 Poster: A snowHead
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Did anyone see the snow reports for Scotland this morning? It seems they have the best conditions for years. Resorts are all open throughout the weekend and Monday (I think) with all lifts working. So if you're up there it might be worth a go.
Why am I always the opposite end of the country when it snows in Scotland? Still - I bet it's freezing cold.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Jane, I heard they've had brilliant ski-ing all over. 
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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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I went up there 25/26/27 Feb. Drove 725 miles in 3 days covering Glenshee, Caringorm and Nevis Range. Apart from the South of the border in England the only snow that my car tyres came in contact with in 3 days was the last 5 miles before reaching Caringorm. Glenshee and Nevis Range didn't have a share of all this big fantastic snow. Despite the snow condition in Caringorm some chairlifts were still close due to lack of snow.
I know Lecht wasn't much better and I passed Glencoe too which didn't even look white to me.
This is top of Sunnyside chairlift of Glenshee as seen on Friday 25 Feb 2005 when parts of England were blocked by snow
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Is that just because the wind blew the snow off?
utterly off-topic, if you've a camera did you get any shots in Iran ?
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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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ise,
All the big snow carry-on in South and East of England apparently didn't touch the Scottish resorts. The snow there is just the average condition if not below the average (as I have seen better!). It is true that the snow is also regional within a resort, presumably due to the wind direction.
Caringorm did have fresh snow on Saturady 26 Feb while I was there but it was in dense fog too. Some runs were not open due to lack of snow. The fantastic central area had enough snow and remaining side "white lady" run was opened later but there was stone to be found there too. With a bit of care one can ski all the way back to the funicular so it did have snow. It took a skier 2 hours to queue to get to the slope and the demand had to be huge. The mountain top restaurant was like a refugee camp with queues blocking skiers coming off the funicular. Any lift and run not open had to do with the snow condition.
Glenshee and Nevis Range on the other hand were both desparate for more snow.
off topic answer
For Iranian resort Shamshek I added some photos after the post
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saikee,
Pedant mode on
The only chairlifts closed at Cairngorm are the ciste and west wall chairs which as far as I know can't run because of a fire in the top hut for the west wall chair over the summer.
pedant mode off
I was at Cairngorm on 26th and glenshee on the 27th. Snow conditions at cairngorm were pretty good. They were running a fair few lifts (10 of 15). They even got the Lady Tow going by Saturday afternoon. They were not running 5 tows (6 if you count the link poma which has been dismantled to be moved to the Ptarmigan bowl - would have been resited over the summer but for regulation problems). These were the two chairs already mentioned, the Failcall ski tow, Tha Anoch poma and the Daylodge Poma. The latter has supposedly been used for spares (for the Faicall ridge poma?). Its sods law that the one year that the daylodge run is fence to fence deep snow (first time I've seen it like that in 6years) the poma can't run. The runs themselves are pretty good with the fences under snow in places. They areas that don't seem to have filled well yet are the ciste gully, the gunbarrel and the Faicall Ridge run. The rest were reasonable to good.
The lecht - haven't been there this weekend myself, but was XC skiing with HNSC on Thursday evening and people were saying it was very good and the photos on www.winterhighland.info also suggest it is good.
Glenshee - was there on Sunday. Your picture doesn't do it justice - Sunnyside was much worse than that  ,but it also doesn't do justice to the other runs. The two race tracks off the Cairnwell tow were good, Butcharts Coire was good, the run of Butrcharts access poma was good though thin in a couple of places. The reds of Carn Aosda were good, though the blue was a bit rocky in places. The easy runs over at sunnyside were poor, bit Coirre fion was very good as was Glas Maol though the poma track was a bit thin in places and the run across the ridge was thin at one point. After the ridge the run down the gulley was very good and unpisted - the whole of the face of the hill to the right as you look down the gulley was snow covered. Cairngorm was much better and I was surprised how thin some areas were at Glenshee, but there were still four or five good runs and they were the harder more interesting runs in the main.
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Dave Horsley,
I have no problem with your assessment which agrees pretty well with the post in here.
I do support the Scottish resorts but I also like to say a spade a spade. The word like "great snow" and "brilliant ski-ing" do catch my eye. My reply could have swung the pendulum to the opposite side. However many skiers south of the Scottish border automatically assume the Scottish resorts could have benefited from the "avalanche" we got in the south and east of England and getting snowheads to report the actual condition would be useful.
