By the time we cross the Garrett County line, night has fallen and the rain has turned all but the last scraps of snow into a viscous mist. My 4-year-old daughter, Lucia, squints into the darkness from the backseat and asks if we'll see the snowy mountains in the morning. "Oh yeah," I say, trying to sound confident.

My wife, Tara, raises an eyebrow and offers her favorite bit of parenting wisdom: "You know, expectation is the source of all suffering."

I quickly add, "And if the snow is all gone, we're going to play in the mud."

Lucia seems content with that, but Tara makes a wondering sort of noise. That's when I make the mistake of dropping the "w" bomb.

"I. Am not. A wimp," Tara declares. She reminds me of some of our more notable misadventures. There was the famous crossing of the glacial ice floe in a tandem sea kayak on our anniversary trip to Alaska. And how about the fifty-year storm event on the Green River in Utah, which we rode out in canoes with Lucia, who was 2 at the time? I remit, but I can tell the comment has stuck in her craw.

It's my first visit to Deep Creek, Western Maryland's all-season resort area, and from what I can make out in the lights along the main road, it is a land of tourist ticky-tack: mini-golf courses, go-kart tracks, ice cream shops. The regional cuisine seems to be pizza. The theme park atmosphere is appropriate, I suppose, as the area's main attraction is a grand fabrication: Deep Creek Lake didn't exist until 1923, when the Youghiogheny Hydro-Electric Corporation dammed a tributary of its namesake river, flooding almost 4,000 acres. The tourist traps and summer cabins have been popping up ever since, drawing visitors from Pittsburgh, just an hour and a half drive to the north, and Baltimore, three hours to the east.

But I've been assured that, behind the kitsch, Garrett County is where you can still find a touch of the state's long-ago plundered wilderness. The far-western county's 657 square miles are home to just 30,000 people. In the summer, there's hiking and mountain biking. The lake is a great place for sailing and sea kayaking, and the Yough and Savage rivers serve up trout fishing and riotous whitewater. In the winter, the hills, which climb up more than 3,000 feet in spots, collect upwards of 100 inches of snowfall in an average year. It's this bounty that inspired Maryland's only full-blown ski resort, Wisp, which sits on 3,115-foot Marsh Mountain above Deep Creek Lake.

The mist is congealing into a light drizzle when we haul our belongings into our room at the Wisp Resort Hotel. There's new tile in the bathroom and a comfy-enough couch, but the artwork is classic Super 8: brown and orange autumn forest scenes. Tara holds our 9-month-old, Chloe, as Lucia jumps from one bed to the other. "It's heaven," Tara says.

Given the drizzle, we're a little surprised the next morning to pull back the curtains and see a thick blanket of white covering the hill above the hotel. It turns out that Wisp has long been a pioneer in faux snow: The resort boasts that it can dump a foot of fresh stuff on the slopes in twenty-four hours. Cold weather in December, combined with a bit of real snowfall, allowed Wisp to build a two- to three-foot base early this season.

After breakfast, Lucia and I pile on our ski pants and jackets and head for the hill. It's a friendly and unpretentious scene. One run up the Magic Carpet (a ground-level conveyer belt that takes you up the bunny slope) and Lucia's ready for the lift. We take two runs from the top on a meandering run called "Possum," she skiing between my legs. It's only 700 vertical feet, but it's all we need—and frankly, it's all my desk-surfing legs can handle while skiing in a linebacker's crouch, doing my best to follow the orders from a budding Picabo Street: "Faster, Daddy, go faster!" It's a nice reminder that you don't need a Colorado mountain peak and a foot of fresh powder to have a good time on skis.

After a bowl of soup in the food court, I head out in search of the man who started all this: Helmuth "Ace" Heise. I find him in the corner of a large, shared office at the top of Marsh Mountain. Heise, a former physical training instructor in the military (he earned his nickname playing handball), gave up skiing only last year. He's 81.

