginner skiing; three chair lifts climb midway up the ridge, providing access to mixed easier and intermediate trails, plus the resort’s terrain park and snow tubing facility. Another set of two parallel chairs extends from the resort’s mid-mountain lodge to the summit, accessing expert and intermediate terrain. A run of 1.25 miles is available by skiing from the mountain summit to the main base, but multiple chairlift rides are required for return; other trails are a fraction of that length.
(Narrative: Courtesy of Wikipedia)