Scottish resorts are financially fragile and there is tendency for the Bristish skiers to moderate our comments on their bad points. It would be a disappointment if we compare them with what we could get from the Alps. However if there is a complete run (without worrying about grass, holes, stones, rock, ice etc) anywhere in a Scottish resort it still beats any of the dry slopes and snowdomes in the country. There is simply magic if we could ski in Scotland.
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However if there is a complete run (without worrying about grass, holes, stones, rock, ice etc) anywhere in a Scottish resort it still beats any of the dry slopes and snowdomes in the country
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even with those things it would probably beat them, dont know many 1km+ snow domes that would offer as good skiing as the Coire Cas area at cairngorm last week or the M2 - daylodge run for that matter! Plus the views are a LOT LOT better than looking at the inside of a large freezer! (even with poor visibility its still better!)
I didnt see very many open runs at cairngorm that looked anything like as bad as that shot of Glenshee above, and i think there were runs in better condition there too from what i have heard. Although the west was looking quite poor, weird weather indeed, but due to snow up there this week!!
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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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saikee,
Me again, you said Cairngorm was busy Saturday and it took a skier 2hrs to queue. I was actually surprised how small the queues were. The West Wall Poma in particular was very quite and when I wanted to get back up the hill I used the Faicall Ridge poma and avoided the train. I didn't see a queue here more than a couple of minutes long. It pays to avoid the train The only big queues I met were the M1 poma at about 10 minutes (and I've been there when it been a lot worse) and the scrum at lunch time for the ptarmigan - I avoided this by stopping just for a beer in the bar down by the veiwing level and then skiing down to the base to eat my packed lunch. However I'm a season ticket holder with my own kit so I didn't have to queue for tickets or kit. I know the former can be a problem and Cairngorm really need to sort that out. It was queuing out the door when I arrived at about 8.10, yet I had no problems getting straight on a lift at 8.30 when I'd got all my gear on. Main trick with Scottish Resorts is that if snow is good and your not a season ticket holder - get there early (well before 9 is best at weekends).
Glenshee on Sunday was also busy (which is good as they need the money and they need to do a fair bit of fence maintainance over the summer - nevre mind major infrastructure upgrades). The main queue was for ski hire - the ticket queue never got really long. Some of the lift queues were quite long particularly for the easier runs. Though at one point the Mael Odhar queue was massive. Unfortunatley I met up with friends with inexperienced kids so spent most of my time on the easier runs. Did a quick tour of Coire Fion and Glas Maol before I met my friends at 10am - was very quiet at that time. Looked like it might of got a lot busier after that going by the numbers heading over in that direction.
People on the Winterhighland site are saying Cairngorm was heaving on Sunday and the queues were bad as a couple of the lifts (WW poma and Lady Tow) which were running Saturday were off on Sunday. The former for mechanical reasons? the latter for the state of the track? Looks like Cairngorm needs money for its lift maintainance budget. Shame the daylodge poma can't run as the slope is in good nick - The M2 - daylodge was a nice run Saturday full width and hardly a rock showing.
Hopefully a bit more snow this week will top up the runs for the weekend.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Dave Horsley,
There must be people at Caringorm have nothing to do in the summer. Why can they remove the rock on the slope? Jackhammer them away or break them into smaller pieces and have some decent pistes to earn a living.
Caringorm and Glenshee do have a big problem with queues whenever there is a decent snow on the slope.
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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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You know it makes sense.
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Civilisation exists today because some rock gets weathered, broke down in fragments and turned into clay eventually for vegetation to grow.
It looked I may have committed a serious crime against the environmentalists. While skiing the White Lady piste in Caringorm last Saturday I tried to step clear a rock but I found it to be a loose stone. I therefore threw it into the fence thinking of avoiding other skiers to get caught. I didn't mark out the position of this loose stone so how can I put it back to exactly the same place?
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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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saikee, sarcy ghet!
In all seriousness, i must say i agree that if piste creation were to ever occur in scotland i would be the first to protest. Cairngorm mountain especially is a ruined mountain, especially in the summer. One of the great things about the scottish highlands is that is it relatively unspoilt, and walking up there all year round is a pleasure, the sight of a great width of grass/bare patch where the rockfall used to be would be wrong, even with all of the ski lifts scattered about.
