Editor’s Note: DCSki Columnist Otto Matheke spent Wednesday evening skiing at Liberty Mountain Resort and filed this firsthand report.

Ski Liberty is making full use of the cold weather and has been making snow like mad. A lot of the mountain is open already with all the trails on the frontside open with the exception of White Lightning and the Half Pipe. The back side of the mountain has Upper Heavenly, Lower Heavenly, Upper Ultra, Lower Ultra and Whitney’s Way open. Serious snow making is taking place on Eastwind, both Upper and Lower and I would anticipate that both Upper and Lower will be open this weekend.

Conditions are really very good. Following the traditional freeze-thaw-freeze cycle we have come to know in the mid-atlantic, the base is hard but is not glare ice. On most of the trails this base was covered with a lovely mix of natural and man made snow. Skiing on the edges of most of the trails and avoiding the obvious scraped off areas made for some marvelous skiing. All of the trails were in very good shape with the exception of Blue Streak. In a pattern which is all too familiar to Liberty regulars, Upper Blue Streak had been pretty much scraped clean of soft snow except for a strip of nice snow on the left edge.

It is hard to believe that it is December 20th. Liberty has more terrain open now than it has had in some of the really lean years. From what I could see, the snowmaking effort continues on a very large scale. If the cold weather continues, every trail on the mountain could be open by New Year’s Day.