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Strong ski season despite Helene is a sign of mountain resiliency, resort executive says

A cold, snowy winter contributed to a strong ski season in North Carolina, despite the effects of Helene.

In the High Country there’s still snow on ski slopes and a couple of good weeks left to enjoy the winter sports, says Kimberley Jochl, president of the North Carolina Ski Areas Association.

She says it’s been a good winter for the resorts, thanks in part to sustained cold weather and more than 75 inches of natural snow this season.

Jochl says the fact that the season opened on time, despite significant infrastructure damage caused by Helene, speaks volumes about Mountain resiliency.

“It is certainly a testament to the the strength and the discipline and the dedication and the just the grit that people in the North Carolina mountains have," she says. "It was fantastic to see. We all pulled together, not only for the ski resorts, but for the entire economy.”

A study of six North Carolina ski resorts found they contributed more than $244 million to the economy in the 2022-23 season.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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