Lost ski areaVirginiaBlue Ridge MountainsMid-Atlantic
Cascade Mountain
Closed after the 1985 season. Virginia's southernmost ski area, a small chairlift hill at Fancy Gap beside the Blue Ridge Parkway, run from the mid-1970s until 1985.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Cascade Mountain Resort was the southernmost ski area to operate in Virginia, near Fancy Gap just off the Blue Ridge Parkway and U.S. 52, part of a Carroll County project planned for up to 900 mountain lots.1,2
Read the whole historyTodayThe old resort is a gated community of mountain homes with a pool, tennis courts and a pond; the ski lodge is a residence, and concrete steps and pillars reportedly remain from the lift.2
Timeline
5 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Cascade Mountain, or worked there?
Tell us what you remember, or what this page has wrong. Memories show here, credited to you, after we read them; facts are checked against a source before they change a figure.
Lost near Cascade Mountain
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Opened 1964 · 68.5 mi away · North CarolinaTwo small ski slopes at the Hound Ears Club near Boone, opened by the Robbins brothers in 1964 alongside a golf course.
- Years not yet collected · 71.2 mi away · North CarolinaA small chairlift ski area off Highway 105 between Boone and Linville, remembered from the late 1960s to about 1990, whose slopes are now community trails.
- Opened 1972 · 127 mi away · KentuckyA small ski area on Big Black Mountain near Lynch in eastern Kentucky that, by one account, opened in 1972 and closed around 1982.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 2 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Cascade Mountain Resort was the southernmost ski area to operate in Virginia, near Fancy Gap just off the Blue Ridge Parkway and U.S. 52, part of a Carroll County project planned for up to 900 mountain lots. North Carolina National Bank took charge of the project in 1974 and finished the slopes, a lodge, motel and restaurant, roads and a water system. The 1977 White Book listed 258 feet of vertical, one chairlift and one rope tow. Four runs, FlatFoot, FancyFree, Express and Zuma, were up to 3,000 feet long, and a base lodge called the SnowShed held ticket sales, rentals, the ski school and the patrol.1,2
Most skiers came from North Carolina, and night skiing drew families from Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Raleigh, though ice was common. The Liebenschuss lodge burned in 1984. After Winterplace opened in West Virginia in 1983, many customers kept driving on along I-77, and with little natural snow and warm winters the ski operation closed in 1985. Its ski equipment and snow guns were sold to the owners of Hawk's Nest in North Carolina, and the Cascade Mountain Property Owners Association bought the ski operation's property.1,2
TodayThe old resort is a gated community of mountain homes with a pool, tennis courts and a pond; the ski lodge is a residence, and concrete steps and pillars reportedly remain from the lift.2
Timeline
Sources for this history (2)
- 1Virginia Places · Former Ski Resorts in Virginia
- 2DCSki · Cascade Mountain Resort
Photos
No photographs of Cascade Mountain we may republish yet
Its old photos and trail maps live on the sites that collected them, and Google finds the rest.
Memories
What skiers remember of Cascade Mountain, in their own words.
Facts
Location
36.6615° N · 80.6653° W · Virginia · Blue Ridge Mountains
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
until 1985 · the year it opened is not yet collected
Closed after the 1985 season. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 3all 3, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain