I agree with you

The arrival of twitter and Facebook has made organised clubs redundant these days, many people just don't need them anymore

Thanks very much for pointing that out. I'll edit it a fourth time!

LOL, sorry if I came across a bit rude just then

It is a fairly stupid letter, as David is quite well aware (or should be) that snow reporting has not started for the season. The same reason Cairngorm was not reported as being open at the end of last season because the clubs snow reporting had stopped.

I join because it is a condition of booking a Ski Freshtracks holiday.

I disagree strongly - I've just been and looked and nowhere can i see does it say that the snow reports are not current or that they haven't started for the season. The cairngorm report still says that they are not open and that 0 of 12 lifts are running. So david (and you) may be well aware that snow reporting hasn't started, but the general visitor to the site won't be!

Snow reporting does not start till December and is only updated on weekdays. So this year 3rd of December would be the start date. Moaning about it on the 2nd which is a Sunday is worse that pointless it is counter productive as it will only go to reinforce the notion that reporting anything about Scottish skiing will unleash complaints from certain quarters, that sometimes involve abuse of SCGB staff members.

Anyway guess what checking today, the first weekday in December shows vaguely accurate stuff for Scottish resorts and the Scotland overview says that Cairngorm and Lecht are open. Snow depth reporting has the usual caveats however.

I took the opportunity when filling in this years feedback to ask for better reporting of Scottish snow depths

I do however concede that it would be better if the SCGB snow conditions section of the website made it clear when reporting starts/stops. Though as pointed out elsewhere in this thread lots of European resorts where "allegedly" shut as well.

I checked today and it and it said cairngorm was closed and 0-12 lifts were running, the later isn't even true for the summer as the train would be running. I still say they should clear say when the reports run from otherwise they are feeding the public false information.

its weird that they seem to have more interest in the big european resorts just because most of their members ski there rather then up here.

As of 13.30, the SCGB is reporting these snow depths for the 5 resorts (lower/upper slopes):

Cairngorm 30cm/60cm
Glencoe 25cm/50cm
Glenshee 10cm/20cm
Lecht 20cm/40cm
Nevis 15cm/60cm

And these amounts of snowfall over the past 7 days:

Cairngorm 5cm
Glencoe 10cm
Glenshee 5cm
Lecht 10cm
Nevis 15cm

As before, it would appear that the first set of figures has not been obtained from the mountains. The second set of figures don't seem to be correct - they're much too low - the great bulk of the snow (particularly on the eastern ski areas) has fallen in the past 7 days. It's for those who've actually been on the hills to suggest what they think has fallen over the past week. The SAIS avalanche service will start measuring snow depths for next weekend, which will be interesting.

Is anyone else measuring snow depths at present?

having hiked up at glenshee on sunday, 10cm as an average might be about right, but it's distributed more like 1cm - 50cm depending on where you are. I've long since decided that snow depth as a measure of snowsports quality is about as relevant as the SCGB......

+ 1

Dear Frank McCusker

The Scottish ski season is well underway. 8 lifts are running on Cairngorm today, and the mountain apparently enjoyed a great weekend.
Here's the current SCGB report. See the panel bottom right - it's complete rubbish.



Skiers on Scottish mountains need daily early morning reports - ideally around 7am - which give up-to-the-minute prospects for the day ahead. These are available on Winterhighland, or from the resorts direct (and now via Facebook, Twitter etc), or on Ski-Scotland - which obtains its data direct from the mountains.

The SCGB continues to publish hopelessly out-of-date info, or snow depth info which is clearly 'made up' in the office. As a Ski Club member I take very strong objection to this - all the Club has to do is hyperlink from its website to the accurate sources and photo/video/observational reports from the mountains.

Please take this action. This well help restore the Club's reputation in Scotland!







Edited 3 times. Last edit at 12.42hrs Mon 17 Dec 12 by David Goldsmith.

Attachments: SCGB Cairngorm report 17.12.12.JPG (42kB)  

It's only updated Monday to Friday and the resort was indeed closed on the 14th. An hour later and it is saying "Good skiing/boarding throughout the area" with eight out of 12 lifts open.

Clearly there is a tension between the fact that the reports are updated sometime around lunch Monday to Friday which means they are always going to be "out of date" to a varying extent over the weekend and Monday morning.

Why not just abandon them and use the other sources of information? Winterhighland and the ski centres' sites are the best so no need for Team GB to help out.

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Donald,

I wish it was simple as that but many of the other online reporting services pull there data from SCGB so if there information isn't correct it has a knock on affect. You are correct that most of our regular customers get there information from ski-scotland or winterhighland but people who normally ski abroad will often use these other reporting services. Under reporting of snow depths and erroneous information about whether the resorts are open or not could be affecting this important part of our market that we are trying to develop. At Glencoe we rarely see queues and our biggest challenge from one year to the next is attracting enough customers.