On Saturday 30th May with a perfect blue sky around 20 people gathered at Glenshee Ski Centre from 10am for a guided walk about with Dr Adam Watson. A selection of photos from the day have been put up in the Pix from the Slopes, as well as a number of photos/links and discussion about the day in the forum.

Gathering at the Cafe

To start the day off prior to heading up the Cairnwell Chairlift and onwards to the Summit, Dr Adam Watson explained the proposed itinerary for the day over morning coffee, while Iain Cameron (Firefly) explained his idea behind the meeting, partly as a thank you to those who have contributed to snow patch monitoring in recent seasons through filling reports and photos on Winterhighland over the summer months.

As part of the day Adam Watson then introduced Willie Meston a manager at Glenshee who spoke about the company, Glenshee Ski Area and the season just past, there was then a question and answer session about Glenshee. Some of the questions were from recurring themes on the Winterhighland Forum and some of these were answered by the A4 handouts from Willie Meston.

Willie Meston gave a brief presentation on snow management at Glenshee, the principle method being the snow fencing, then grooming and snow farming with the Piste Bashers and finally the limited snow making capability that is primarily used on the Claybokie run.

Key points from this:

• Snow fence management and repair is a major undertaking, Glenshee are currently replacing between 1000 and 2000m of snow fencing per year.
• 1km of snow fencing was replaced on Glas Maol in summer 2008 including extensive repairs to the fenced traverse from the top of the Poma out to Centre Gully.
• Newest Piste Basher is a 10year old Kassbohrer.
• Different wind directions favour different fence lines and parts of the Ski Area.

Existing snow making system:

• Entirely manual system, staff have to be on site to start up and stop the system.
• Constant adjustments needed as temperature, humidity and wind fluctuate. Staff need to keep a constant watch as a sudden change in temperature could result in the guns blowing out water and ruining the existing snow by turning it into sheet ice.
• A small water storage pond between the foot of the Cairnwell T-bar and Claybokie Poma.
• The six manual fan guns used on Claybokie have a start up wet bulb temperature of -3°c, but -5 or lower is better.
• In clear settled weather conditions with light winds such as under high pressures temperature inversions can be an issue, temperatures down to double digits below 0°c in Braemar but above freezing on the mountain.
• Requires significant electricity input and Glenshee has to generate own power. System for Claybokie consists of the fan guns which are rated 30kW each, a 150kW water pump and uses a 380kVA generator.

Snow Making on the Claybokie on 31st Dec 2008.

Why & how was the Tiger Tow Removed:

Tiger T-bar taken out of service for safety reasons due to steepness and difficulty of up-track, to many serious accidents with the situation described as almost an incident every time the tow was switched on.

Towers were dropped out of the ski season and when there was sufficient snow on the ground Piste Bashers went down the line and were used to remove the towers from the hill-side.

Is there any life expectancy issue with the Cairnwell lifts, esp. the Chairlift?

All the existing lifts remain serviceable, however (as has already happened with the Cairnwell and Carn Aosda T-bars where the old diesel drives have been replaced by electric drives) the remaining diesel drives could be replaced in future. Cairnwell Chairlift will under go a refurbishment if it is remaining in long term operation.

Will the Courrour Poma operate again?

Courrour Poma has not operated for 8 years and it is unlikely to operate again in it’s current location. Subject to funds being available it could be moved to a more useful location, potentially to double up Butchart’s (T-bar or Poma). Decommissioned lifts being used as spares. Some newer poma tower work platforms have been removed and placed on older towers to make work on the lifts easier.

State of play with Meall Odhar T-bar and Pomas

Meall Odhar T-bar and Caenlochan Poma

Issue raised about redundancy and capacity issues as this has been a bottleneck in recent seasons.

Willie stated that the Meall Odhar T-bar would be serviced and that lack of time/resources meant it had not been possible to get round to it prior to the arrival of snow last season. Plans for future refurbishment of the T-bar with a new electric drive to replace the old diesel drive with external gear box - as with Butchart’s T-bar, more efficient, easier to maintain, more reliable and less diesel storage sites to maintain with electric drives. T-bar generally would be used as back up and for extra capacity at peak times as boarders prefer easier access over the back from the Caenlochan.

Also mentioned with regard stoppages that the Caenlochan line was considerably more exposed than the other two lifts.

Mention that Meall Odhar and Butchart’s T-bars could receive ‘redundant’ electric drive stations from CML.

Reliance of Surface Uplift for access to Glas Maol and Fionn Coire

The discussion over lifts on Meall Odhar brought the discussion onto the subject of the problem of not being able to access the reliable snow fields and runs in Coire Fionn due to runs/uptracks on the way over being incomplete.

Glenshee have a proposal for a Meall Odhar Chairlift to replace the Meall Odhar Poma on a slightly different alignment to the poma. Would need further good seasons to have funds to install such a lift.

