Timeline

Sugar Mountain Resort Timeline

1969	Fall – Sugar Mountain Company opens with four lifts and eleven slopes
1978	Sugar Mountain Resort, Inc. purchases Sugar Mountain Company
1982	The Red Slope and Red lift are built – now Oma’s Meadow slope and the Oma’s Meadow lift
1984	The Gray/Summit #2 lift is built
1991	The Annual Oktoberfest begins
1993	Hiking and mountain biking trails open
1994-2007	The Showdown at Sugar Mountain Bike Competition is hosted
1994	New Ski /Snowboard School and Ski Patrol buildings are built
1996	Sugar Mountain Resort receives the National Ski Patrol distinguished service award
1997	Summer lift rides begin
1998	Sugar’s double Black Diamond slope, Whoopdedoo opens
1999	The Tubing Park opens
1999	The Terrain Park is added
2000	Snowshoeing becomes another activity at Sugar Mountain
2003	Annual Sugarfest Celebration begins
2003	Sugar Mountain Resort and local meteorologist, Ray Russell team up to provide customized local weather forecasting using on-site weather stations.
2004	Sugar Mountain Resort receives the Employer of the Year award by The Employment Security Commission of North Carolina.
2004	Improving the snowmaking infrastructure begins its five-year overhaul plan of replacing and enlarging all air and water pipes
2004	A Magic Carpet conveyor lift replaced the thirty-year old rope tow in the beginners’ area
2006 & 2007	Sugar Mountain Resort brings North Carolina its first National Mountain Bike Competition hosting 900-1,200 competitors from eight countries and forty-three states and territories.
2005	Yellow/Summit #1 and Green lifts receive new chairs and drive- stations
2005	Sugar debut’s one of the industry’s first live-streaming web-cams
2006	Sugar Mountain Resort’s Ski/Snowboard Patrol is awarded the outstanding patrol in the Southern Division for the 2005-06 season
2006	Sugar Mountain Resort receives the Alfred Adams Leadership Employer of the Year Award from the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce
2006	Brown Lift receives new chairs and drive station
2007	Sugar Mountain Resort and the Village of Sugar Mountain Tourism Development Authority build the Dave Nixon Pro Shop which houses tennis, golf, ice skating and tubing
2007	Ice skating opens
2008	Sugar records a record one-hundred forty consecutive skier days
2009	Sugar celebrates forty years!
2010	Gunther Jochl purchases Sugar Mountain Resort, Inc.
2011	Gunther Jochl purchases the Sugar Mountain Trust
2012	Sugar hosts weddings
2014	Sugar’s game changing $1,000,000 slope Gunther’s Way opens
2014	Ten new SMI snow-making machines are purchased for Gunther’s Way The pump house is redesigned and rebuilt to accommodate an additional 1,000 gallon per minute vertical water pump.
2014	Big Red Slope is renamed Oma’s Meadow after Gunther’s mother, Marianne Jochl. She is eighty-eight years old, was an avid downhill and cross-country skier until around the age of eighty. She lives in Sachrang, Germany. Oma is a term of endearment in German speaking countries and means grandmother in English.
2015	The new Summit Express, a six-seater, detachable, high-speed chairlift/chondola manufactured by the Austrian based company, Doppelmayr is installed. The new Little Gray chairlift, formerly known as the Summit #2 chairlift, is shortened and ferries skiers and snowboarders to the top of the Easy Street Extension slope. The Little Gray provides access to the lower and north sides of the mountain. The new GW chairlift is installed. It transports passengers from the base of Gunther’s Way slope to the mountain’s peak. The new lift configuration increases the uphill transportation capacity from 8,800 people to 10,520 people.
2018	Built a lift-serviced bike park which includes Sugar’s signature expert terrain and newly built beginner and intermediate trails.
2019	Fall – Sugar celebrates 50 years!

revised February 2019

BASE 55.4° HI: 56.4° LO: 55.3° 4/19/19 4:23am	SUMMIT 50.9° HI: 52.2° LO: 50.3° 4/19/19 4:36am
AveryWeather.com • Weather.com

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