 Poster: A snowHead
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A whistle-stop trip to Glencoe over the weekend reminded me what an exceptional place this is. Snow is again in extremely short supply - the only viable run seemed to be the Happy Valley, served by its draglift - but the spirit to keep the mountain open shines through. They're even providing transport from the top of the access chair to the Cliffhanger (a wonderful antique single chairlift) with an 'Argo' vehicle - a kind of beach buggy.
A pressing schedule precluded any skiing yesterday morning, but we took a ride up the access chair. A 5-minute stroll up a path takes you to the 'Plateau Chateau', a cafe with views up the ski area. For £4.50 return on the chair it was a bargain.
After a coffee we wandered over to the Cliffy, where 5 French skiers (of all people) suddenly arrived on the Argo, enthusastically grabbing their single chairs to cheers from assembled spectactors. I doubt if there were more than 50 skiers on the hill at the time, so this French invasion was hysterically funny!
Glencoe only has five lifts but it's a unique, eccentric, sweet ski mountain (the first to be mechanised in Scotland) with some of the most gob-smacking scenery anywhere - the massive panorama of the Rannoch Moor takes in your entire field of vision as you go downhill. The ski area sits almost all by itself in this vast landscape. For even finer mountain views, lakes, rivers and colour and water, take a drive down the nearby 14-mile single-track road of Glen Etive, captured here by 'Undiscovered Scotland.' It's impossible to describe how beautiful that valley is. On the way, you're more than likely to see herds of red deer with full antlers. Many of them were right by the roadside as we drove down. Others were running across the heather-clad slopes of nearby hills. The road ends abruptly at the exquisitely beautiful Loch Etive.
The future of Glencoe's skiing remains in the balance commercially. There's talk of running the place like one of the little Pennines ski areas, or the club fields that operate in New Zealand.
Whatever, it would be a real tragedy for British skiing to lose the place.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
There's talk of running the place like one of the little Pennines ski areas, or the club fields that operate in New Zealand.
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First job of the new owners, add 1000 meters to the height of the resort.
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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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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
| On the way, you're more than likely to see herds of red deer with full antlers. |
*begin useless mine of information*
which, at this time of year, would indicate they're female since males shed their antlers in autumn
*end useless mine of information*
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Glad you had a good time up here David - the scenery is truly breathtaking. First trip up to Scotland, I was driving through Glencoe and nearly crashed when the vista suddenly opened up in front of me!
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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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I'll be up there as soon as the conditions improve a little and i can get oof work for a bit... Looks like the conditions are going to change for the better this week.
Having only skied at Glenshee and the Cairngorms I can't wait to try out Glencoe. It sounds soooo much better.
Check out these conditions from a weekend earlier in the season which i missed at the last moment due to work 
www.winterhighland.com/glencoe/pics_17_jan_04.php
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Only lake in Scotland is Lake of Menteith, all the rest are lochs. 
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Picky, picky! Actually had a very nice paddle in the Lake of Menteith last year - was on a Nick Nairn cookery day (his cook school & very nice house backs on to the Lake) and we all took a bit of a stroll after dinner (even had to cook it ourselves - what a con!)
Lovely scenery there (and the Trossachs), but still not a patch on Glencoe...
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| markP wrote: |
I'll be up there as soon as the conditions improve a little and i can get oof work for a bit... Looks like the conditions are going to change for the better this week.
Having only skied at Glenshee and the Cairngorms I can't wait to try out Glencoe. It sounds soooo much better.
Check out these conditions from a weekend earlier in the season which i missed at the last moment due to work
www.winterhighland.com/glencoe/pics_17_jan_04.php |
nice pics. Looks like some good skiing to be had at Glencoe.
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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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Have you seen the picture of that lift que "ouch"
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The queues were only about 15 minutes apparently and once you were up the mountain there were hardly any.
Sort of harks back to the other queing thread and forcing people to double up and what not.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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An article in today's Scotsman suggests there may be some hope for the future, with talk of possible bids for both Glenshee and Glencoe. Nothing concrete yet though...
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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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Don't forget - we're only just starting to get into the "real" ski season up here as well!
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I learnt to ski in Glencoe, and I love the ski terrain - it's one of those rare mountains where you can always find an interesting way down. I definitely think it's a better mountain than Cairngorm or the front side of Nevis, but while those other areas actually have a town at the bottom and can diversify into non-skiing tourism as the snow disappears, at Glencoe there is almost no accomodation or gear shops/cafes etc. All we can do is hope the Gulf Stream gets cut off and we go into Global Cooling!
