The Cutting Edge – Humidity, Summer Skiing at Falwell's University

Lynchburg, VA, Aug. 31, 2009 -- It is that oppressive time of year in the Mid-Atlantic region when the temperature inches over 90 degrees, the crickets croak day and night and the humidity is stifling.

Not ideal weather for downhill skiing, but weather is no longer an obstacle in steamy Lynchburg, Virginia, where the administration at Liberty University, the conservative evangelical college founded in a valley below the Blue Ridge Mountains by Rev. Jerry Falwell, have built a year-round, snow-less ski hill.

Falwell's son, Jerry Falwell Jr., is chancellor now, and says his father signed off the day before he died of a heart attack on the $4 million ski hill, paid for, Falwell says, with private donations.

"My father believed that the University should be the most exciting university because he said if it's Christian it should be better. His vision was for liberty to become for evangelical Christians what Notre Dame is for Catholic young people and what Brigham Young is for Mormons," he says.

A year-round ski slope might seem at odds with a university focused on academics, but Falwell argues that part of making the school world class is developing its academics, sports teams, and extracurricular activities to compete with those schools.

And so despite the oppressive heat, on a mountaintop owned by the university, there is the rip of snowboards.

But they're not really on snow. The system, manufactured by a European company called Snowflex and already popular in Europe, is more like a carpet wet by built-in misters canvassing the hillside. Liberty University's slope is the first in North America.

The space-age wet carpet allows skiers and boarders to slide down, almost like on an enormous slip 'n slide, but also catch their edges for turns.

"It's awesome man, like corduroy, groomed trail all day long," says Luke Fosse, who will work at the mountain as an instructor, on his way up the T-bar lift. "You can ride it all year long, there's no ice, the jump is always the same," he said, before launching down the mountain and flipping off a jump.