After being released from the service, Heise, a native of Pittsburgh, moved to McHenry, Maryland, to run a motel on Deep Creek Lake. His father bought the property from an old man who rented vacation cabins, calling the place Will O' the Wisp after the ghostly lights he saw from a train window while passing through the Louisiana bayou. Summertime business was fine, Heise recalls, but when the weather turned cold, the tourists vanished; someone suggested that he start a ski area. Heise had never set foot on a pair of skis, but in 1955, he hauled an old rope tow down from Stowe, Vermont, and put it up on the foot of Marsh Mountain in what he calls "a glorified cow pasture." Wisp Resort was born.

In the early days, skiers from Baltimore could ride the B&O railroad to Oakland, where Heise and his crew picked them up in a bus and hauled them twelve miles up-valley for some fun in the snow. Lift tickets were $3.50, and for a couple of bucks you could rent a pair of skis, which were distributed out of the back of a pickup truck. The après-ski scene consisted mainly of huddling around a pot-bellied stove in a Masonite-walled warming shack and eating chili Heise's wife cooked at home.

Heise built the place up slowly, adding a Poma lift in 1958 and crude early snowmaking equipment around 1960. Chairlifts, more runs, and a scrappy hotel and base lodge followed. "The one thing we lacked was a deep pocket," Heise says. "Everything we did, we had to make it." In 2001 Heise sold Wisp to three investors—longtime realtor Karen Myers, whose family is in the timber business in Garrett County and nearby West Virginia, and her partners, Gary Daum and Steve Richards. The three have poured more than $30 million into snowmaking, chairlifts, a cavernous new base lodge, and a slope expansion called North Camp, plus millions more outside of the ski area. Heise seems a little dumbfounded by the magnitude of the change. "I had a powerful imagination, but not to this extent," he says. "This is almost too much for me to imagine."

By "this," he means the mini-mansions and gated communities spreading across Marsh Mountain. His office overlooks what area marketers hail as "the world's most adjustable whitewater course"—an artificial river that runs in a circle. Nearby are the muddy beginnings of a private golf club and 2,500 vacation homes and condos that could sprawl across the mountaintop in ten or fifteen years.

At the real estate office at the base of the mountain, sales consultant Mark Russell gives me the stats. Slope-side lots run between $400,000 and $700,000. "Improved lots"—that is, lots with houses on them—start at $300,000 off-slope, and run "up to whatever," Russell says; the most expensive house to sell on the mountain thus far went for $1.75 million.

It's peanuts compared to Vail and Beaver Creek, the Colorado resorts Wisp seeks to emulate, but the business model is the same: Chairlifts and ski runs create what Russell calls "real estate opportunities." Those who can afford to buy in win the opportunity to drop another $37,500, plus $5,000 a year, for a club membership that comes with ski and golf privileges and access to a lakeside clubhouse. The recession has slowed sales, says Russell, but he's optimistic that things will pick up. "There are only so many ski-in, ski-out home sites on the East Coast," he says. "They're not building a lot of new ski areas."

If we could be so lucky. By the time gray morning dawns over Marsh Mountain, rain is falling by the bucket-load, drenching the poor lift ops who have been ordered to open the slopes, weather be damned. Former Olympic downhiller A.J. Kitt is coming to Wisp today to set the pace for NASTAR races held around the country. It's not ideal weather for this PR opportunity, and the resort staff is surly. A manager downstairs at the ski shop calls the weather "disgusting."

Today is not a ski day for my crew. We load our bags into the car and head out in search of something more fitting of the weather. I've promised a little wilderness puddle-stomping, and I have a good lead on where we might find some: a bog about a half hour south on the Maryland-West Virginia line, said to be a remnant of the last Ice Age. As we drive south, Lucia asks if I can see the road through the wall of rain and fog, and Tara starts muttering about her "motherly eject button." "Listen, I'm not a wimp," she says, "but I have been told—by a number of people—that I am a good mother." Dragging two young children out in a 38-degree downpour apparently does not fit her definition of good parenting.

I get the same assessment from a couple of gray-haired ladies when I poke my head into the Garrett County Historical Society Museum in Oakland and ask for directions. Their descriptor for the bog: "spooky." I press on.