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You know it makes sense.
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Never been but one day i'd like to try Scotish skiing/boarding...................long and expensive trip from Brighton though 
I know all about people's feeling but surely it doesn't make financial sense to save it - and that's what it comes down to in the end. Unless they can market it into a year round resort so that money can be made in other ways other than the very tempremental scotish snow season. Could they not perma snow it or something so that skiing could go on all year round even if there is no snow or is this seen as environmentally not a good idea???? Is there a Roman Abromovich of the Skiing world that fancies his own bit of skiing heaven in Scotland.....................????
I saw a very interesting 10 minute bit on Scotish Skiing and Genlcoe featured quite heavily on the Money Programme BBC Monday lunch time, i think, did anyone else see it?
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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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Cairngorm too has major problems according to this report. The resort seems to have little choice but to look to other activities to compensate for what the owners term a "severe lack of snow".
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Poster: A snowHead
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The snowline on Cairngorm was consistently reliable at about 600m when I did most of my work and skiing up there in the mid to late 1970s - hence the fact that the ski tows and chairlifts were originally built from that altitude.
Nowadays it's hard to know where the snowline is. The White Lady T-bar, which was a strategic lift in the golden years of the mountain, starts from about another 150m up the hill, but it seems to be out of action most of the winter. The trusty old Coire Cas T-bar, which starts from a slightly higher altitude in a good snow-holding gully, seems to do better. But the rest of the T-bars and Pomas (with the exception of the two highest ones up in the Ptarmigan bowl) seem to operate on a wing and a prayer. It hardly comprises a great day out for the intermediate or advanced skier these days.
Bob Kinnaird has a significant management challenge in keeping that hill viable. You wonder how the climate could have switched so dramatically in a mere two decades.
It might help if the ski industry collectively adopted a strong pro-Kyoto stance, switching much more European travel from air to rail or bus, and lobbied for radical action in cutting CO2 emissions.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
The snowline on Cairngorm was consistently reliable at about 600m when I did most of my work and skiing up there in the mid to late 1970s
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First off, thanks for your interesting posts on the subject of Scottish skiing. I love the country and its people.
Regarding the snowline, was it consistently at 600 meters in the 50s? 60s? You may think it is a daft question but if you look at this image for a similar kind of area in France you will see that the 70s were really bounty years
http://mapage.noos.fr/pistehors/images/globalwarming/snowcover.png
Louis Raynaud, a researcher from the Glacial and Geophysical Laboratory in Grenoble says that many lower lifts were built in places where historically there wasn't sufficient snow. Developers wanted to expand resorts in the 70s and started building lifts where the current snowline occured not where the longer term snowline was.
Now none of this may apply to Scotland which has a different climate.
Other forms of skiing, such as ski touring or snowcat touring are still quite feasible in Scotland and perhaps more in keeping with the savage environment. I've seen people ski touring in early May.
| David Goldsmith wrote: |
It might help if the ski industry collectively adopted a strong pro-Kyoto stance, switching much more European travel from air to rail or bus, and lobbied for radical action in cutting CO2 emissions. |
Train transport seems like the best idea... like in Switzerland. A study in the Rhone-Alpes found pollution in Tignes at the weekend to be the same as the city centre of Lyon largely due to their diesel navettes and the large number of tour operators transporting skiers.
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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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davidof, the first major (i.e. non ropetow) lift built on Cairngorm was the top section of the White Lady chairlift (1961) which starts at about 750m. The bottom section (from 600m) was built shortly afterwards. About 5 tows from around these altitudes were built during the 60s and early 70s.
I guess that reflects confidence from a consistent snowline through the 1950s and 1960s. Since 1989 the snow pattern has been generally terrible, with good winters far out-numbered by mild or snowless winters.
The study of air pollution in Tignes would interest me, as I'm sitting on a ski environmental group for the Ski Club of Great Britain. Do you have a reference for it? The general pattern of motor traffic climbing from valley towns like Moutiers and Bourg St Maurice to the high resorts - rather than by train - must be generating huge pollution generally.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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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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David Goldsmith, I do agree about the traffic in the French valleys.
The contrast between them and the train route to, say, Zermatt is dramatic. Oddly, nearby Saas Fee relies on the post bus to connect with the rail service.
Is Swiss electricity produced at hydro-electric stations ? If so, they are not passing the atmospheric polution to somewhere else in the country (though there are other environmental effects)when they use electric trains.
The French have nuclear power - primarily - so again atmospheric pollution transfer would not occur for electric trains.
And they are big on civil engineering projects. I wonder why they haven't gone for the train-to-resort route.
