Hi All

So last week between the Tuesday & Friday I headed up to the highlands on a quest to find out just exactly what is happening at the two westerly Scottish ski areas this summer.

I was surprised at just quiet how much is being achieved, so decided to write this report.


Glencoe:
The access road is now finished and this coming week the Boyd contractors will be finishing up the sides of the road, to assist with the natural re-growth of wild fauna.

I'm beyond impressed at how neat and tidy it all is with lots of gullies cut in by the roadside to allow for drainage, lots of pipes allowing the water to pass safely under the road and the road surface is highly compressed.

The rock was mined onsite in two locations to provide the road surface material and the rock underneath. In the process of doing this, a new area of flat ground has been opened up just below the sledging area on the plateau. Andy M informed me in a meeting on Wednesday that a 20-30m PistenBully storage garage will be built here - work on this is starting soon.

The areas for the valley station and mountain station for the chairlift have also been created and some foundation work may begin this season. The install of the chairlift is being done largely in-house, which I applaud and is impressive.

Some new snow-fencing has been added in around the mountain near the assess road as well. The new access road will also serve a new green ski run down to the valley and Andy seemed very excited about this and discussed possible plans to add some snow-making to the route.

The snow-factory is now in, but not yet connected to water or power. It will probably need it's own transformer to draw power from as it is a power-hungry piece of equipment.


Nevis Range:
Just up the road from Glencoe, work is also progressing and its encouraging to see so much preparation and effort going into the ski season, especially with a few people slagging it of lately.

The majority of work concerns snow fencing. I would estimate NR are installing around 6-7km of new snow fencing this year and repairing another 500-700m.

They are continuing with the style of big posts and alternately placed boards.
The old posts from the last snow fencing are being left in or replaced to act as bracing for the new posts/fence.

The scale of this work is just incredible. There are thousands and thousands of boards being installed and hundreds of posts and the team are moving at quite a rate, with a crew of 3 installing the new posts and a crew of 4 nailing the boards in place.

I had a long chat to one of the crew who anticipated that next year the fencing around the summit and warrens would be done, as well as a few sections by the gouse t-bar, meaning that almost all of the old pailing fencing will be gone.

The areas that have been done (or will be done this summer) are:
Quad Chair
Side-Winder
Easy-Rider
Summit Button
Summit Run
Spider Run
Spectre
Cat Track
Sqiggles

Repair work to some fencing between quad and goose
Repair work to Rob Roy's Return
Repair work to Rob Roy
Plus other areas I did not notice

A plan below is attached.



Other work includes:
Re-painted woodwork & steel at the gondola top-station
Re-painted steel-work at the Quad Chair & Warrens
Lots of junk/rubish being removed from site
New decking area is being built outside the Gouse Snack-Bar to increase its use/capacity
New transformers at the Summit Button drive and Goouse Drive


If folk don't think much is going on at these two mountain resorts this summer, they should re-consider!

Regards to all you budding skiers, young & old, Scottish & English, Male & Female! Heres to a great season!










Edited 2 times. Last edit at 14.09hrs Fri 31 Aug 18 by 01cookjk.

Attachments: snow fencing new.jpg (266kB)  

PS:

Photos coming soon, video report live at around midnight (also includes various other non-ski resort related adventures, so just skip ahead if you want) [youtu.be]


Regards,
Jonathan

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K9SmfyaZxF4" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>



Edited 4 times. Last edit at 14.24hrs Fri 31 Aug 18 by 01cookjk.

Any idea of the route the green to the valley will take at Glencoe?

It's the same as this season (only now complete). Looking down the hill there is a new road well to the right of the chairlift that gently winds it's way down to the dry slope.

Excellent update Jonathan

Good report. Many thanks. Your video is good too.

Thanks for the positive feedback so far, here are some photos, see attached files. I don't know how to embed photos on the forum yet. Windy Miller - can you let me know sometime, since you seem to be the expert.

Here are photos first from Glencoe - note the photo showing the location of the top drive of the new Plateau Chairlift. It is roughly 20m to the right of the poma and extends about 80-90m further than the poma with 15-20 of additional height gain, but due to the wind, nowhere near high enough to make a connection with the main basin lifts.













Edited 1 times. Last edit at 14.13hrs Fri 31 Aug 18 by 01cookjk.

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Now some photos from Nevis Range

Note that they are burning the old fencing as aposed to leaving it to rot and bagging up the steel wire for recycling. Again, I applaud their efforts. Its responsible and the ashes probably help fertilize the ground, albeit in very confined areas!













Edited 1 times. Last edit at 14.18hrs Fri 31 Aug 18 by 01cookjk.

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Just a few more







Edited 1 times. Last edit at 14.21hrs Fri 31 Aug 18 by 01cookjk.

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Great photos. Thumbs up for the responsible approach on display.

Cheers for posting the photos 01cookjk, look like good improvements. New location for the snow factory looks good to cover a fair bit of the plateau.

Yes, snow factory is in good position and it can't be seen from the top of the chairlift, which is probably a good thing. I am interested to find out how they decide to distribute the snow - by means of simply pushing it around with a snow groomer or via a network of pipes to the top and middle of both the run and the button tow.

It's only logical that as each seasons passes, the technique for distributing the snow will improve, and like the crew at Cairngorm, Andy realises that the key to maximising snow output with the snow factory is to use a standard fan gun alongside the snow factory. The fine mist of water from the fan gun then forms new ice crystals on the snow. The trick will then be avoiding creating a humongous block of immovable ice!

Lot's of great news there. I'm particularly excited by the long term idea of trying to maintain a ski-able route back to the base area at Glencoe. I can see benefits for two reasons, firstly it will encourage more people to return to base for lunch in the main cafe, reducing pressure on the "Plateau Chateau" and of course it allows a much bigger vertical drop on a greater number of days, a big marketing plus.

I don't see the lack of a direct connection from the new chair to the main basin as a big deal, improving the wind tolerance of the lift seems like a better option. If you work on the assumption that snow making will be used to keep Mugs Alley open all season the direct connection isn't needed. Using snowmaking to keep vital links open seems to be the approach elsewhere. Mugs Alley is also the highest green run, so keeping it open in a poor season is good business logic even if it weren't needed for access.

Hopefully the snow factory can maintain that level of cover, it didn't seem to put out that much snow last year, maybe cos it was new or wasn't worth it at lower levels, some of the "snow" it out out last year was horrid.

Yeah, they were really just testing it last year and 'getting to know its properties and quirks'. I believe the generator powering it had some issues too.

I think the Lecht came out on top as the best user of the units last season, they really went to town at the end of the season, using it as much as possible to keep their learner area open. I don't know yet if they are keeping it, but the summer jam session suggests that this is likely.

Their water storage system is also very probably the best in Scotland at the moment and probably contributed to their success.