There’s coming home, and then there’s coming home. In the case of developer Randy Banks, who was away from his native Yancey County, N.C. for 20 years working as a ski pro among other things, the return involved an ambitious and glorious plan to transform the family homeplace.

The Banks and Young families, linked initially by marriage two generations back, originally owned about 500 acres atop 4,700-foot Slickrock Mountain, which rises precipitously just west of the little town of Burnsville. The land had been in the families for four generations and Randy Banks, then in his mid-30s, took the lead role in coalescing the knowledge and capabilities of the families toward the creation of what has since become – aside from the school system and county government – the largest employer in Yancey County.

Those family strengths involved experience in two major realms – timber management and heavy equipment – attributes ideally suited to making a mountain into Mountain Air Country Club.

The vision involved transforming the mountain into something “built by families for families.”
Or, as Randy Banks puts it: “To take this beautiful mountain and develop it in a manner that would not only not detract from it, but genuinely complement it.”

“People want to be a part of the natural environment,” he says. “They come here to the mountains to be a part of what’s here – the birding, the hiking, the programs we provide to help them be a part of the land.”

Banks says that about 30 percent of Mountain Air residents come from Florida, and another 20 percent from North Carolina. In all, 30 states are represented.

You drive out of Burnsville toward Mountain Air on a sunny late-May day and the temperature read-out just above the rearview mirror is a comfortable 64 degrees. As you wind your way up the pretty mountainside, the degrees fall away consistently. By the time you reach the top of the mountain, it’s 59. And clear.

The first impression is the views. Eastward toward the top of Beech Mountain. West toward Mount Mitchell – at 6,684 the highest peak in the east – and the rest of the majestic Black Mountains. To the south, the Balsams.

What presents itself next is a series of rather stunning buildings spread around Slickrock Village Green, the focal point of the mountain. The anchoring structure is Falling Leaf Lodge, built in scale with the mountain and home not only to guest suites but also the post office, a market, the golf shop and the Mountain Air concierge. Within pleasant-stroll distance are Orville and Wilbur’s Bar & Grill (complete with museum-quality one-quarter-scale model of the craft that made the first flight 100 years ago this December), other restaurants, a business center, fitness center and a design center where homeowners can pick out interior touches from flooring and window treatments to lighting and carpets.

Drive further, along lanes named things like Andrew Banks Road or Ball Camp Road or Apple Brandy Way, and you’re aware of homes – many of them majestic in scale – peeking out from amid the trees. And many perched on land so dramatically steep as to appear to the untrained eye to be completely incompatible with the siting of homes. Perhaps the most striking of these is a home built by the developer (about 50 percent of the community’s homes are designed and built by owners), called The Red Oak Lodge. Its breathtaking reach out into the air and into views of distant mountains is accomplished by a technique at least roughly akin to that used for the Linn Cove Viaduct – the section of the Blue Ridge Parkway around Grandfather Mountain, completed in 1987. The modern, two-level homes are built with respect to the vegetation and rock outcroppings below, as the homes share a suspended-in-air feeling with the viaduct as it curls unobtrusively around Grandfather Mountain.

Beyond the homes and the cluster of buildings at the village center, the two most striking man-made features of Mountain Air are its landing strip and its pan-elevation golf course. The runway is the highest east of the Mississippi River, and pilots can reach two-thirds of the U.S. with no climb at all. The strip accommodates the 85 or so pilots among the 500 families who live at Mountain Air. Friday afternoons provide a little extra excitement on the mountain as air traffic control – housed in the pro shop – shepherds residents in for the weekend.

There’s a family tie of sorts to the runway as well. Randy Banks is a former pilot who in early adulthood cajoled his former-Air Force-pilot dad back into the air. These days, with a 12-year-old son interested in flying, the 50-year-old Banks hints at a Mitchell Banks-spawned comeback for himself somewhere not too far in the future.

Take a driving tour of Mountain Air with a golf enthusiast like Warren Grant – a long-time associate of Randy Banks – and you get a palpable sense of a guy itching to get out of the car and onto the tee box. He talks about the elevation drop on this hole, the view on that one, the creekflow along this next one.

And finally, unable to restrain himself any longer, Grant stops at the par-5 11th hole, talking about Tiger Woods hitting the ball maybe 300 or 320 yards on a drive, and the need to take a look at this one hole. Grant pauses at the back of the car and then presents himself with club and ball in hand. He’s about to use the compelling gift of the drastically sloped geography to show off a “drive” of 400 yards. But alas, on the tee box just below – one of three that tier down the mountain – is a pair of golfers. Grant, nearly crestfallen, packs up the equipment, mumbles a little more about Tiger under his breath and starts talking about the 10-second hang time on certain drives.

Randy Banks says golf is an important amenity to many residents, but only part of the mountain’s experience.

“There’s just too much to life for golf to be really number-one up here.”

Which is where another of the family aspects of Mountain Air comes into play. Randy Banks’ wife Jeani, as enthusiastic and involved a part of the mountain as her husband, is the key to all that there is to do here.

“Four hundred events a year,” is the way Randy Banks puts it, noting that his wife’s job title is Director of the Mountain Air Experience.

Look at Jeani Banks’ calendar of events and you get a sense not only of the activity level at Mountain Air, but also a broader feel for the attributes and amenities on Slickrock Mountain. Take a few sample entries from September alone: There’s the garden group meeting, a tennis tournament, dancing, concerts, hikes, fishing, a cooking school, a golf tournament and an elk-watch excursion, to name but a few.

“The events calendar has grown out of surveys to members,” says Jeani Banks. “We create things to do based on what people want – crafts, photography, pets, hot-air ballooning, star-gazing, gem-mining, themed lectures and more. People have come to the mountains for a tie to them, and all of our events have a tie to where we are.”

Developer Randy Banks and his wife Jeani are deeply involved in the day-to-day life at Mountain Air. Son Mitchell may one day before too long prompt his dad to return to flying.


The drama of the Lodge is heightened by clear-night sky and the facility’s lighting and regional architectural touches. Members-only guest rooms inside also carry a flavor of the North Carolina mountains, with names such as Tulip Poplar and Carolina Silverbell.


Hole number 1 on the Mountain Air Slickrock Course is emblematic of the beauty afforded each of the holes by the natural setting, an attribute that prompted Links magazine to refer to the course as “one of the most dramatic and naturally conceived in the country.”


The Red Oak Lodge single-family home is perhaps the most dramatic of the Mountain Air home designs, rising up majestically from steep slopes to look out upon distant mountains.


The Slickrock Village Green serves the same functions as any village square. Members and families gather here, atop the mountain, to shop, to dine, to pick up the mail.


The Mountain Air tennis courts are the highest courts east of the Rockies.


The Slickrock Cinema, part of the Chautauqua Activity and Fitness Center, offers theater-style chairs and real movie popcorn.



Falling Leaf Lodge, with its soaring vaulted ceiling, natural stone and inviting seating, offers not only a comfortable gathering place but also a wall of windows with 50-mile views.