have trees ever been introduced to the ski resort?

it would make perfect sense as they form an excellent natural windbreak, preventing snow blowing away, prevent erosion, look nice. Trees used to cover large areas of the highlands to fairly high levels (as anyone who has seen tree stumps in the bogs will be aware). Scots pine and birch would be the obvious choice... cairngorm and nevis could be tricky but glenshee and the lecht might have more soil to work with.

Around 10,000 trees have been planted in Coire Cas!! Can you find them?

The trees around the Mountain Garden where the bottom station of the Carpark Chair was are around 40years old, yet the tallest are only around 5-6feet, and they had the benifit of shelter from the building. The growing season is so short and the weather so extreme, there's a reason why the natural tree-line in the Cairngorms is around 1700-1800ft.

There are Scots Pine trees on the Fiacaill Ridge that barely reach 2feet, yet are over 90yrs old! For the tree's to have a chance to take hold in such an environment very young saplings need to be planted, there's no point planting in slightly older bigger trees, they won't grow faster, the shock of finding themselves halfway up CairnGorm Mountain would just kill them.

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As Alan suggests, the natural treeline in the Cairngorms is around 600m - probably the only surving treeline is Scotland is not so far away from Cairngorm at Creag Fhiaclach above GlenFeshie. Scots pine has slowly been (re)colonising the Northern Corries but although occasional small trees can be found at 700m+ the climate is just too extreme for trees to grow properly - they just can't photosynthesise enough energy to develop fully.

If you want the pleasure of tree skiing you either need to make use of the occasional snowfall lower down the hill or go abroad - one of the real pleasures of skiing in the southern French Alps is comming down through the larch trees in powder in places such as the Queyras

Presumably the difference between a high altitude snowline in the Alps and North Amerca and scotland is to do with the stresses of exposure to the wind rather than temperature or lack of sunlight or rainfall ?

I think norway would be a better example to compare scotland with, similar (colder ) climate but probably just as windy and similar terrian as the eastern highlands. Don't know how temp effects growth but in the alps an average resort at the bottom is higher than ben nevis, but the climate is not near as extreme. I expect it's a combination of lattitude , temp and extreme wind.

I imagine the most important factor is probably wind because in the Canadian Rockies the treeline is about 2200m. However temps here often drop to well below minus 20c and there is a short summer only really lasting from mid June to early September. The major factor here is that the winds are rarely high. Somewhere similar to Scotland to consider is New Zealand who have a similar climate to Scotland (i.e. predominantly maritime and rarely extremely cold, but with frequent heavy precipitation and high winds.) They too have no tree-skiing (bar the lowest reaches of Craigieburn and Broken River) as the tree level at it's highest is between 800m-1200m as you go from South to North and the ski areas typically start at about 1200m-1400m. The Alps I would say are between the two as they have generally slightly higher temps than Canada and a great likelihood of high winds and the tree level is generally around 1800m, Zermatt being the notable acception (2100m) and that is probably due to the fact that as it is in a steep sided valley it is probably protected more from the high winds.

IMHO most of the Scottish Highlands are too windy to support tree levels higher than 600m with the exception of some of the more southerly parts and the more protected glens.

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One thing that has puzzled me why in the Jotunheimen region of Norway (which has some truly foul weather in winter!) the tree-line is 1100-1200m.

The climate here is surely far more severe than Scotland yet trees grow at a far higher altitude. Any ideas why?

Marginal soil conditions, marginal growing season, very severe weather, combination of factors. One key point about quite a few of the places mentioned is a much better albeit short summer growing season.

Bear in mind it's not just a wild environment, CairnGorm Mountain is actually one of the wildest places on Earth, few places on Earth sustain the wind-speeds that afflict the high tops of the Cairngorms, on CairnGorm Mountain itself the mean wind exceeds 38mph (gale-force) 50% of the time at 3000ft. It is that unrelenting buffeting that in part explains lack of trees.

The highest recorded wind-speed 176mph, was recorded by a weather station which only samples the weather for four minutes an hour, given the estimated margine of under recording this results in it's more than likely the wind has exceeded 200mph, and possibly 220mph, since the AWS was installed but it is as yet to catch such a gust. Only one place on Earth has recorded a higher wind speed, Mt Washington in the USA, with a speed of 231mph recorded in 1931, it remains the world record by a significant margin.

