Boone Winter Family Vacations with Snow Tubing, Ice Skating, and Skiing Lessons. The High Country area of North Carolina offers families many ways to enjoy time in the snow including tubing, sledding, skiing, boarding, and skating. Perhaps the best is snow tubing – family fun with no prior skills needed.
Here's the scoop: Boone located in a sleepy mountain valley nestled in North Carolina's High Country. While it has almost instant name recognition because of well-known American folktales about Daniel Boone, except for the Horn in the West summer outdoor play, Daniel Boone had little to do with Boone, NC. Undeterred by this information, we turned our focus to snow tubing which was one of our reasons for venturing into the mountains.
There are four ski areas Sugar Mountain, Hawksnest, Beech Mountain and Appalachian Ski Mountain within a twenty-minute drive of Boone making access to snow tubing as well as skiing, boarding, skating or sledding is easy. Our original plan was to find a cozy cabin in the woods but we learned that without a four-wheel drive vehicle, that our options were limited. Our fall back plan, stay in the Boone area. Our choice was Hawksnest Ski Area on Seven Devils Mountain. We knew that they provided exceptional tubing on the mountain and tubing was what we were planning to do.
Snow tubing the first time. I know everyone has a first time experience and I seemed to be the only member of our family of four who had concerns (a mom thing, I think.). Once at the top of the run, surrounded by the sounds of happy children, I let go and what fun it turned out to be. There is truly no training is required - just hang on and shove off. Picture a large inner tube, like the ones often pulled behind a ski boats. Imagine the same soft round tube on lovely white snow; just flop down on it and zoom.
Hawksnest limits the number of participants on the runs during any given time frame and rope pull takes each tuber up to the top of the hill. This is a perfect way to introduce a young child to the fun in the snow. Ages five and older are allowed at Hawksnest with parental supervision.
Bonus Points: In addition to tubing,
Hawksnest offers a free lesson on each Thursday in January and February so anyone renting skis or snowboards from Hawksnest gets a free beginner lesson.
Ice skating made simple. Tubing out of the way our next adventure was ice skating at Beech Mountain. The rink is at the base of the ski runs and is surrounded by bleachers on one side and shops on the other. It is the perfect place to play pretend. Pretend to be an Olympic skater or pretend to be a hockey athlete.
Bonus Points: It was fun to ice skate while music is playing and there is a rink side place to get hot chocolate.
Skiing lessons together. Our original intent was to take ski lessons as a family and the plan was to learn together at Appalachian Mountain. A combination of weather and weariness made us all want to sleep late. And then, after our first high-energy day Élan (our youngest) came down with the cold and that was our signal to slow down. We returned to the rink and did a little more tubing but our getaway was off the plan. We still have the plan to experience skiing together it will have to be another time and in another place.
Boone Convention & Visitors Bureau 208 Howard Street Boone, North Carolina 28607. (828) 262-3516, toll-free 1-800-852-9506 or
www.ExploreBooneArea.com.