Maybe I need to add a little more information....Most of my skiing life has been on a 400ft vertical hill in Wisconsin but I've raced in plenty of beer leagues on a 250 foot hill. Have skied quite a number of big and small resorts in the west and a few in the east. I'm pretty happy on virtually any terrain from easy greens to super gnarly double blacks. Bluebird or blizzard. 50 degrees or 20 below. All is fine for me.
The thing is I'm looking for a place that works for my wife, she's a bit more particular. She needs fall-line greens and easy blues served by a detachable quad. (none of these "oh so common" "crowded, twisty, narrow catwalk all the way down" type "green" runs...hey, it's a trigger issue for me!) She *can* manage a fixed grip lift but fall-line greens are a must. Runs *****cannot***** be populated by large numbers of lunatics! Skiing with her at some places is super difficult (for example, Sun Valley, Snowbird, Jackson Hole, etc. Not because of the lunatics, more because of terrain and run layout) We really enjoyed Deer Mountain because she could "ski the whole mountain" and not just one little section....although it probably isn't an issue in North Carolina (a few runs and you've done them all it seems) ((and that's OK, I'm not complaining))
Sugar Mountain has a pretty darn respectable vertical but it looks like most of the runs funnel into a valley. Those places don't work for us as she's not a super fast skier and gets quickly overtaken by "young boys on snowboards" (or similar) which...on occasion...hasn't worked out very well. Of the resorts in the link above, Cataloochee looks the best on paper, it seems like there is quite a bit of room at the bottom with people bee lining it to the lift going skiers right leaving the left side safe. Has anybody skied there?
Joe
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