Good question.

But.

They seem to be getting along OK. True the past two season have been exceptional but on the face of it they seem to have invested more than anywhere else. 2 brand new pisten bully 600's alone is a bit of a statement on that front. And if you ask them they are pretty chuffed with themselves for it

On the other hand getting a grant funded new day lodge or new Meal Odhar chairlift would be affy nice. But I like the fact Glenshee is what it is off its own back.

Some meteorological numbers on February 2012. For the Met Office East of Scotland climate area February saw a mean temperature of +3.9°c, +2.4°c above the 1961-90 avg. Last month was 0.7°c warmer than February 2011.

The deviation in February mean at the CairnGorm SSC hut was +0.8°c between this year and last, with a mean temperature this February of 2.0°c compared to +1.2°c in 2011.

Interestingly the mean February temperature at the CairnGorm SSC Hut was fractionally less mild than in 2008 where the figure was +2.2°c. The Met Office East of Scotland area returned a February mean of +3.8°c in 2008, 0.1°c less mild than this year.

Mean monthly temperature alone does not explain the difference between the snow cover on CairnGorm in Feb 2012 and 2008.

However splitting February 2012 into two halves, the 1st to 14th saw a mean temperature of -0.2°c at the SSC Hut, while 15th to 29th saw a mean temperature of +4.2°c. The second half of Feb was thus somewhere around 4.6°c above average - that's a huge anomaly in mean temperatures and would mean recent weeks would still rate as something of a freakshow under the median high emissions UKCIP09 scenarios for the 2080s!

Here's another number, 100inches forecast for Kirkwood, CA in the next 6 days. *Tips out coppers jar hopefully....*

The final skier days figure for CairnGorm Mountain for the 2012 season stands at 66,463. Glenshee had just over 33,000 skier days and between them CairnGorm and Glenshee had around 85% of the total market this season.

not good

Do you, alan, have the exact figures for Shee, Coe, Nevis Range and Lecht? I would like to know them.

With regard to CairnGorm mid to upper 60,000s were hailed as excellent in 2008 and 2009! Least we forget 2007 brought a 38,000 season on the 'Gorm and Glenshee a 7,500 skier day season, thus at CairnGorm the rolling 5 season average has increased once more.

The extent to which CairnGorm and Glenshee cleaned up this season is not an a full reflection of the snow distribution and while Glencoe has some comfort from the numbers on the mountain when the weather, snow (and power!) came together at weekends, one wonders if the Lecht and Nevis Range esp are feeling the chill of high fuel prices more than the others.

Alan, by what % is the 5 year rolling average going up, is it keeping ahead of the increase in expense (operating costs etc)?

Don't know about Nevis but the Lecht barely got going this season due to lack of snow. From memory it all melted before half term in Feb and only returned for a day or two in March/April. You can't speculate about high fuel prices Alan. Simply a lack of snow

I heard the final number for Nevis Range was around 10,000. That's what the Press and Journal said a few weeks ago.

Planetski are headlining this as "Poor winter for Cairngorm"

[www.planetski.eu]

I assume that's based on "... it was only able to open for 110 of the 169 days available"

If that's the case, and the 66,463 skier days were achieved over 110 days, then it would be interesting to compare that data with 'skier days over skiable days' for previous seasons.

For 2011-12 it's an average of 604 skiers per day, with high-season months (particularly March) very challenged!

The Scotsman has some comments on the winter from CML chief executive Ian Whitaker:

[www.scotsman.com]



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 10.21hrs Thu 7 Jun 12 by David Goldsmith.

The same stuff has also appeared on the Beeb website. The fact that the same phrases are being used, suggests strongly that the story is being lifted straight from a press release (in the usual journalistic fashion), and therefore presumably from CML. When are they going to learn that putting out negative messages like this will have a far more depressive affect on visitor numbers in the future than any lack or otherwise of snow (and has the same negative impact on all of the centres)?

The same "facts" could have been presented some much more positively - eg "Stupendous May conditions results in skiing numbers higher than expectations !", then go on to emphasise the pisting work, etc., and then just a simple statement of current year numbers, rather than all the negative comparators being used to headline the current story. I suppose we should be thankful that they have stopped blaming it all on global warming in every press release.

One more number, Hipennine's post above is the 100,000th on the forum!

We know from past experience that there are people at the Scotsman who like a good no snow story, so why do CML pour fuel on the fire?

[www.scotsman.com]

Skier Days actually turned out respectable for CML, certainly they have a lot less to complain about than the other 4, yet the other 4 are quietly getting on with it while it seems CML scratched around for the statistic that would allow the most negative spin to be put on the story?