Plus, its in the Cairngorms national park, one of the few treasures of the UK's countryside, we have plenty of space to destroy in this country, lets leave the national parks alone! 
Plus, more importantly maybe, its not too many rocks that is the main problem, its the lack of snow.
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brian
brian
Guest
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| tomski01 wrote: |
Plus, more importantly maybe, its not too many rocks that is the main problem, its the lack of snow. |
Yes, but part of that problem is that it takes a lot more snow to make a boulder slope skiable than a grassy one.
The Lecht can operate with much less snow than Cairngorm.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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tomski01,
I have been polluting the Scottish highland by driving the 725miles over the weekend. Comparing with Caringorm with the vast unspoiled country side I think it would jolly nice of the Scottish people to permit a huge number of skiers enjoying a piece of Caringorm. If people like to unspoiled mountains there are hundreds of them around spreading over the 725miles I travellled. A truely unspoiled nature is the one we never set foot on.
If we count the number of people enjoying the skiing, the amount of money we pay to the resort and the amount of food, drink and accommodation paid to the supporting industries I would think the Scottish people would welcome more of it. The busiest road I have been is the A93 to Glenshee. The demise of Glenshee has a huge economic impact form many villeages along this road.
A skiing resort looks like a ghost place in the summer because of zero activities in a deserted place. It will never be good to look at. Try it on any place on the Alps. My first contact with La Rosiere was driving a motorbike through in the summer. The place is a totally different world in the winter.
Caringorm is 10 miles off the main road and the amount of recreational facilities on this 10 miles is possible the busiest in UK. I just couldn't imagine knocking off a few large boulders and flatten them a bit would spoil the scenery for some environmentalists. If these people have to see the real unspoiled mountains can they pick somewhere else to walk? Why it has to be a skiing resort? Too many visitors also spoil the country side and Lake District is a prime example.
Somehow a balance has to be struck to keep everybody happy. Environmentalist is just one of them.
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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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From my experience of Cairngorm skiing, it's not the rocks/boulders that prevent skiing, it's simply lack of major snowstorms. A couple of major horizontal storms will fill the corries with substantial depths of snow and cover the rocks. Clearing these rocks might make a difference in marginal conditions, but marginal conditions quickly change to unskiable conditions anyway, in the main.
Cairngorm has, in fact, made major efforts to clean up its landscape. The mountain operates against very strict environmental codes. The car parks are the major blot. The expansion of the ski area sideways into Lurcher's Gully was blocked two decades ago.
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Well, if they made compromises for the ski areas, how could they justify not allowing development in other less ruined areas of national parks?
anyway, im not going down this line, however I did notice the sign that said if you cycle up from aviemore to the daylodge you can have a free funicular ticket! 
Now that would be impressive, thats quite a steep hill, cant imagine very many people take up that offer but its at least an incentive to use more sustainable tranportation!
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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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In the interest of balancing out this thread a little, I thought I'd post a link to some photographs of Glenshee that show some of the better conditions on the mountain.
http://www.winterhighland.info/pix/pixalbum.php?pix_id=44
I was at Glenshee on Saturday and Sunday and the overhead conditions were as good on Sunday as they were poor on Saturday.
I've loads of photographs that show the great conditions on the Glas Maol, but I've no idea how to post them.
Longest queue I had on Sunday was 15 minutes, but I'd say the average was around five.
In short, I thought the conditions were plenty good enough to justify a 700 mile round trip from Manchester. And I'd do it again.
Also it should be noted that it is impossible to tell the conditions at Glencoe from the road. It does look brown from the road. But it's definitely mostly white from the other side.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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tomski01,
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Well, if they made compromises for the ski areas, how could they justify not allowing development in other less ruined areas of national parks?
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Easy they say its undeveloped and should stay that way and further development should be within the already developed area - which seems a sensible general principle. As David says Cairngorm have been cleaning up the area recently. I was there walking over the summer and was surprised how well it all blended in from a distance. They have been doing a lot of remedial work - putting in cross drains along the home road and the zig zags to reduce erosion - cross drains made from solid granite (which need a fair depth of snow to cover). Reducing the width of the road surface up the home road and zig zags and reseeding the areas to either side. Planting native trees around the area.
saikee,
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A skiing resort looks like a ghost place in the summer because of zero activities in a deserted place. It will never be good to look at. Try it on any place on the Alps. My first contact with La Rosiere was driving a motorbike through in the summer. The place is a totally different world in the winter.
