Qualla: White Grass Ski Touring Center

White Grass Ski Touring Center: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Strap on skinny skis at White Grass and the trail does something a Nordic skier rarely expects: it climbs almost 1,200 feet. The reason is sitting under the snow. This used to be the second Weiss Knob Ski Area, a downhill operation whose chairs are long gone but whose lift line and mountainside terrain remain - now traced by some of the steepest cross-country trails in the United States.

White Grass Ski Touring Center: From Downhill to Cross-Country

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

White Grass began in 1979 on a different mountain entirely - White Grass Knob, near Harrisonburg, Virginia - and moved two years later to the failed Weiss Knob site on the northern slope of Cabin Mountain. The lodge that once warmed downhill skiers is still the day lodge today, a...

White Grass Ski Touring Center: The Snowiest Corner of the Mid-Atlantic

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Canaan Valley sits at about 3,200 feet, the highest large valley east of the Mississippi, and weather systems crossing the Alleghenies dump their snow on it before continuing east. White Grass strings 45 trails along the northern slope of Cabin Mountain, with 50 kilometers of gro...

White Grass Ski Touring Center: A National Reputation, Quietly

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1994 The Washington Post named White Grass one of the ten best Nordic ski areas in the nation. It still appears on those lists, though the operation itself has stayed small, family-feeling, and a little eccentric. Staff lead free natural-history snowshoe tours into the Canaan ...

White Grass Ski Touring Center: What Happens When the Snow Melts

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Winter is the headline season, but White Grass spends the warm half of the year as something else entirely: a 500-acre cattle farm. The grazed pastures double as the cleared trail corridors that get groomed each November, and the ecology of the area - cool, wet, and high - means ...