PMSL.

Isn't the de facto national club SnSc ie the governing body of scottish skiing.

I've copied quote below from a post of mine infrom a thread about Scottish Snowsports social scene thread from the Bothy section. It would be interesting to find out how many members the SCGB has in Scotland & compare to numbers below.

"At its peak of membership, back in the 60's-70's Snowsport Scotland had over 90 member clubs representing 14,000 skiers. Added to this there was also university, youth groups etc which had associate membership which brought up the total number of skiers involved with Snowsport Scotland to over 24,000 in Scotland. Currently SnSc has 35 member clubs representing 6300 skier + 700 coaching members."

Snowsport Scotland is recognised by Sport UK etc as the national governing body for skiing & snowboarding in Scotland. Snowsport England & Snowsport Wales represent their own nation's skiing. Competitive skiing & coaching are two major areas of concern for these bodies. Racing skiers go through their home nations to initially get their race licences. However on the international stage it is British Ski & Snowboard that acts as the governing body to the International Ski Federation.

Maybe SnSc (or SSC or SSS - take your pick, not sure what the official abbreviation these days) doesn't engage with recreational skiers in the way it should. This lack of engagement may account for its reduction in membership from its heyday in the 1970's. But the major reason in Scotland was the less need for being a member of a club to enjoy your skiing. More people started to own their own cars so didn't need club coaches to the resorts. Also overseas resorts became much more accessible to the British skier.

Ski Club of GB is not a national governing body & never has been. It was one of the main players in setting up BSSF which became SSGB before it went bankrupt & re-emerged as BSS.



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 01.27hrs Mon 28 Jan 13 by Peter Thorn.

This timeline gives some perspective on the history of the SCGB vis-a-vis international ski history. I think the Club was the governing body of British ski racing until 1964, when the National Ski Federation was formed. The top floor of the Club's former HQ in Eaton Square, London, used to house the 'Fed'.

[www.skiclub.co.uk]

It's important to remember - as the timeline shows - that at the height of the SCGB British skiers (viz: Sir Arnold Lunn) defined the international rules of slalom skiing. So we were governing the world!

"I think the Club was the governing body of British ski racing until 1964"

David, I stand corrected about the SCGB being our NGB before 1964. But 1964 marks the year that the first formally constituted skiing NGB was formed. And SCGB was a major player in seeing this happen.

Thanks, Peter

I was a member of a University Ski club at a Scottish University at various times through the 1990's. To suggest that I was somehow a member of SSC or SnSc is having a laugh. I might have been technically, but it meant nothing practically.



Snowsport Scotland and the Scottish Ski Club are different things.

So basically the SSC is primarily for organized competitive snow sports and training these days, which a quick gander at the website would indicate is probably the case. Though I do note that they allow their huts at Cairngorm and Glencoe to be used to host webcams by Winterhighland.

Somewhere if I could be bothered to get the annual report out you can work out SCGB membership in Scotland. It is listed as a percentage of the total and the total is given.

jabuzzard, the SCGB's 2012 annual report states that the proportion of members in Scotland is 4.9%, from a total membership of 30,457. The number of subscription payers (paying units) isn't stated, but I've been given a figure of 16,782.

+1

+1

So, 1492 Scotland based members of SCGB. Membership is massively skewed southwards even though in theory the opposite should be true considering that the vast majority of UK skiing takes place in Scotland. This is an accurate reflection of the wider picture where the UK scene, with organisations usually based in London or even further south, overshadow the very real grassroots Scottish scene, which in turn does not associate much with the UK scene.

I wouldn't bother trying too hard to change SCGB or the UK institutions. The Scottish snow experience is too different to fit with their agendas and in this case if not others the communities seem to have grown further and further apart. I think we're better off concentrating on making the best possible Scottish resources available to people who want to ski/ride in Scotland (wherever they are travelling from) and make clear the distinction between the Scottish and the UK community/scene..... they are different.

If you really felt strongly you could start a web & social media campaign to alert SSGB members to the problems with the reports and direct them to somewhere better (or ask them to lobby SCGB management to improve their service, but why bother, just bypass SCGB and appeal to the membership demographic directly to go elsewhere, if they are indeed looking for info on Scotland, which is doubtful).

I can see where you're coming from, tim, but don't really agree with you. When I caught a bus from Hendon Central in north London to the Spey Valley in December 1974, to do a 3-week Christmas job as a ski instructor (which turned into a full winter, plus BASI course at Glenmore Lodge) ... my entire skiing experience to that date had been in France, Austria and Switzerland. Skiing the Scottish mountains turned out to be an adventure I'd recommend to any southerner, largely because it's so wild and magnificent in terms of landscapes and weather.

