Stopped on the way home from work - I never get tired of this view!

 Storm bound today(Friday- midday )  – we made a call to not even attempt to open with the forecast for continued strong winds and difficult road conditions. We have been able to have a look around and this storm is really making a difference. The White Lady looks really loaded as do the lower slopes and the Day Lodge Poma. Zig zags are full.  Top still out of reach. Forecast is changing and we now expect winds on Saturday not to be too bad( don’t quote me – keep an eye on the up to date forecast)   we will open what we can – will be excellent when the wind dropspostscript- Saturday am : well we got it wrong : The wind dropped and did not go back up as forecast and we lost the potential to open in the afternoon. Today’s another challange - no where near as stormy - but still very windy ….. forecast to drop ( crossed fingers again!! ) Bob

  With a clear diary for once and a good forecast I decided to take a day off and go skiing - after all skiing is what attracted me to work here in the first place!  Although we had lots of new snow over Easter this came with strong northerly winds and conditions could best be described as Baltic, including total white-out at the top of the hill for several days. Many of our Easter visitors never got a view and most were stuck on the Cas in what could only be described as challenging January conditions. But what a difference a day makes: yesterday the weather broke and winds dropped. The CairnGorm team had been working hard through the stormy days to try and ensure we could open the wider mountain as soon as possible and yesterday was the day! I have attached a few photos below. It was great to be able to ski the Ciste Gully, West Wall, East Face of the Gully, M2 and the rest…. With the temperature still at -8 at the top,  it meant that it was possible to piste the M2 all the way down to the Day lodge and off-piste snow was still light enough to enjoy and avoid the rocks!

The good news for Scottish skiing is that all 5 areas now have good snow and this provides a real opportunity for Scottish skiers to enjoy some excellent spring skiing into April. Being able to spread skiers around the 5 areas means that queuing is unlikely to be a problem. This is excellent news for the whole industry. We are particularly pleased for the Lecht; despite lots of snow this winter – the snow level has generally been higher up the mountain - over the last few weeks the Lecht has suffered, but now there is good snow at all levels and most importantly this has coincided with a holiday period.  Within the industry we believe it is important that all 5 areas continue to prosper.

Bob  

  In Scotland the snow comes in with the wind and clearing snow from fire exits, keeping snow away from the tunnel mouth as well as preparing the get-on ramps is simply a matter of hard graft and a good shovel.  For those of you who have been up recently you will notice we have been doing a lot of shovelling – and this continues to make the best of the snow we have. Last week-end we were able to rebuild the Fiacaill Ridge poma track and during the week we have been working on the West Wall poma track and hope to open it from the bottom once the winds drop a bit.

It’s a shame there is not a competition for the best view from a chief executive’s office – there are definitely days when  I think I would be in with a good chance of winning.  This can be frustrating when I look out and see what I am missing, but today it’s a total whiteout – not unusual in itself, but less common at this time of year. We are still enjoying full winter conditions but with the advantage that when the sun does come out it actually makes a difference. Once again the weather is teasing us – here we are at a major holiday week-end and today is so stormy that we have had to close all the lifts. We hope the weather will improve over the week-end and into next week. We certainly have plenty of snow - we just need the right weather.

At this time of year I normally try to escape for a week to the Alps; it always serves to remind me what a great life I had when I used to teach skiing and mountaineering for a living. This year we went to Norway at New Year instead and enjoyed some brilliant cross-country skiing near Lillehammer.  Although I will miss the alpine trip, the spring conditions here look like they are going to continue well into April and I am sure there are going to be some great skiing days to come as well as some touring on the plateau…but I think I will leave that until the sun shines!

Bob   Ps picture of digging out the tunnel –from last year- when the wind was in the South!  

 We started skiing in the 1st December and it now looks like we will be skiing through Easter and probably into our 5^th month – April.  The freeze thaw and snow fall pattern has been on our side for once, although this has been a very windy winter which has meant that we have lost more skiing days than usual. Don’t ask me to define usual, the fact is there are few trends in the weather… we simple get weather!

At this time of year we are already beginning to focus attention on preparations for next winter. Apart from what we call line work on the tows we try and carry out a full service on each lift every 4 years.  I am told we have 28 kilometers of fencing – and this is almost another  full time job for a team to go round fixing and replacing damaged sections during the summer. At the same time all the snow vehicles get a full service and walkways and other structures get repaired or replaced. We try and build in improvements each year. The technical team is currently working on their shopping list of spares and we are also costing the repairs to the White Lady Tbar in the hope that we can find the funds to repair it. 

This weekend is the White Lady Challenge, organized by dedicated supporters of Scottish skiing, who are raising funds to help the company to be able to repair this lift.( more information on the main web site).   As far as I am concerned the principle of this is great and very well received by the operating company , I hope those involved have a successful and enjoyable  day.  We all know the future of Scottish Skiing comes back  to the climate and I suspect we will have to continue to think and work in innovative ways to give the next generation the best chance of enjoying what we treasure so much – Scottish skiing .

 Bob  

In like a lion and out like a lamb (or vice versa) is a well-known saying about the weather in March, in this part of the world.  During the first few days in March we have been experiencing the effects of a polar maritime front and the main ski runs have been much improved.  This year the Cas has had excellent cover; the mobile yellow hut at the top of the gun barrel, designed to shelter lifties when we load from here due to lack of snow lower down, has yet to be utilised -  long may that continue.

The first sign of spring in our gardens brings more choice of how we all spend our leisure time. The golf clubs, the bike, the boat and the garden are just some of the options rather than going skiing, and once the skis have been put away there tends to be a reluctance to get them back out again. Despite the arrival of the lapwings on the Insh marshes and first early lambs lower down in the Strath, winter is far from over here on the mountain - it’s not unusual to ski beyond mid April and even into May - quite often we experience a longer season than in the Alps.   Longer days and kinder weather between the spring storms can really make for some excellent ski days.

Although the web pages and webcams help, we are always amazed by the misinformation that gets put out about skiing conditions on the hill, even in our local villages.  I know this is not just a problem here, but at other ski centres as well. The thin strips of snow seen from the A9, ten miles away, are actually quite wide ski runs which currently offer over 2km of skiing; the Ptarmigan basin at the top is out of sight and therefore out of mind.

This year the Easter holidays are very early starting around 19^th of March, although some schools do not return until the 20^th April so we hope we will be able to offer skiing throughout this period.

With the lighter evenings it’s now possible to put the skis on after work and, using ski skins, climb up through the ski area to the top of the mountain. This is always a special time of day on the mountain which is often almost deserted with the exception of the pisting team and a few late climbers coming off the hills. (See pictures)

Bob