Liberty University plans $1.7M synthetic ski slope

Liberty University announced plans Monday to add something new to the view of Candlers Mountain: a year-round ski slope.

Set to open by early 2009, the ski center will feature a synthetic material called Snowflex that already is in use in Europe.

The Liberty University Snowflex Center will include a ski lift, a 500-foot-long main slope, a beginner’s slope, a tubing chute and jumps, rails and quarter-pipes popular for snowboarding.

Liberty University's Snowflex site

It will be located above Campus East, roughly across from the LaHaye Ice Center, and will be funded entirely through an anonymous donation to the university, Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said.

“It’s going to be spectacular,” Falwell said Monday at a news conference. “We’re real excited about it.”

He said LU plans to open the slopes to the general public every day, but may reserve certain times of the day for students and prospective students.

“It’s going to be a big addition to the city of Lynchburg,” he said.

The school has not yet determined how much it will charge for public use of the facility.

Falwell visited a site in Scotland that uses the synthetic surface last month, he said. A few weeks later, he signed a $1.7 million contract with Briton Engineering Developments, the makers of the synthetic surface.

The total price tag of the project would be more than the contract amount, Falwell said, but the school is trying to minimize costs by using local contractors.

The slope’s synthetic surface is kept lubricated with built-in misting devices to recreate the “slip and grip” of real snow, according to a Liberty news release. About three inches of foam installed underneath the surface provide a cushion for any falls, Falwell said.

Although Snowflex already has widespread use in Europe, Falwell said, the LU facilitywould be the first of its kind in the U.S. Construction is set to begin in about a month.

Snowflex is usable year-round, except when temperatures dip below freezing and cause the wet surface to become icy, he said.

Lee Beaumont, directory of auxiliary services at Liberty, said the slope will feature nearly an acre of the synthetic surface. If the site is popular enough, the slope can be widened, he said.

“We are grating it out enough to double that,” he said.

Falwell said university officials had been discussing how to best make use of the site on Candlers Mountain for several years.

They had considered everything from selling the land for development to building an amusement park for students, he said, but the ski slope seemed like the best fit.

“These kids are all anxious to get outside and get active,” he said.

Seventy miles of biking and hiking trails already on the mountain will remain undisturbed, Falwell said, but previous plans for a “mountain coaster” and zip lines will no longer be carried through.

“For years, Christian education was seen as less than fun,” Falwell said. “We want to give students every reason to come here.”

He hopes students will be enthused enough to create competitive ski and snowboard teams and clubs, he said.

The ski slope becomes a centerpiece recreational draw for the rapidly growing university, which previously had announced plans for more than $10 million in recreational facilities over the next few years.

Earlier this summer, officials completed an $80,000 indoor climbing wall at the LaHaye Student Center. Plans also are in the works for a student union, a 20,000-square-foot Barnes & Noble Evangelical Superstore, a paintball facility, nine intramural sports fields, a 2.5-mile cross-country loop, and an indoor soccer complex with two fields over the next several years.

the material
- Snowflex, a synthetic material that is being used at multiple places in Europe for warm-weather skiing, provides a base on which to ski. The material is kept moist by a built-in misting system, which re-creates the feeling of being on snow. A layer of foam under the material cushions falls.