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!  

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 3:17 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.