Devil’s Elbow and/or Centre Gully Access Lift?

In the 1980s a detailed proposal was worked up for the installation of an access Chairlift from the Devils Elbow to the foot of the Meall Odhar T-bar. This would have addressed the access problem from the South where the road is more prone to closure in snowy weather than the road from the North.

Company concerned about extent to which such a plan would divide the Ski Area base facilities, without adequately dealing with the Glas Maol access issue. Meall Odhar or Coire Fionn could still be broken, while Glas Maol skiable, but still not accessible.

Late 80’s into the 90’s idea surfaced for an alternative Northern approach for a low level access lift, from the North side of the Ski Area. A new chairlift would head from the A93 up Centre Gully to the foot of the Glas Maol and Coire Fionn Pomas providing access to both without relying on either being complete. This remains the long term objective and is considered the best solution to the issue of reliable access to Glas Maol.

Glas Maol Summit from A93. Chairlift would largely be out of sight in Centre Gully.

Alternative lower cost solution to improving Access to Coire Fionn

All potential solutions have the issue of funding. An alternative approach is to extend the Sunnyside Chairlift towards the Meall Odhar Cafe, providing an easier interchange with a Meall Odhar Chairlift. This would would enable access to Coire Fionn regardless of snow conditions on Sunnyside, Cluny/Tom Dearg and Meall Odhar. However Glas Maol could still be inaccessible in this scenario.

Signage

Donald Morris brought up the subject of signage along with with the Gaelic bi-lingual signs which were put up this season just past. As a result of increased holiday visitors rather than local day trippers this season, navigation around the Ski Area has been an issue and new piste direction signage and extra instruction signs on correct use of the T-bars is planned.

Summer Activities, Mountain Biking?

Cafe at the road side is open daily following the refurbishment prior to last season. Cairnwell Chairlift will operate daily during the summer from Mid June this year.

Glenshee plan to use the Chairlift for downhill mountain biking using the existing estate landrover tracks on the Cairnwell side. Plans to add features to the sides of the track to enable the track to still be used, this means riders can easily avoid any feature without dismounting.

Other Plans / Issues for Glenshee?

Adam Watson mentioned the issue of Glenshee suffering in terms of funding support due to being the only Scottish Ski Area wholly outside of the HIE area. This contrasts to the situation at CairnGorm and Nevis Range and to a lesser extent at Glencoe and the Lecht where HIE has funded or contributed to funding of infrastructural improvements.

Willie Meston stated that another small lift that is a high priority is to install a short Chairlift between the Ticket Office building and the Cairnwell Cafe. This would make a huge difference to visitation in limited snow cover, as numbers drop dramatically if people have to walk to the Cafe. This is esp true when skiing is on machine made snow on Claybokie. Increased ski numbers in such situations would allow increased use of snow making and in good conditions remove the bottle neck at the Plastic Slope Poma.

The chairlift is currently sitting at the end of the Car Park adjacent to the Dink Dink Poma. There is not a current costing for it’s installation, though this is being looked at. New rules on installations (EU Cableways Directive etc) mean increased costs to bring lift up to scratch.

For other potential lift projects, Willie Meston mentioned the extent of availability of second hand lifts that are relatively modern at low cost if they can be transported from mainland Europe due to many French resorts replacing uplift on a 15year cycle.

Cairnwell Chairlift

Discussions were wrapped up with Iain Cameron and Dr Adam Watson leading the thank you to Willie Meston for his time and for allowing use of the Chairlift. The group then headed up the Cairnwell Chairlift before walking to the Summit where the fantastic visibility gave excellent views in every direction. Adam and Iain are preparing a full account of the walk about and afternoon discussions and site visits in Glen Clunie which will be made available in due course.

On behalf of all participants may I once again thank Glenshee for hosting the day, Iain Cameron for setting the ball in motion and organising the day and Adam Watson for a fascinating and informative day.

update 3/06/09: The SSC Hut AWS is up and running with temperature, humidity and air pressure at this time.  Replacement connectors for the wind sensor and rain gauge are on order, but not in stock with the suppliers. A full service will be restored as soon as possible.

With fresh drifts lying on CairnGorm Mountain, there was a distinct nip in the air this evening while walking up to the Scottish Ski Club Hut at 2500ft by the foot of the White Lady.

Saturday’s trip was undertaken to move the SSC Hut webcams to their summer positions, this is partly to give a more interesting wider view from the mountain outwith the Snowsports Season, but also to reduce camera exposure to direct sunlight looking Southwards up the White Lady during Summer.

The Lady Camera looks out the opposite end of the hut during Summer giving a view over the Kassbohrer garage and lower slopes towards Aviemore. Around dawn and dusk the lights of Aviemore can be seen centre picture when visibility is good, while the partly hidden Loch Morlich is visible to the middle right of the image.

