Appreciation: The Telemarking Snow Farmer of Central Appalachia

The legend goes something like this: In the winter of 1979 or ’80, twenty-seven-year-old Harold Beverly “Chip” Chase III telemarked twelve hundred feet down Cabin Mountain’s milk and honey powder into West Virginia’s Canaan Valley and stumbled upon an abandoned downhill resort called Weiss Knob. He looked back at the broad meadow scalloped from the timeworn hills and funneling into a wealth of mountain wilderness. He peered into the windows of a derelict outbuilding and was smitten with a vision of the future. He struck a deal with the landowner, then rebuilt the barn into a lodge. He mapped out a trail system and christened his creation the White Grass Ski Touring Center. The Washington Post ran a story, and soon Chip and his wife, Laurie Little, whose natural foods cafe would become as instrumental to White Grass’s renown as the skiing itself, were trying to figure out where to park all the cars.

In a region best known for its timber industry, the little freeheel