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Les Arcs did it, by cablecar from Bourg, when they built the original Arc 1600. Now there's the funicular, which is extremely good.
What concerns me is that the latest development at Arc 1950 is a classic N. American 'solution' - build masses of luxury apartments with underground parking, celebrate the 'car-free' nature of the village, but ignore the huge quantities of C02 and CO the cars generate on the access road.
As you say, if the Swiss did it 100 years ago why are mountain railways no longer built? We're supposed to be an advanced society!
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It's a shame that an extension to the funicular up to 1950 wasn't envisaged. I read somewhere that the design of the line itself has led to considerable technical problems and very high, ongoing costs. Land movement resulted in the rubber section of the supports needing much more regular replacement than had been foreseen. (This from memory - I am no engineer). I wonder if this (land movement) is a factor leading to high costs in the building of mountain railways generally....
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| davidof wrote: |
| Other forms of skiing, such as ski touring or snowcat touring are still quite feasible in Scotland and perhaps more in keeping with the savage environment. I've seen people ski touring in early May. |
Excuse my ignorance  , but what's ski touring or snowcat touring??
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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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Dan, take a look at Davidof's site, the introduction explains ski touring....
see PISTEHORS
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Ski touring is where you fix special climbing skins (made from nylon or mohair) to your ski bases. These let you climb slopes to about 25-30 degrees. You can also use Nordic skis which have either special wax or scales on the base which let you climb slopes of a lesser gradient.
Both sports suit Scotland's variable climate I believe.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Quote: |
The snowline on Cairngorm was consistently reliable at about 600m when I did most of my work and skiing up there in the mid to late 1970s -
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My Dad used to ski on Cairngorm in the late Forties. They used to drive to Loch Morlich, walk and skin up to the summit and then ski down. He said you could always ski to the bottom of the sugar bowl in those days. They would do it twice in a day.
I worked on Cairngorm for 7 years in the eighties, and only skied to the bottom of the sugar bowl once. However that was a great time for Scottish ski-ing, loads of people up there (OK big lift queues at the weekends), lots of work and a brilliant atmosphere.
I hear the Lecht has done great things to diversify and they don't have a handy town etc. either. Has anyone else skied their plastic slope in summer? Very interesting! 
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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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Cheers for the link PG and explaination davidof, its basically walking/climbing to somewhere away from the lifts and then skiing down.
Why do you attach skins to ski's, why not wear snow shoes and carry skis on your back? Surely its a lot easier to climb with some sort of snow shoe than skis??
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It can be easier, depends how deep/soft the snow is. It helps to keep the weight down, so the less gear the better. We're not talking about your usual downhill/racing equipment.
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You know it makes sense.
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No longer full steam ahead for the Cairngorm funicular.....
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| Meanwhile, Hamish Swan, the chairman of CairnGorm Mountain, yesterday blamed the company’s continuing losses of £1.2 million on the poorest winter for skiing in the history of the mountain resort. |
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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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| Dan wrote: |
Cheers for the link PG and explaination davidof, its basically walking/climbing to somewhere away from the lifts and then skiing down.
:oops: Why do you attach skins to ski's, why not wear snow shoes and carry skis on your back? Surely its a lot easier to climb with some sort of snow shoe than skis?? |
You can do that, here are some guys climbing the Mezenc which is on the Southern end of the Massif Central and not entirely different from the mountains in the north of England or Scotland
http://pageperso.aol.fr/Exbrayatbenoit/Ascension+du+Mezenc.jpg
http://pageperso.aol.fr/Exbrayatbenoit/Versant+Sud+du+Mezenc.jpg
Apart from the weight issue mentioned in the other response you can move faster and climb steeper slopes with skins than you can with snowshoes.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| Nick Zotov wrote: |
| Is Swiss electricity produced at hydro-electric stations ? If so, they are not passing the atmospheric polution to somewhere else in the country (though there are other environmental effects)when they use electric trains. |
Could be wrong, but I was told it was 60% hydro and 40% nuclear.
The thing about electric trains, even if the electricty is generated by polluting means, is that it is easier to do something about the pollution - with all the usual technical and political caveats - as you are dealing far fewer emittors, than diesel or fuel driven transport.
Also, and these are guesses, but wouldn't the vehicles powered by externally supplied electric motor be simpler and use less resources (like for like) in construction? They would be lighter too, but that may be off-set by the electrical transmission requirements?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| skanky wrote: |
| Nick Zotov wrote: |
| Is Swiss electricity produced at hydro-electric stations ? If so, they are not passing the atmospheric polution to somewhere else in the country (though there are other environmental effects)when they use electric trains. |
Could be wrong, but I was told it was 60% hydro and 40% nuclear.
