Snowflex Centre plans fifth anniversary celebration Saturday

Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre (LMSC) will celebrate its fifth anniversary with a public event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday, Aug. 2.

The Snowflex Fifth Anniversary Celebration Cookout will include unlimited tubing, skiing, and snowboarding, as well as outdoor inflatables and activities for younger children inside the Barrick-Falwell Lodge. Guests will be admitted with the donation of a new backpack or lunch box filled with school supplies. (View an approved supply list at www.Liberty.edu/Snowflex). Members of Liberty’s Ski & Snowboard team will distribute the supplies to needy students in Lynchburg City Schools.

“Saturday will be a good time to come up here and get away from the busyness of life down in the city, get away from work, enjoy the great views, and just have fun with your family,” said Drew Sherwood, LMSC’s general manager. “People are responding online, through Facebook, and other social media. We’re expecting a full house.”

LMSC, the only year-round ski and snowboarding facility of its kind in North America, held its grand opening on Aug. 29, 2009. More than 3,000 people attended the ceremony, including Brian Thomas, the inventor of Snowflex, a synthetic material specially engineered to simulate the slip and grip effects of snow. At the ceremony, 24 pro skiers and snowboarders from the United States and England wowed the crowd with aerial stunts.

Since that time, LMSC has continued to upgrade its facility and attract more riders, from beginners to professionals.

“We’ve added additional skiable surface on the beginner’s hill, expanded the main slopes, making them a little wider, and more than tripled the number of (ramp and rail) features available to students,” Sherwood said. “We’ve also added three new tubing runs, an (aerial awareness) trampoline, a hot tub, and the (Bag Jump) air bag.”

LMSC quickly established itself as a premier offseason training location.

“We’ve got people that come from all over the country to ski and snowboard here,” Sherwood said. “We’ve added (Next Level Summer) Camps and those numbers continue to grow, both for day and overnight.”

Many of Saturday’s guests will be drawn to the Neveplast tubing runs, which include an 80-foot feature on the beginner’s slope and 350- and 500-foot tracks that run parallel to the main slopes, where riders can reach speeds of up to 30 mph.

• For more information, visit www.Liberty.edu/Snowflex, email Snowflex@liberty.edu, or call (434) 582-3539.