Outpost

White Grass

Skiing

White Grass offers you a different skiing experience. This is a cross country center. It lays at the base of Cabin Mountain directly between Timberline and Canaan. As a matter of fact, Blackbird Wing and Timberline Trails connect White Grass to Timberline (3.5 and 3.3 miles one way) and Springer Orchard Trail (1.6 miles one way) connects to Canaan. Bald and Weiss Knobs look directly down on Canaan, and Cabin Mountain looks directly down on Timberline.

If your previous experience with cross country skiing has been on generally flat trails winding out and back through meadows or along forest service fire roads, prepare for a different challenge. These trails climb and drop, sometimes considerably. It takes effort to get to the top and skill to ski back down. Many of these trails wind around mountains, through deep forest and steep ravines. Several are three, four and five miles long and the longest is nine. In all, there are 50 miles of trails. White Grass is actually a larger facility than Timberline or Canaan.

The current White Grass Ski Center was originally built as the Weiss Knob Downhill Ski Area in 1959. Weiss Knob was a nice small facility, with 1200 vertical (Perfect North has 450) and 17 trails. But it could not compete with the much larger Timberline and Canaan slopes, so closed and reopened in its present form as the finest cross country resort in the region. Only Snowshoe is competitive, and White Grass beats it with many more miles of trails.

White Grass allows you to set up a fine five day Canaan Valley ski trip. You can drive up one day, ski at Timberline one day, White Grass one day, Canaan one day, then drive one day home.

Left : Snowshoers prepare for a race

Above : Whitegrass Lodge and Cabin Mountain .

Right : CX skiing instruction just below the lodge.