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Cairngorm is quite busy in the summer especially weekends and holiday and it needs to be to bring in the money. They had 180,000 non ski visitors use the funicular in the 2003 financial year. They need this all year custom to keep the area going. Glencoe and Glenshee need to develop this sort of summer trade like Cairngorm and Anoch More have if they are to stay in business and develop their infrastructure.
Sorry if this is geting way off topic
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saikee, stunning, got more snow in my garden than that
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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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markP, if you don't have your own web site, register with snowHeads new multi media zone (there's a link from the Main Menu in the MX portal view you get by clicking on the mountain view). Then you can upload your piccies to there.
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markP Good luck with the
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snowHeads new multi media zo
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I hope you have more luck than I did with it!
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Are there any webcams in the Scottish 'resorts' that show the mud:snow ratio ?
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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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kuwait_ian, Thanks Ian! I didn't know about that. I'll do it this evening.
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markP, hope it works OK for you - some have been having troubles with the registration emails. See this thread. Alan Craggs is the main man for techy stuff on snowMedia Zone.
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You know it makes sense.
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If i had taken my camera to Cairngorm with me the photos would have certianly shown more snow than there was at Glenshee, doesnt look too great there!
been snowing fairly heavily overnight tho in Scotland i gather!
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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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Dammit the only weekend everyones going up and im off to Andorra, have a good one!!
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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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I was at Nevis and Glencoe yesterday and Saturday - alpine conditions, absolutely superb. Back bowl at Nevis had 18in of powder on the section between the cornice and the top of the braveheart chair. Untracked in a few places, and no queues at all for the chair. Runs to the chair unpisted obviously, but skier-packed in places and nice exciting skiing. Summit and middle runs all complete, lower goose and under quad chair scraped in places and thin, but upper runs esp warrens had great snow. Glencoe was 100% complete too, with packed snow on the main runs in places, but generally superb. Spring run largely deserted, and got icier later on, what a great day under unbroken blue skies, with NO WIND!! (Except in my salopettes as I made a hash of the Wagon Wheel off piste). Some friendly advice: Resign from work if need be, put your children up for adoption, do anything - Get up there, it'll blow your mind!
Incidentally, a bloke was saying at Glencoe on Sunday that he had a mate over at Glenshee and he'd been queing for an hour on one lift, and the number of people was huge. GC and Nevis had pretty much full carparks on both days, but we didn't wait more than 5 mins for a lift all weekend. Great to see all the centres doing a strong trade - they deserve it. Just goes to prove the demand for scottish snowsport is still there.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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I was at Glencoe on Friday. Really good day. Conditions were pretty good, if a little scraped and icy at the bottom towards the access chair.
Nevis on Saturday was shrouded in cloud just about all day. Conditions on the front of the mountain weren't that brilliant to be honest (though to be fair I didn't do that many runs around the summit). However the back corries were superb. I wish I could have done the section between the cornice and the top of braveheart again. Absolutely heavenly powder.
Glenshee on Sunday was superb though, if a little busy. The snow over on Glas Maol and Coire Fionn was brilliant. I'd have spent more time over there but the queues were increasing as more and more people discovered just how good it was there. Went over to the Cairnwell side in the afternoon and the snow there was still pretty good. The odd scraped and bare patch around but conditions were generally excellent.
An absolutely excellent weekend of boarding though and it was good to see the car parks so full. Hopefully this season will see the centres making plenty of money to help secure them for the long term.
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FAQ
) most of the lift fitters at the end of last season to reduce costs. Most staff involved in the snowsport side are (I think) seasonal staff employed only for the winter season. Having seen their last published set of accounts (not a pretty sight) I can see why they needed to cut back. Hopefully if this cold weather holds out they may break even or better this year. They said they needed 100,000 skier days to break even in the 2002/2003 season (taken from the accounts for the year ending April 2003). Hopefully cutbacks will mean fwer skiers are needed to break even this year and some profits will be available for further investments.
