Poster: A snowHead
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What a ridiculous f**k up. Somehow you could see it coming though.
I come up about every other year for a couple of days of skiing. Yes, @mancski, I agree, I'll probably go to the West. Anyhow I agree with @kitenski that the back of Nevis (aka Aonach Mor) is special. It is a shame Braveheart runs so little - you definitely need touring bindings and skins when it isn't. As for the denizens of Aviemore: perhaps you'll have to pretend it is 60 years ago and do the same. Personally, though, now I'm 70 it is hard to walk up more than a couple of times per day.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Maybe they'll chuck some dendrex under the uplifts and a lower slope and kill 2 birds with one stone
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I guess closing Ptarmigan (logistics of getting supplies up aside) goes to show that, despite their positive spin PR, they are not exactly expecting to be getting massive numbers up there in the coming season.
Does that also mean that the only 'conveniences' will be at the bottom of the hill too? That's not going to be, well, very convenient if you're playing in the top bowls, 'specially if there's limited snow cover to get down and queues to get dragged back up again.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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@Grizzler, good points, this coming season at Cairngorm unfortunately looks like it will be a commercial disaster.
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@Grizzler, I think it's gonna be a "don't eat yellow snow" type of inconvenient. Dear lord, how can an organisation get things so badly wrong?
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Sad state of affairs ☹️
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fazbadge wrote: |
be interesting to see that rating nowadays there's not a school or hospital in my town older that that article 😂😂😂 |
With the finance and oil-gas industry now collapsing, it is a fair bet that Scotland today remains the worst-performing country in all of Western Europe.
And seeing things like the Cairngorm disaster only confirms the trend.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Whitegold wrote: |
fazbadge wrote: |
be interesting to see that rating nowadays there's not a school or hospital in my town older that that article 😂😂😂 |
With the finance and oil-gas industry now collapsing, it is a fair bet that Scotland today remains the worst-performing country in all of Western Europe.
And seeing things like the Cairngorm disaster only confirms the trend. |
sounds like you read a newspaper 15 years ago and still present it as your opinion on current affairs 😂
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@Whitegold,
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The company that took over Cairngorm -- has anyone forensically probed their books or financial activities in recent months? |
More "interesting* info on Cairngorm financial state on W.H.
http://www.winterhighland.info/forum/read.php?2,176351,176884#msg-176884
Basically
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Cairngorm Mountain Ltd which it the company that operates the ski resort....(CGM Ltd)….is wholly owned by "Natural Assets Investments Ltd".
Natural Assets Investments Ltd has one person with significant control of the voting rights etc..
David Gorton with between 25% & 50% of the voting rights. |
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Natural Assests Investments Ltd is insolvent to the tune of £35 million (ie negative net worth) |
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CM spent 1 million more than it earned last year. Follow the money as to where that came from and you arrive at David Gorton. |
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Basically CGML is being used to borrow against...by NAIL.. |
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You know it makes sense.
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From this link http://www.winterhighland.info/forum/read.php?2,81386,170437#msg-170437
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Mr David Michael Gorton the shareholder in this lot is a big hedge fund manager ... |
Hmmm : the plot thickens...
Quote: |
hedge fund
noun
an offshore investment fund, typically formed as a private limited partnership, that engages in speculation using credit or borrowed capital. |
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Haven't seen the accounts, but I read that Winterhighland summary of them as saying that CGML or NRL owes money to group undertakings (i.e. has borrowed a lot from them and their owner), not is being used as the asset against which group borrowings are being secured. Makes more sense, and not sure that the financial situation, structure and purpose is as Machiavellian and cunning as some want to make out. Could be wrong of course.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Appalling. I worked at Cairngorm for a couple of seasons back in the nineties and ski school was the life blood of Aviemore.
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Very depressing it’s going to have a huge impact on Aviemore 😖
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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That's now getting really sad, going to kill tourism over the winter school holidays and massively impact the lives of loads of people who depend on that income in the area.
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On the one hand they're putting out press releases saying that they'll be fully open for skiing (I presume this includes other snowsports too) and will get loads of snow cannons or whatever to make sure that they're able to operate, then on the other they're closing the Ptarmigan building, laying off instructors and other staff. Clearly they don't believe their own PR before the season's even got started. Clearly, in reality, they've already given up for 2018-19.