Newly upgraded Balcony Cam

The SSC Hut Balcony Cam has been upgraded to a higher resolution 2mp auto focus camera, from the older fixed focus camera that has served us well the past 2 winters. The higher resolution and auto focus will give crisper images, but due to very limited bandwidth it’s not possible to increase image sizes just now. (But this is being looked at for the future).

During Summer the balcony camera is turned round by approximately 90 degrees to give a partially uphill view, since the other camera is looking downhill.

Weather Station Upgrade & Repairs

During winter the wind sensor array at the SSC hut suffered from an intermittent fault, which only occurred in thaw conditions following on from a cold spell with powdery snow. The anemometer then functioned when either temps went back below freezing or it became warmer and drier, suggestive that water ingress into the AWS unit from drifting snow accumulating inside the thermometer’s radiation shield then subsequently melting was a contributing factor.

On inspection the internal connector plugs in the AWS are starting to corrode and the wind vane cable has been damaged during winter. The main sensor array unit has been taken off site to have the connector modules replaced and this will be carried out during the coming week. A new cup anemometer unit was installed on Saturday afternoon, ready for the return of the main AWS Unit and it is hoped to have the weather station along with the upgraded aneometer back online by mid May for Summer.

This afternoon myself and Keith from Loch Morlich Water Sports installed a new Automatic Weather Station at Loch Morlich at an altitude of 1050ft (or 320m for those who try to make the hills look smaller than they are).

Coupled with Winterhighland’s other the AWS at the SSC Hut at 2500ft up on the ‘Gorm along with CML’s AWS on the Funicular Tunnel Mouth at 3400ft and the Met Office and Herriot Watt Unis Summit AWS there is now  (and  possibly uniquely in the UK) a good  vertical spread in live weather reporting stations on CairnGorm Mountain from the Glen to the Summit.

Take together these should provide a great resouce for monitoring how conditions are changing and provide a useful tool for helping plan weather dependent activities year round.

It is also hoped that they will taken together with longer standing manual records allow for a better understanding of the climate on CairnGorm Mountain and how the weather varies spatially and altitudinally on the mountain, helping with planning for the future of snowsports on the ‘Gorm.

For any one interested in some of the technical details, the Weather Station at Loch Morlich is a Technoline WS2300 with data handling and upload undertaken by a PII running Xubuntu linux with the Open2300 open source command line applications.

The AWS at the SSC Hut on CairnGorm Mountain is a WS3600 with propeller anemometer using the Open3600 software suite.

SSC & L. Morlich AWS www.winterhighland.info/cairngorm .

The Funicular Tunnel AWS  www.cairngormmountain.co.uk .

Herriot Watt Summit AWS www.phy.hw.ac.uk/resrev/weather.htm .

Please visit Loch Morlich Water Sports , once again many thanks for your help in making it possible to get live weather data from Glenmore.

There’s been a recurring issue over the past few days witn the wind data dropping out from the Ski Club Hut automatic weather station on CairnGorm Mountain.

The intermittent rather than constant nature of the problem suggests a poor connection and/or damaged wiring is to blame. The anemometer has functioned when temps have been lowest, suggestive that water ingress into the AWS unit might be a contributing factor.

Weather permitting if the forecast lull does indeed come over during Saturday the Weather Station will be taken apart and checked out, connections cleaned out, cables checked and hopefully it will function OK given the predicated storms. The weather station will if time/weather allows also be switched over to cable link rather than radio link which should improve reporting of stronger gusts due to more frequent sampling.

The mariginal nature of the snow event at times though means the likelyhood of wet driving snow for a time at the SSC Hut level which greatly increases the potential risk for anemometer icing. If anyone has a couple of grand going spare for a heated sensor array, drop us a line!

The router and comms equipment in the SSC hut was shutdown and reset on Thursday afternoon and the Ski Club Hut cameras on CairnGorm Mountain are back on-line and functioning normally.

A replacement webcam box has been installed in Mountain Spirit in Aviemore and we now once again have a low level view looking along Grampian Road in the direction of the Ski Road Roundabout to distant hills. This camera is useful for gauging low level snow events and also early morning check-ups on non-trunk road conditions in wintry weather. The Mountain Spirit webcam is online 24/7 due to it viewing a street lit area.

An additional view looking over the Strath to the Northern Cairngorms will be available shortly, also from Mountain Spirit.

Wishing all readers of Winterhighland all the best for 2009 and hope you had a good one whatever you were up to on Hogmanay.

New Year’s Day brought a flurry or two to the mountains, nothing very significant by any stretch however it was enough to take the edge of the hard base on CairnGorm and the continued cold weather with light winds has allowed the Lecht and Glenshee to fire up their old fan guns to enable all the Eastern areas to offer some riding over the New year period.

