Gorminator, I genuinely like your name but it's inappropriate to get bossy with a joke name. I typed it into Google and got this ...



Attachments: Germinator.jpg (118kB)  

At least I can spell it - you total fanny !

Must be my superior Scottish Education, and boy does it show up on this Forum subject !

Yes ... [stand by for another Scottish Education point] ...
... I also saw that you spelled "pish" correctly

15 pages all about SKi Club GB not providing accurate snow reports? FFS

Dave, Maybe he'll keep his gob shut now that there is an extra mouth to feed in Endland.

Hear he's getting called Endland's most common name - Mohammed !

I have as much enthusiasim for the Royal birth as I have for SKGB snow reports, probably a bit more.

Maybe Dave G should take his caes to the English Parliment - oops, forgot the dont have one.

Just a reminder to anyone remotely interested that the annual general meeting of the Ski Club of Great Britain (a combination of nations which one understands includes Scotland) ...

... is on Thursday 21 November at the SCGB Clubhouse in Wimbledon, London. 7pm.

This will be the second AGM of the new CEO Frank McCusker, who is Scottish. It was reported here some months ago that Frank made a visit to Scotland to talk skiing (though I don't think that trip was reported to SCGB members) so it will be interesting to learn whether any material changes in attitude/relationship between the London-centric club and the principal UK ski locations are intended.

My understanding is that the Club's roots, from the early years of the 20th century, were largely nurtured in the Highlands. But the Club's current Council (board of directors) doesn't include any representation from Scotland, as far as I'm aware. I don't know who, in control of the SCGB, skis in Scotland ... but the Club is welcome to enlighten us.

At some point an orginisAtion can lose its way. If this is the case with ski club uk (bearing in mind the scuk is the snowboarding club of the uk...) then it is for the ordinary people to create a new body in their own image to lead the way....let them wallow in their south east orientated mindset, if indeed that is their aim, we shall persevere and not notice one bit.

By coincidence this was in the press. Maybe it's the president of SCGB that you should contact?

[www.telegraph.co.uk]

I'm just bumping this thread, because there is significant suspicion that "Pippin" - who launched into this thread back in June (on page 10) - is a Ski Club of Great Britain director.

It is for Gerry Aitken to confirm or deny that. And, if he is "Pippin", was he commenting officially or unofficially?

See contributions from "Pippin" starting 10 June 2013.



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 09.36hrs Sat 7 Dec 13 by David Goldsmith.

As someone one who has skied in Scotland my whole life, I don't think SCGB is of any relevance at all apart from people down south. It might do a litter pick each year but much better to support a local club or national club such as the SSC.

David this thread became really tedious last season, I hope you’re not going to keep on with your personal vendetta against Ski Club of GB. Clearly there are issues with their reporting but most people tend to get their info from forums like winterhighland or direct from the ski resorts themselves. Snow depth in Scottish resorts can be pretty meaningless as some gully’s can be many meters deep yet 5m either side are windblown with very little depth. Ensuring accurate reporting of resorts open/closed status should be a little easier although one update a day might mean timing is everything. It was this latter issue and this thread that prompted me to write to them at the end of April. Their responses were always prompt, apologetic when they got things wrong and helpful in their explanation of how their systems worked.

In reply to one of their explanations about where information came from I asked:-

Rather belated follow up question to your earlier email. I was interested to note that you gather info electronically from Cairngorm. “We are provided with a feed of info from Cairngorm including snowfall and depth figures”. Is this directly from CairngormMountains web site or via Ski Scotland?

Secondly you say “our snow reports are all gathered and written by a person every day we update the info – as opposed to the data feed model used by most providers” Does that mean a manually created report based on remote feeds & checking of snow resort websites or does someone actually on location go out to check and verify condition reports?

The reply I got was helpful:-

Towards the middle of this season Ski Scotland, the Ski Club and the five Scottish resorts all came to an agreement that the resorts would measure their snow depths where the marked runs were and they’d send us the information.

Ski Scotland administrate this with an editable online page that the resorts fill in each morning. It’s usually done by the mountain operations team once they’ve been up onto the mountain first thing in the morning. The data is all accessible to us so we use that when writing the snow reports for Scotland. They manually enter their snow depths (upper, lower and fresh snow in past 24 hours) and then we take it from there and put it into our own snow reports manually. This helps ensure that simple typos etc don’t make it through onto our website.

It’s quite tricky with Scottish resorts though as snow depth varies so widely even in small areas, so it can be hard to get an all round figure to represent the average cover. Some of the upper runs may be in a gully and therefore have 7 metres of snow whereas another run only 50 metres away may be very exposed to the wind and have only 20cm of snow on. I think that’s just the nature of the beast though and the majority of people understand that’s the case with snow depths at Scottish resorts.


Of course it still requires SCGB to manually update in a timely and accurate way but it would appear the resort operators themselves provide the snow depth information via Ski Scotland. Hope that puts that bit to bed.

Dave

I'll try to be a bit more sparing about the reportage, DaveF, but the SCGB is our national skiers' club and claims to be the national authority on snow reporting. Things are off to the following start (yet again) for the winter ...



As Cairngorm reported on Facebook yesterday afternoon (Saturday, 4.30pm) "Thanks to all who visited us today, enjoying some good skiing on the Ciste Fairway. The wind strengthened late afternoon which closed the Ciste Tow."

Does that SCGB report above suggest that any opening of the ski area - which was predicted by Cairngorm - would take place on Saturday? Do you really think this is acceptable, or that it reflects the assurances you say you were given?



Edited 2 times. Last edit at 19.45hrs Sun 8 Dec 13 by David Goldsmith.

Attachments: SCGB Gorm report.JPG (67kB)  

The above is more about the fact that the reports are only updated once a day Mon-Fri on non holidays during office hours. Which is itself a problem, though a separate one from the question of accuracy.

Agree with Alan re timing. The report is dated and timed at 1:30 on Friday. Had Cairngorm stated they would open? Seem to recall it was all a bit on hold for the limited offering there at present and facebook message didn't come out until 3ish which still didn't confirm definite opening. Had Cairngorm submitted any information via Ski Scotland as SCGB suggest is the process? Timing might be the issue here if SCGB operate Mon to Frid but as at 1:30 on Frid, the time the above report was written, the information provided was probably accurate. If in doubt always check the resort media sites or winterhighland which are 24/7.