Ever seen a white elephant?

A snowHead

Hi baheid, welcome to Snowheads.

This is a bit of an old thread but the funicular continues to create some controversy as I'm sure you know.

With regards this Dave Morris bloke can members not get rid of him?

I presume you're referring to The Ramblers Association, where is head office - somewhere in England?

Sorry for all the questions but can you also give us an idea what the Badenoch and Strathspey group of the Ramblers thinks (I'm presuming you're a member)?

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

You need to Login to know who's really who.

^ They recently changed the VMP and you can now walk up and then get the train down.

It's not entirely CMLs fault, as I understand it the reason these silly rules were brought in was to quiet down opposition from the environmental lobby and allow the original project to gain planning permission.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Good thread resurrection, @davidof. Opinion in Scotland is, to put it mildly, mixed. The suggestion that "our friends in the north" are of a single view (on almost anything, like the rest of us) is far-fetched. I only skied once at Aviemore. The first day was beautiful - blue sky and great snow - and the queues to get up (draglift) were insane. The second day it blew a hoolie and they closed the lifts by coffee-time. A typical Scottish ski weekend?

After all it is free

Fantastic thread resurrection I'd say. I'm English but have lived in Scotland for nearly 30 years. Of course there's no single view on anything except possibly the England men's football team, where there is a clear majority opinion. However, the average opinion on politics (insofar as it's possible to say that) differs from that in England.

My first ski trip was with Mrs tsgsh (then GF) taking a school trip to Cairngorm (pre-funicular). That was memorable for learning why the locals wore ice hockey goalie masks, having my face stripped off by ice blown up the White Lady at one point. It was almost as memorable hearing one 2nd year (year 8.5 in English money) in the car park saying that he'd "rather watch cricket [than ski]" and it was clear that he wasn't a cricket fan. OTOH, the best day's skiing weather I've ever had - lovely snow conditions and wall to wall blue sky and sunshine without ever getting too hot - was at Glenshee on Easter Sunday 2018.

@Origen, 20th anniversary thread resurrection ! Sir Goldbrick was clearly on the money with this one.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Has that 150k visitor number ever been independently verified ? I live near there and I genuinely don’t see how it could possibly get that many.

snow reports

I checked, this is what the Economist said of the project back in 2004

SNOW and skiers are both thin on the ground these days in Scottish ski resorts. Global warming and cheap flights to the Alps are to blame. Since the late 1980s the number of days with skiable snow has fallen by about a quarter and the number of ski passes sold has halved (see chart).
Scottish skiing is heavily subsidised. Most of the £27m ($43m) in state aid doled out in the past 15 years has gone to one of Scotland's five ski resorts—Cairngorm, a state-owned enterprise with a large appetite for subsidy.

In the mid-1990s, when visitor numbers were falling, Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), the north of Scotland's main economic development agency, which owns most of the resort's assets, decided it needed a makeover. The big idea was to replace the wind-blasted main chairlift with a funicular railway.

The railway was meant to cost taxpayers £12.1m. By the time it opened in 2001, the bill was supposedly up to £14.8m, but The Economist has learnt that it actually cost taxpayers £19.6m. HIE gets £513,000 rent a year, a lowly 2.6% return, from CairnGorm Mountain, the company that runs the railway and the skiing.

The enterprise looks dubious on several counts. Morrison Construction, the Scottish firm which did the civil engineering, was chaired by Sir Fraser Morrison, who was also chairman of HIE when the railway project was being planned. Midway through the building work, Iain Robertson quit as chief executive of HIE and became a director of Morrison Construction. Investigations by the Scottish Executive, the devolved Scottish government, found no evidence of wrong-doing. Nevertheless, local suspicions remain, particularly as most of the £4.8m cost over-run went to Morrison Construction, which was taken over by AWG, another construction firm, during the railway building.

Jim Hunter, HIE's present chairman, blames conservationists. They went to court to stop what they saw as the despoiling of Britain's only sub-Arctic habitat of rare plants and birds on the Cairngorm plateau, delaying the start, and spreading building work over three summers instead of two. Unexpectedly difficult tunnelling and complicated soil-protection work also raised costs but, he claims, could not be disclosed at the opening because HIE was negotiating Morrison's bill down by several million pounds.

HIE might have to spend still more if the resort is to stay open. Since 1998-99, CairnGorm Mountain has lost money—£1.9m in 2001-02. The extra 150,000 visitors the funicular brought in 2002 is not enough to close the gap, particularly as 2002-03 was the worst skiing year on record and this one promises to be just as bad.

Bob Kinnaird, CairnGorm Mountain's chief executive, says the company can break even, in part by cutting the workforce of 85 permanent and 200 seasonal employees. That is not good news for HIE, however. The EU gave £2.7m towards the railway, on the understanding that 40 full-time and 65 part-time jobs would be created. If that does not happen, HIE will have to refund some of the money.

HIE insists, however, that the funicular is still a good deal for the local economy, which is 80% dependent on tourism. They say it was crucial in persuading Macdonald Hotels, a big chain, to spend £23m on upgrading Aviemore's main hotel and extending a golf resort in the town. Cynics note, however, that a further £8m subsidy for these developments might also explain the hotel company's enthusiasm.

What if, as the climatologists think, warm winters are here to stay? In the worst case, the railway might have to close and be taken away. That would please the conservationists, who worry that the pressure to generate summer income may lead to hordes of tourists being allowed to trample the delicate 4,000-ft high plateau instead of being confined to the café and viewing platform at the top of the railway. But it would not please the taxpayer, because <span>HIE</span> would have to pay the hefty railway-removal cost.

You know it makes sense.

The population of Scotland and northern England has also been quite flat over the last 40 years with a contraction in the number of children and expansion in the number of over 65s.
So the potential supply of skiers has also reduced.

If this winter is an indicator of what we may expect in future then the difficulties which the Scottish centres have been facing for 30 years are also going to become a significant problem across the Alpine ski industry.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

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Ever seen a white elephant?

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