It really is an unbelievable situation. More unbelievable that others are not - or are not being invited nor allowed - to step in and salvage what they can for this season and the future.
I have a suspicion that, whatever the true reasoning and motivation, they do seriously want to kill off Cairngorm as a snowsports venue. Hard to explain certain actions over the past few and current years otherwise.
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Cairngorm is dead.
Glencoe, Nevis, Lecht and Glenshee need to pounce and steal Aviemore's skiers.
Move fast. Don't mess about.
For example, get 20% off a Nevis season pass if you have an Aviemore zipcode.
They have a great chance to make sum dolla.
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@Whitegold, I don't think it's really going to be that hard to capture an already disillusioned audience who effectively have no choice but to go elsewhere anyway.
The greater annoyance, potentially, is whether the other resorts really have the parking, uplift and other capacities to take in all of their new customers, especially if it is another good year.
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Completely catastrophic for Aviemore. Millions of pounds removed from the local economy...
Wonder if the Scottish Government might have to act? Eg some sort of emergency relief funding (or loan?) to shore up the wonky funicular supports and get the train running
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@mountainaddict, I think it's too late for that this year - now probably too cold up there to pour concrete and get it to set reliably and strongly.
I agree - a catastrophe for Aviemore, and sadly CML the problems were coming a while back, but did nowt (or worse, were deliberately destructive . . .)
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I can't comment on things that I don't know intimately about or have not seen, but there is an increasing amount of amateur conspiracy-theorists (aka people with axes to grind or genuine points which they're trying to make) busy online analysing publically available, often 'abbreviated' accounts for individual and large, sometimes worldwide, companies and groups for evidence of wrongdoing, undesirable motives and all the rest of it. Not that some of what they're observing might not be pertinent, even correct; maybe. But I do wish that they'd learn a bit of accountancy first before sending all of these great analyses flying around from 'facts' which I cannot see allow much at all to be inferred.
Not just in the Cairngorm situation BTW: see it in all kinds of public protest vs evil developer, etc, situations.
Give 'em an A for enthusiasm and effort; but all too often F- for actual accurate interpretation
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You know it makes sense.
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@Grizzler, you're absolutely right - it takes a skilled accountant to pick up evidence of financial skulduggery - cos people indulging in said skulduggery also employ skilled accountants. However, if such skulduggery is a part of managing an operation, then eventually the evidence of the skulduggery will become obvious even to the unskilled. I think that's what has happened here - CML management has reached the point where their mismanagement has become obvious to all.
Apologies in advance for overuse of "skulduggery"
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Are they allowed to use additives to their snowmaking at Cairngorm?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Brilliant !
So due to apparent CML incompetence, the government has to invest £1m to put snow on the lower slopes?
This is verging into "Yes Minister" territory.
Sure that will be of little comfort to the instructors who wont have a job this season.
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Lol.
It is hard to comprehend the incompetence here.
Over many decades.
Build a snowtrain that closes when it snows...
Build a snowtrain where the foundations crack in cold weather...
Dismantle the secondary lifts that backup the failed snowtrain...
Finally, waste £1,000,000 of taxpayers' money in one of the world's poorest regions on propping up a private foreign firm...
Cairngorm is a disaster.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Whitegold wrote: |
Lol.
in one of the world's poorest regions
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Highlands, by GDP per head, is poorer than Equatorial Guinea and Puerto Rico...
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Equatorial Guinea is oil rich with a (very) few creaming off the money while most live in desperate poverty. Puerto Rico is part of the USA. You could replace with Brunei and California
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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To be fair I suppose Cairngorm is in good company. Argentiere recently set fire to two of its own cable cars and in Chamonix two others broke down. The Germans crashed their brand new Zugspitze cable car last month and the la plagne les arcs cable car had to be restrung. Jackson hole underestimated the cost of their new cable car by $10m and of course it was a US jet that killed 20 people in Cavalese when it flew too low cutting a cable. So not just Cairngorm.
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@Peter S, Bit of a theme there Maybe these drag lift things ain't so bad after all. Oh, wait, till they come off their cable...
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