I think the 'fantasy' 457m descent is just the height difference from the top of the Glas Maol poma down to the car park area. Obviously the biggest single descent is from the Carn Aosda T-bar/poma combo but that's only around 250m.

Anyway, good maps and fly-through vids.

Glencoe have now turned their snow factory on 24-7.

[www.facebook.com]

Top of Glas Moal lift is 1030m. Car park at 650m. Bottom of Dink Dink 640m. So even on that measure, and using bottom of Dink Dink, it would only be 1030-640 = 390m vertical. So I don't get where the 457m comes from.

If I ran the Shee and had cairngormesque levels of public money available, I would put the main car park where the Allt Coire Fionn meets the road, together with appropriate snowmaking facilities and a big fast chair up to the shiny new revolving cafe on Glas Maol.

That's 1050 down to 550, although I reckon that amount of money might stretch to raising the summit by a couple of hundred metres too...

shame its not visible on any of the webcams.

It will be when it moves onto the main fork of Old Mugs Alley.

The biggest lift served vertical is 301m on Glas Moal (or 307 if you count to the Corrie Fionn drags). Carn Aosda is the second biggest, at 258m, but you have to go to the bottom of the Dink Dink to get that. The attached image shows the point on the road where you would have to end up to claim an approx 457m descent starting from the top of the Glas Maol poma. I'm assuming that's a viable off-piste route with good snow, but there's certainly no lift service. Did GS ever run a mini-bus down there at the peak of the season?





Edited 2 times. Last edit at 22.17hrs Wed 31 Oct 18 by tim1mw.

Attachments: 457m.jpg (132kB)  

The 457m is measured from the base of the Dink Dink to summit of the Glas Maol. Like the theoretical 2000ft descent to the base of the Carpark T-bar on the Cas side of CairnGorm, it can only be achieved by hoofing to the actual summit.

Lifting Centre Gully to the A93 would be superb for Aberdeen side customers, unfortunately for such a plan the vast majority of customers come from the otherside. It's always a great freshies day when theres powder and the Spittal gates remain shut!

Andy said it will be permanently on on their FB page.

How do they plan to move it?

The Snowfactory won't move, the pipes and hoses connected to it will.

Ahhh, yeah. So it'll be producing snow 24-7 then. (hopefully unless a technical hitch)

Aye I just meant the initial pile. The geek in me would like to see it's progress in marginal autumnal conditions. No matter, I'm just being impatient

It'll be interesting to see how the snow survives the 'warmer' parts of winter where theres rain etc which can make a mountain go from nice and white to green overnight.

Andy seems positive that it'll work out alright, keep plenty of the snow piled up in large enough volumes and it'll remain during the more milder days.

Really hope its another bumper season for Glencoe and those resorts who put the effort into keeping the customers their top priority. They certainly deserve it.

I've noticed the pylon for the rope tow at the top of the sunny side chair for the past year or so, but never seen it in action. Maybe health and safety/costs got them since on most of my trips during the past winter there was an operator looking after the rather tame Beag Poma.

Counting down the days now.....

That's still not 457m, Glas Maol is 1068m at the top, The Dink Dink base is 641m, that gives you 427m, so still 30m short, although that does make me wonder if the claimed vertical is based on both an uncorrected historical typo and walking.