The thing about electric trains, even if the electricty is generated by polluting means, is that it is easier to do something about the pollution - with all the usual technical and political caveats - as you are dealing far fewer emittors, than diesel or fuel driven transport.
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You're right, it's around 58/38 with 4% from solar, wind etc.
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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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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
The study of air pollution in Tignes would interest me, as I'm sitting on a ski environmental group for the Ski Club of Great Britain. |
A summary of the study was published in a newspaper but I don't have the reference now. It comes from the Rhone-Alpes ATMO group but I can't find a reference on their site either doh!
The pollution comes principally from cars and buses, although I note that Tignes itself has a new fleet of Renault buses so we are looking at Tour Operator buses more than anything.
Tignes and Les Deux Alpes have the highest traffic levels of French ski stations. There are important concentrations of CO2, Nitros-Oxide and ozone but these do not exceeed danger levels set down by the EU (which they do in French cities on occasion). The pollution levels are said to be higher than Lyon at certain times which lead the newspaper I was reading to criticise the advert for Tignes which said "Come and take a breath of fresh air". I also read that atmospherique polution has increased by 10% over the last 20 years in France (figaro).
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| davidof wrote: |
| I also read that atmospherique polution has increased by 10% over the last 20 years in France (figaro). |
That surprises me. Air pollution is one of the environmental indicators that is improving in the UK.
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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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Air pollution is a very general term and could apply to a wide range of things being measured, some of which will be going up and some of which may be going down.
Was the UK's starting from a worse baseline? If the population is moredense and there was more heavy industry (relative to size of country, in terms of area), then things like the clean air act and the closing down of that heavy industry will have a greater impact, relatively, than the increase in road traffic (and other things that may be increasing pollution) may have. That is, of course, assuming that the increase on road (etc.) traffic is increasing pollution faster than efficiency improvements are lowering it.
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Thanks for the pictures!
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Just going off on a tangent here, but Western Europe accounted 100 years ago for 14% of the World's population. Today that stands at 6%. In 50 years time, that is expected to fall to 4%. The resultant reduction in localised pollution will likely reduce dramatically (fewer cars, less need for power, slower demand for air travel etc), even though our (Western) consumer thirst pushes up pollution in the first instant. The ageing work force and higher taxation to pay for so many aged people will probably mean much of what we take for granted today disappearing, thus reducing demand for products that result in many causes of pollution
This isn't a call for complacency, the population in all other areas of the World are set to increase, and they do need to act now to reduce pollution.
None of this helps Scotland, of course.
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| skanky wrote: |
Was the UK's starting from a worse baseline?
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I think that must be an explanation. France was heavily nuclear powered 20 years ago whereas Britain was running on coal and oil. The article said the increase in vehicle numbers and flights was a big factor. It is nevertheless a worry for the government here.
Regarding the Tignes figures - the headline could read "Lyon's air as clean as Tignes", for people who like good news but to be honest the air in Lyon is pretty filthy. The measurements at Tignes were made with a network of sensors just below the resort, the air higher up is much cleaner I imagine so don't cancel your holiday next year, please.
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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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Mark Hunter, I'd hate to temper your optimism but reduced percentage of Europeans does not equal to reduced numbers, we're just not breeding as fast as the rest fo the world. We haven't seen any reduction in demand for cars, despite overcrowded roads and fuel tax. I'd sooner put my hopes in hydrogen engines than our restrained use of energy.
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I don't think air quality is the pressing issue here.
Look at how dramatically air quality has improved in French towns over the past 30 years. Here are some figures for SO2 for example: http://www.citepa.org/emissions/nationale/Aep/aep_so2_en.htm
Modern cars are much cleaner than their predecessors (although they perform at their worst when idling in a traffic jam on a cold morning in an Alpine resort!) and, in general, better technologies and better regulation are equal to the task of dealing with these problems.
Mark Hunter is right that the 'dirty' environmental problems are most pressing in the developing world where huge numbers are killed in both urban and rural areas by dirty water and air, lack of sanitation etc.
For rich countries, the problem are the less visible ones - such as global warming which require cross-border solutions. I think DG is right to suggest that skiing groups (such as the SCGB) should take strong postions on this - but that needs to go far beyond the Kyoto targets.
The UK has a target of reducing emissions by 60 percent by 2050 - which is a pretty good indication of the scale of reduction likely to be needed if you believe the scientific consensus...
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