Beating that would certainly be a claim to fame, but quite how you fit into the Marketing is another story...

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I seem to remember reading a few articles about this a couple of years ago (Disclaimer: I'm not claiming to be an expert!)

As I recall, it's not just the weather but also a question of human impact. When Scotland had more trees the climate was a little better than it is today, however the arrival of humans coincided with a worsening in the weather (around 3-4000 years ago I think). Basically in many places it was a double whammy with the forests unable to survive the wetter and cooler (and probably windier) conditions, combined with humans cutting trees for fuel and buildings and then grazing domesticated animals in the clearings.

Without trees to drain the soil and with the onset of a climate change, the soil got waterlogged and acidic and blanket bog spread which meant the surviving trees and their offspring couldn't compete with the grazers (cattle, sheep and deer - whose numbers seem to be out of control in some areas now).

The final blow was the industrial revolution when many of the lowland woods were cut for charcoal, or naval ships.


Still if you go to places like Glen Affric/ Kintail or even Tweedsmuir in the Borders where deer fences have been put up, or extensive deer culls carried out the trees are coming back. I'm not sure how far they will be able to spread given the boggy conditions of much of the highlands today though.

Also don't forget much of the Highlands is maintained in it's state by burning for the grouse, I was surprised years ago to discover exactly how altered and 'man-made' the Highlands is.

Now if we could get some decnt weather I could stop rambling on and go telemarking for a change . . .

Yes but that doesn't atler the natural tree line which is climatic depedent!

At lower levels inadequate culls of red deer in many areas are preventing regeneration of Native forests, the biggest problem is lack of natural perditors, coupled with the fact that red deer are one species who like humans have no self limiting capacity, with out prediation they will grow in numbers until they completely destroy their own habitat.

Deer fences are not the answer, because they are killing the native woodland bird life. Either culls are steeped up, and there's a lot of people who need to release that the "oh that's cruel you can't shoot a fluffy bamby" mindset is not only not the same as conservation, it's actually in this case wholly incompatable with nature conservation.

There is an alternative. Wolves?

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Winterhighland.com you've got to love it !
All this first class information from one innocent question.

Hi,

I've just been skiing in Norway at Sjusjoen. The tree line there was at about 900-950m. All the hills much above 900m had bare tops. It was interesting that even on windy days once you dropped down below the tree line the wind was hardly noticeable.

The problem with re-introducing wolves and bears is the same one that blights the fox population: all animals (humans included) are lazy. A fox would much rather feast on a sickly genetically-altered-through-selective-breeding lamb than chase rabbits all day and thus the farmer gets a little annoyed when foxy starts raiding his GM crop.

If we selectively cross a sheep with a porcupine though the problem is solved, wolves and sheep could co-exist peacfully.

On a serious note though, I would love to see wolves re-introduced into this country. Could we not fence off large swathes like we do for deer?

There is no doubt wolves would take some sheep, but this could be dealt with by providing an adequate compensation scheme for sheep farmers. Yes there would still be objections, but it would help, and the benifits would probably (and I think there's been research into this) outstrip the costs of providing compensation. Moreover wolve packs will generally seek to avoid human contact, and are likely to prefer the most rural and remote areas where there are fewer sheep anyway.

There's been a debate ongoing about whether there is suitable habitat, but it was a delibrate drive to cull them to extinction mostly fueled by unjustified fear rather than loss of native pine forest that drove them to extinction. Capercallies were imported into Highland Scotland in the late 1800s to brink the native population back from the bring. Red Kites have successfully been reintroduced, and Osprey's sucessfully returned of their own backs. Mammals though don't have that option. We wrongly and purposefully wiped out the native wolf population, and wolves are a vital part of the native Highland eco-system, it is a wrong I think we should right.

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Absolutely Alan, what right do we have to arbitraily (sp?) drive another species into extinction!? None, I would say! P.S. Wall it should be (humans especially), how else do you explain microwaves, prepackaged food and cars!