Kathy & I did some reconnoitering at ski liberty this evening to see what the tubing was like because my sister & her family wanted to go tubing.

Ski liberty & whitetail are $20 for 1 hour of tubing and $24 for 2 hours.

http://www.skiliberty.com/lmr/tubing.aspx?c=mountain
http://www.skiwhitetail.com/tubing.htm

I know whitetail is a taller mountain in general than ski liberty, but I don't know how the actual stats of the tubing runs compare. Ski whitetail has 10 tubing lanes, while liberty has 15 tubing lanes. LIberty is a little closer to dc (it's up by Emmittsburg) and the ski hill has always seemed more crowded than whitetail, so it may be similar for the tubing lanes.

Lift tickets start on the hour - so if you get there at 5:30, you can either get a 5:00 lift ticket or a 6:00 lift ticket. They don't seem to be very stringent about checking lift tickets though.

There was usually a line of 5-6 people per each lane, so it does involve some standing around in line... and this was on a Tuesday evening - weekends might be worse.

Zen or someone else whose done a lot of tubing may know better than I do - but I think it's usually best to wait till the temperatures have cooled down a bit and they can make snow. If it's over 40 degrees or so, they can't make it. The tubing lanes are mostly icy - but it's nice to have some snow to walk in when you're dragging your tube around to get back in line.

The course was fun, you picked up a fair amount of speed, and they slope things back uphill at the end to slow you down.

Anyone want to start throwing out some potential dates to do this? I can't do anything for the next two weeks.

My little niece at the end of a run (poor thing was wearing my ski pants which were a bit too long & wide on her):