The snow making equipment at the Lecht and Glenshee certainly isn’t state of the art and being entirely manual - someone has to go and turn on each hydrant at the required flow and set up the gun - means it’s very cold and wet work, so a big shout for the guys who spent the New Year Holiday getting cold and wet so we could have some more runs to play on !

The success with limited old manual equipment does raise the question of just what might be achievable with a modern, more extensive and at least to some extent automated system. Winterhighland’s AWS (Automatic Weather Station) at the SSC Hut at 2500ft on CairnGorm Mountain has logged over 760hours where the wet-bulb temperature has been cold enough for modern Ratnik Sky Giant air/water guns since the end of October. (Not all these hours would have been suitable due to wind,  but the data also shows the degree to which the foot of the White Lady can be sheltered in certain wind directions. This has implications elsewhere on the mountain in that there will in some wind directions be part of the mountain where snow can be made even when high winds are plaguing much of the mountain.)

Winterhighland into 2009

Well for one thing the blog admin which had problems following an upgrade to the software is fixed! More importantly the site has been widened, partly to accommodate additional advertising, some from Google Adsense, some shared snowsports adverts with Fall Line Media. The really important bit is why these adverts are needed - they are contributing to the substantial cost of a brand new dedicated server for Winterhighland which should significantly improve site load times and stability despite the volatile traffic spikes that inevitably hit whenever snow is forecast and so far it has coped admarilly with some early surges in traffic that October’s excitement caused.

The wider format is gradually being rolled out and it also allows for a summary lift report on the general situation page, wider thumbnails for Pix from the Slopes on the GS and area report pages, plus much larger thumbnails on the front page.

The UK Ice Conditions Server now links into the GS page with the latest photos, several small improvements will be rolled out across the site to provide more cross links to the various member supplied photo galleries on the reports servers, particularly the public reports so they better integrate and compliment the Pix from the Slopes.

Here’s to a snowy 2009.

Every office across the land that has at least one skier or boarder will no doubt have seen productivity drop and bandwidth use rocket today! Snow falling on the webcams at the start of the first significant cold snap of the autumn, yes there was some snow last week and at the start of the Month, but this week things are ramping up another level!

There are weather warnings out from the Met Office for Tuesday, lots of chatter in the weather forums and a real buzz is building. Fellow skiers and boarders… winter is getting closer and for the fist time this new season, the slats on the Ski Club hut’s decks have vanished beneath fresh fluffy snow!

SSC Hut Balcony slats vanish under the snow for the first time this season!

Don’t miss out on your chance to get yourself a brand new Navy or Black Winterhighland Beanie. These beanies feature the Winterhighland* snowflake logo on a single layer style (no turn up this time), so great to use on the hill or for more everyday use.

Beanies will be available for dispatch in the second half of November, but get your order in as numbers are limited, we also have Karabiner Keyrings, various Winterhighland T-shirts and Baseball caps, some potential stocking fillers for Christmas.

www.winterhighland.info/shop

October has marked it’s arrival with the first Snows of the upcoming winter, as a Northerly Plunge sends temperatures diving. Thursday saw the first reasonable covering of snow on the higher tops of the Cairngorms, and there’s also a smattering on the tops in the West.

It all add’s to the excitement and anticipation at the season ahead, but don’t get too carried away just yet - winter proper is officially 11 weeks away yet, that said it’s another sign of the seasons unstoppable march back to winter.

The past two seasons started the last weekend of November (2006/07) and first weekend of December (2007/08) on CairnGorm Mountain with lasting snow, though cover became more limited in the run up and around Christmas both years.

You can now watch how things are shaping up this autumn with our mid-mountain webcams and live weather real-time weather station on CairnGorm Mountain which are now back online following completion of the reinstatement works to flood damage on the hill road (which necessitated the switch off of the power supply for safety). Our cams and AWS are situated in the Scottish Ski Club Hut at 2500ft near the foot of the White Lady.

CairnGorm Mountain has also installed an automatic weather station and two new webcams for the new season, these can be viewed at www.cairngormmountain.com/web-cam and the AWS is located just under 1000ft above the SSC one at the Tunnel Mouth.

The First Snow at the Mid-Station:

See also Pix from the Slopes for a couple of photos from up top on Thursday 2nd October.

With potentially much cooler air due to sink southwards during the coming week we could well see the first sprinkling of new snow on the peaks.

As of Friday 26th Sept our Aviemore web cam hosted by Mountain Spirit (The place for all your backcountry and telemark gear) is back in place providing a 24hour a day view of the Southern end of Aviemore looking down Grampian Road in the direction of the Ski Road Roundabout.

Unfortunately our mid-mountain cameras on CairnGorm Mountain remain off-line for the time being as the Ski Club Hut is without power during the ground works to repair washout/flood damage to and in the vicinity of the Hill Road just below the mid-station level.