I see no reason for a kind of apartheid between southern England and Scotland in terms of what's demanded, based on the segregation of demographics you describe. Scottish skiing deserves to be levelled with - that's all - and respected in terms of accurate information provision - that's all.

I kicked off this thread because the new CEO of the SCGB is a Scot, and I was interested in how his decision-making would be influenced by his roots.

As you correctly imply in your last paragraph, the solution is so simple: direct skiers down south (if that's where they are) to websites up north that get their info feed straight from the slopes ... rather than dreaming it up at a desk in Wimbledon!

I think that there is a very real issue here. Scottish Snowsports need all the help they can get from revenue streams in order to remain sustainable at current investment levels.

It is bad enough in Scotland and the English northern counties to get people to understand that the lack of snow outside their doors does not mean that there is no snowsports available.

The demographic factors to be considered need to include the relatively high per capita spending capability of southerners vs northerners, and that could be an important source of cash to the ski centres if marketed correctly.

Sites like winterhighland are known by enthusiasts and locals, but not by the unknowing hordes who might be tempted to have a blast up north if correct timely information is being fed to them on a plate. The bulk of SCGB membership is darn sarf, that's a reality. It therefore presents a unique opportunity to market directly to a mostly untapped revenue stream. The fact that the management of the club that styles itself as the "national" club is singularly failing to provide accurate info to its members is a national disgrace.

In terms of beyond short breaks such as weekends, Scottish Snowsports is always going to be something of a niche, but in relation to the potential size of the UK market it does not require very many to make that a niche that significantly strengthens the local tourism industry in what otherwise would be 'out of season'.

The winter of 2010 and the media coverage it got opened eyes to the potential of Scottish Snowsports. During half term last season, I spoke to several families on CairnGorm Mountain who were there on holiday for the English half term. They had come either in 2010 or 2011 off the back of the media coverage about those winters, and had returned again in 2012.

Now despite snow conditions being much leaner than 2010 and 2011 at half term last year, none of them were downbeat about the conditions and all stated they are quite amazed at the effort made by CML to maximise the snowsports on offer, including running the lifts later and the floodlight riding in the Ptarmigan Bowl.

What did surprise me though was that none had been put off coming back, one group had already booked for 2013 on arrival and another had done so during the week as they were desperate to get the same house again.

A point made by more than 1 family group was they were getting a proper 3 / 4 bedroom house for the price of a tiny apartment in France and that you could comfortably have a down day just relaxing and resting in the house in a way you couldn't in a said tiny apartment. The feeling was they were getting far better value for their money and that was at half term!

Another group pointed out on the day of the flood light skiing, they'd been skiing in the morning (kids in ski school), left the hill at lunchtime to go to Landmark in Carrbridge, and were back on the mountain skiing again as darkness fell. Earlier in the week they'd been at the Highland Wildlife Park to see the polar bears.

Some of the groups I spoke to had non skiers or less enthusiastic skiers who wanted to ski but not for the full week, this is a sector of the market that many of the big well known international resorts frequented by British Holiday-makers simply don't cater for.



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 11.45hrs Tue 29 Jan 13 by alan.

Good post Alan and I hope there are many more people like those you spoke to coming to Scotland. We need them to come on their holidays to ensure that the centres get good holiday periods and then can re-invest the money in fencing and lift maintenance etc, so that us, all year round nutters, can keep skiing easily in Scotland :-)

Before anyone jumps on my choice of words "need", I merely mean that their out of Scotland money is a welcome boost to the indigenous £ spent by local Scottish skiers the rest of the season.

From the minutes of the SCGB AGM:



If that is the case with members then it most likely is the case that is the reason for the vast majority of non-member visits to the website also - underlining the need for this information to be correct, esp as it is distributed to other places. (Though there are worse, the information on onthesnow.co.uk is so inaccurate it would be completely laughable if it were not now near the top of Google searches for Scottish Ski Reports).

Further into the minutes, they state that the website costs for 2010/11 were £107,000.

If any insomniacs need some bed time reading you can read the full AGM minutes at [www.skiclub.co.uk]

At least w/h comes above SCGB and the others in google searches for Scottish conditions! I completely agree that if their reports are rubbish they should be improved but given that there has been no decent response in 7 months I think a better method of lobbying would be by starting an online campaign.... How about:

@SCGBReportssuck #SCGBsuck "Ski Club of Great Britain UK Snow Reports Are Rubbish!" (fb page name) "The campaign to get the Ski Club of Great Britain to improve their rubbish UK snow reports and provide SCGB members with information on where to find accurate reports on Scottish snow conditions"

I did write about 2000 words last night on this and (what I see as) related issues but I don't know where to start. So much for "I never think about SCGB"

I still think the UK scene and Scottish scene are worlds apart though (as reflected in SCGB membership).