white grass touring and cafe

Great skiing, great food, great people! Love White Grass.Went here for my second trip (first trip was in 2009) with my boyfriend this winter and enjoyed a fun day of free lessons on Winter Trails Day and had delicious homemade chili afterwards. Love cross country skiing here in the woods, it's beautiful! The staff and guests are all happy - it's just a happy place!

I've been up here heaps of times with my family and every time I leave with a warm heart! White Grass is a special place, whether you are invited up for Jack Frost in the opening of the season or for various events throughout. They are really wonderful people! Thanks for the free nature snowshoe tour this morning and the delicious sweet potato chipotle soup! Already planning our next trip back for some XC!

Wondeful place. We keep going back.My experience has always been that there is darn little, effectively no cell service up there, and it has to stay that way because of a nearby research center, that needs the airspace to be cell phone free.Same problem for businesses along hwy 32 nearby.Let me know if that's changed.We use Verizon.

This place has miles of trails and Chip and his team work to keep as much as possible open. They have a rentals for x-c skiing, telemark, skate-skiing, snow shoes. The repair and sell used and new skis, boots, polls, and clothing (well not used clothing). They also give a variety of lessons. Chip "farms" snow, which means that he places oodles of snow fences to collect the snow where he needs it in the fields and also to collect extra snow which he uses to fill in where is needed on trails. They have a fantastic kid's ski package. You pay $250 and you get some used skis, poles and boots - all in good or excellent condition and you trade in free until your kid is 13. After that age I think there is a charge until the program ends around 16 or 17 (when your kid stops growing). The cafe is excellent, but cramped. The warming hut is nice to sit in on a day when everyone else is out skiing, but otherwise crowded when there are lots of skiers. They have excellent dinners, which I used to eat before kids. The dinner food is not kid-friendly for my kid, but some kids may like it. I have been skiing here since soon after it opened in the 1980's. I have bought skis, had my skis repaired, changed binding, taken lessons a couple times. It is a full service x-c place. There are many trails, but this place is nicest if you are an intermediate or advanced skier. I remember how frustrating it was when I was a beginner. You can be a beginner at Whitegrass, but you will have more limited trails to ski on.

To put it simply....This is one of the best places to cross country ski period. The gear shop has all you need and the café has some of the best food anywhere. The staff is friendly and very helpful. Go there and experience life as it is meant to be.

Great backcountry style XC skiing to be had at Whitegrass. Lodge and cafe are just the right vibe of lowkey funkiness filled with smiling employees and skiers alike. Skip the lift-served skiing and go exploring at Whitegrass this winter, you won't be disappointed.

I hadn't been on skis in 25+ years, and hardly knew what I was doing then. My son had never been on skis. Plus, we're from Florida... We don't see much snow! Everyone was friendly and helpful, whether they were staff or just local skiers. We were only there for a few hours at the very end of the season, and we didn't really know what we were doing yet, so we never really got out of sight of the parking lot, but we found plenty of places we could ski as much as we wanted. Oh, and the cafe is both reasonably priced and good, too!

We try to get out here several times over the winter. Great trails, warm vibe, really tasty food at the cafe. You can x-c ski, snowshoe, or telemark ski on 50k of trails here. Wonderful place that seems almost lost in time, in a good way.

I went to White Grass specifically to learn to Cross Country Ski because I hurt myself trying to learn the ski a little, fall, get up and ski some more approach. The staff was very friendly and knowledgeable. They not only got me up and moving on skis they also got my wife who had no interest in skiing up and going and she was surprised by how much she enjoyed it.

This place is made out of pure love of skiing. The place deals with skiing the way it was invented in the Nordic countries, as a way of moving from one place to another on the snow. It reminds me of how I learnt to ski in Norway many years ago on skis that were a hybrid between telemark and cross country skis. No ski lifts, but the ability to hike up and to go downhill as much as you want. The place is truly exceptional and unique. The food is really home made and the staff is knowledgable and always helpful. The place is also nice for kids, as they can play as much as they want in the hills.

x-c skiing and snowshoeing is excellent with dinner fri and saturday nites with live band playing everything from bluegrass to rock; food is organic and the center has published 2 wonderful cookbooks for sale- access to dolly sods wilderness from the white grass area

Second time I've been at Whitegrass, about the 4th time for my wife. We love it (when there's snow!). The ski center/cafe is about as low key and relaxed as you can find anywhere. We skied midweek so were not there when the hundreds of others crowded the lodge area. The cross country trails are meticulously groomed and the views are beautiful to behold in midwinter, even when the temperatures were -10. If we lived closer, we'd be regulars here.

I've been to White Grass a couple of times, now, and it is absolutely worth the drive from the DC area. The snow is usually pretty good, the trails are interesting and generally well maintained, and the café serves excellent home-cooked food at excellent prices. My spouse says it reminds her of a 1950s downhill ski resort. Everyone is extremely friendly, staff and customers alike. There are warming huts sprinkled along the trails, and each warming hut has one or two old WW-II era ammunition boxes packed full of goodies, some for humans and some for the birds. What a delight to sit down for a brief rest, grab a free granola bar (well, OK: "included" would probably be more accurate than "free"), toss out some bird seed and be entertained by the chickadees!Some of the trail signs could use a little maintenance, and one day the parking lot was virtually an ice rink, but these are minor quibbles. It's really a great place to go.

Have been to White Grass many times. It is the best place I have found to cross country ski. I don't telemark ski but I'm sure that's fine too. White Grass offers so many trails from flat to hills....whatever suits you. People are friendly and they have a great cafe with food and booze. Friendly place and very affordable. If you don't have your own gear you can rent it all there. As many times as I've been there I still haven't hit all the trails as there are so many of them!!

I have just finished xc skiing at White Grass for the last 2 days. The staff are great. Busy weekend with lots of people and lots of snow! They worked hard to keep everything moving from car parking to rental. I like to just go and enjoy flat, wooded trails, getting just the perfect stride (yes, lots of greens). I was afraid with the hill setting the trails would be much more difficult but I found perfect trails. The staff gave me great recommendations. My favorite of course was Timberline...done at the first part of day, after 4 inches of snow, I was alone on a beautiful xc trail. A great place to enjoy the snow and get the great exercise that xc offers!