Chloe is asleep in her car seat as we pull into the parking area twenty minutes later. Tara announces her intention to stay in the car with the sleeping baby, telling Lucia and me: "You have twenty minutes to explore. Then we're going back to town to find some hot chocolate and a grilled cheese sandwich." With that, Chloe wakes up. Tara takes a deep breath, straps the baby to her belly, and wraps the both of them in her raincoat. I hand her an umbrella and we march down the trail, coaxing Lucia along with promises of ever-bigger puddles to stomp farther on.

About a half hour into our hike, we break out into an open area where a boardwalk leads across a lumpy landscape of peat moss hummocks. It's like a patch of Labrador plopped in the Maryland woods. Lucia, who a minute ago was ready to go in search of the promised hot chocolate, suddenly wants to explore farther. Tara marvels at the luminous wine-red of the sphagnum moss—a color that isn't matched anyplace else on Earth. A bit of a bog connoisseur, I'm laughing and whooping and poking at the spongy moss. Here, at last, is the experience we came looking for: A chance to meet nature on its own terms, to find a little fun in weather that most folks would rather hide from.

Back in Oakland, we huddle into a booth in Dottie's, a greasy spoon tucked into the back of an antiques and knickknack shop. The whole town seems to have gathered here for lunch and coffee. American flags and Steelers jackets are in abundance. The waitress is all business. The hamburger is patted into shape by hand. And Lucia and Tara decide to skip the hot chocolate, opting instead for a giant milk shake—a brimming cup of ice cream on a frigid Western Maryland day.

—Urbanite senior editor Greg Hanscom grew up in Park City, Utah. His parents had him on skis as soon as he could stand up.




Peak Rewards
Microbrews, meat markets, and plenty of mountains await the intrepid Western Maryland traveler

Wisp Resort
It will never be Vail, and thank goodness. Co-owner Karen Myers says that the state's lone ski facility will always be a family resort, where you can gather with kids and grandkids and skip the long rides to New England or Colorado. The skiing is not difficult—it's all well-groomed, and the few black diamonds amount to little more than a steep pitch in the middle of a blue square. For non-skiers, there's a tubing park, and snowboarders and freestylers get a decent terrain park. Weekday lift passes are $39; weekends go for $59. The hotel at the base of the mountains offers two-day "Slide and Ride" weekend packages starting at $169 per person per night, including lodging and a ski pass. Go mid-week and pay $59 per person per night. (296 Marsh Hill Rd., McHenry; 301-387-4911; www.wispresort.com)

Mountain State Brewing Co.
OK, the Mountain State is West Virginia, where this microbrewery got its start in the small town of Thomas, but this new McHenry brewpub up the road from the ski area offers a taste of wood-smoky Appalachian culture, replete with log construction and sawhorses that stand in for bar stools. They also serve up fine flatbreads and craft brews. Try Cold Trail Ale, an American blonde with lots of character. The waitress apologized profusely that the place wasn't more kid-friendly, then produced a game of Connect Four and held our baby while we ate. (6690 Sang Run Rd., McHenry; 310-387-3360; www.mountainstatebrewing.com)
 
Garrett Country Market
Bring a cooler and load up on frozen meats on your way home. This country store processes local Black Angus beef and bison, produces their own smokehouse bacon and jerky, and offers all manner of organic fruits and vegetables, cheeses, and an olive bar. (418 S. Main St., Accident; 301-746-6328; www.garrettcountrymarket.com)
 
The Cranesville Swamp
If you have a thing for rare plants or a passion for the north country, this 1,774-acre Nature Conservancy preserve will turn your crank. It's in a "frost pocket"—a low spot nested in the hills—that has served as a haven for plants and wildlife that lived here during the last Ice Age. Winter visitors will find hemlock and black spruce, and if there's open ground, cranberries, princess pine, and peat moss. In the summer, you'll find bug-eating sundew  plants. (Cranesville and Lake Ford rds.; www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/maryland/preserves/art135.html)

Dottie's Fountain and Grill
This "old-fashioned fountain and grill" tucked into the back of Englander's Antique Mall in downtown Oakland is a good place to rub elbows with the locals. Leave your Ravens paraphernalia at home—this is Steelers country—and make time to peruse the antiques. (205 East Alder St., Oakland; 301-553-0000)

—G.H.