Massanutten Snowresort: Skiing and Snowboarding in Lovely Virginia
Written: Oct 29 '00 (Updated Sep 02 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful scenery, snow tube park, good instructors (read on)
Cons: Bad snowboard rental fleet, expensive season passes (read on)
The Bottom Line: Overall, Massanutten is a beautiful and fun resort to visit during the winter season.
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| rodeo7's Full Review: Massanutten |
I learned to snowboard at Massanutten, and I still like the place. By South-Eastern US standards, it holds its own as a premier snow resort. I enjoy its great down home atmosphere with a beautiful setting in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Massanutten has the most vertical drop in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland at 1100 feet. All 14 of its trails are lit for night skiing and vary in difficulty from beginner to advanced. The snow season usually runs from early December to late February. Rates can range from $15 to $50 depending on the rider’s age, day of the week and if it’s peak holiday season or value season. Rental prices run from $13 to $30. Although Massanutten has college student days where college students get a discount, I feel its season pass is a bit pricey at $225-$425 depending on the type of pass. A competitor has a season pass at $110 valid every day except Saturday, and I feel that this resort also has better facilities and trails. (Take a look at Massanutten’s website for tables of prices.)
Being fairly local to Massanutten (about a 2 hour drive from my place), I decided to go there for my first trip to a ski resort. I paid $49 for a “First-Time Package” where you get a lesson, lift ticket and rental all for one low price. My instructor was probably a couple years younger than me so I felt a little more relaxed. Older riders may have thought him to be a punk snowboarder kid, but I liked him. His lesson was very informative and he let me pace myself to be sure I felt comfortable before continuing with something new. He was very articulate and knew many techniques to get me turning. It ended up being a lesson that I enjoyed and learned a lot from.
The rental equipment that I used that day was top quality. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I know that I was actually using a very nice board with good bindings and good boots. I’m not quite sure how I ended up with those because friends of mine got stuck with some really bad equipment on later trips. The bindings were very flimsy and were not as responsive as I would like them to have been. The bases of the snowboards were scratched pretty badly and one friend did not have a stomp pad on her rental board. It was really hard for me to teach her how to get off the ski lift when I myself would be slipping around without a stomp pad to secure my unstrapped back foot to the board. I would expect rental equipment to be on the raggedy side, but these were pretty bad.
Ski conditions at Massanutten are pretty much what you would expect from the east, and especially the southeast… Ice and granulated snowmaker blown fake stuff. I’m not complaining. I’m just warning any out of towners that are used to the West coast that they probably will think the trails are a joke. We don’t get much snow around here so it’s rare to get fresh powder on the trails. But at least we have trails. I think I’d have to move if I didn’t live close to a snow resort. I’ll happily take what I can get.
The snowboard park at Massanutten is the best in the area. It is specifically designated for snowboarders and utilizes a J-bar lift to get the boarders to the top. The placement and construction of the tabletops and halfpipe are well thought out and engineered by experienced professionals. The snow tubing park, which opened in 1998, is located next to the snowboard park. Massanutten’s tubing park is the only snow tubing park in Virginia and is great fun for anyone.
Accommodations at Massanutten include House Rentals starting at $108/night and their Hotel starting at $75/night. Massanutten publicizes four other local hotels as being great places to stay. The town of Harrisonburg, home of James Madison University, is about 20 minutes away (10 minutes to the bottom of the mountain and another 10 to get up to the lodge). I’m sorry to say that I can’t recommend or not recommend any of these places since I am a local boy and have only taken day trips to the resort.
Here’s one last personal story to throw in here before I wrap it up. My younger brother is an undergraduate at the previously mentioned college, JMU, in Harrisonburg. He prefers to drive two hours to a different resort even though Massanutten is only 20 minutes away at the most. He has even purchased season passes two years in a row at the other place. Sorry Massanutten.
Massanutten is a great place for beginner and intermediate riders, a great place for the family, and great place for locals. The park is awesome for the snowboarders. I wouldn’t recommend it for people that are expecting a resort comparable to someplace from the west or northeast, or for advanced riders specifically looking for very difficult and technical trails.
I really enjoy my visits to Massanutten, but compared to other local resorts, Massanutten unfortunately is not on top of my list. Standing alone, it is a great resort, but I prefer the competition. I’m incredibly grateful that Massanutten opened in 1973 to bring skiing to the area. I’ll take what I can get and I am thankful for it.
[Just a little note: I am a local, college student who takes day trips specifically to snowboard and nothing else. I apologize if I forgot to include any info you were hoping to find {i.e., something relating to skiing, skiiboarding, etc…), but if you’ll leave a comment I’ll be happy to answer your question, or revise my Epinion. Thanks. :)]
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
rodeo7
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Eddie
Location: Virginia, USA
Reviews written: 28
Trusted by: 71 members
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