In February 2016 a cross arm came loose from a chairlift tower at Timberline Four Seasons Resort and fell to the ground. Several skiers were injured. No one died. But the incident exposed what regulars on Cabin Mountain had known for years - the lifts, the snowmaking, the lodge, all of it was aging out of working order. Three years later the resort was bankrupt. The story of what happened next is one of the more unusual rescues in recent American skiing history.
The mountain that became Timberline opened to the public in January 1987. A real estate developer named David Downs had started cutting ski runs on the eastern slope of Cabin Mountain, calling the area Mt. Timberline. Dr. Frederick Reichle and his family then bought a large parcel of Cabin Mountain land with the goal of building a real four-season resort. Timberline Four Seasons Resort was the result - an alpine ski area perched at the high end of Canaan Valley, sharing a ridgeline with the Canaan Valley state park area to the south and the cross-country trails of White Grass Touring Center just downhill. For close to two decades the resort prospered, drawing skiers from the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas a few hours away.
Timberline's signature run is Salamander, a two-mile descent that the resort claims is the longest in the Mid-Atlantic region. It is named for the Cheat Mountain salamander, a federally threatened species that lives only in a handful of high West Virginia ridges, including the spruce forests of Cabin Mountain. The trail map runs the usual spectrum from First Flurries beginner area through the intermediate Almost Heaven, Dew Drop, and Twister, into more difficult Pearly Glades and Glade Runner, and finally to the expert-only Off The Wall and The Drop. Two terrain parks - Snow Squall and Thunder Snow - offer rail and jump features. Two glade trails cut through the mature red spruce on the upper mountain, which is some of the only easily-accessible inbounds tree skiing in West Virginia.
By the mid-2010s the infrastructure was failing. Snowmaking pumps broke down. Lift towers needed work that did not get done. The February 2016 chairlift accident, in which a cross arm disconnected and a chair fell to the ground, drew customer attention to problems that had been building for years. Skiers stopped coming. The resort fell into financial and legal trouble. In February 2019 Timberline closed and filed for bankruptcy, leaving its season-pass holders without skiing and the surrounding Canaan Valley businesses without one of their winter anchors. For most independent ski areas that scenario ends with the lifts being scrapped for steel and the runs growing back into forest within a decade.
In November 2019 Perfect North Slopes - a family-owned ski area in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, more than 400 miles west - bought Timberline out of bankruptcy. Perfect North invested ten million dollars in renovations. They replaced lifts, including installing a six-pack chair to upgrade lift capacity dramatically. They overhauled snowmaking with new equipment that worked on warmer nights. They remodeled the lodge. They renamed the operation Timberline Mountain, retaining Salamander and the familiar trail names. The reopened resort, which now operates two surface lifts, one quad chairlift, and the new six-pack, has stuck. Timberline is again one of the three winter recreation operations on the same Cabin Mountain ridge, alongside Canaan Valley Ski Resort and the cross-country White Grass - an unusual concentration of winter recreation supported by the unusual snowfall of the highest large valley east of the Mississippi.
Located at 39.04 degrees north, 79.40 degrees west, on the eastern slope of Cabin Mountain in Tucker County, West Virginia. From 6,000 to 8,000 feet AGL the ski runs cut light vertical stripes down the wooded ridge, with the broad Canaan Valley basin visible to the west and the Allegheny Front falling away to the east. Nearest airports are Tucker County (W22) at Parsons and Elkins-Randolph County Regional (KEKN). Expect heavy upslope snow showers in winter and frequent low ceilings over the valley.