On Tuesday afternoon the fun came to a premature and frustrating end thanks to one moment of careless disregard for the uplift infrastructure and fellow snow riders on CairnGorm’s Coire Cas.
A rider jumped off the Cas Tow just before a Tower throwing the T-bar away, which rebounded into the tower, derailing the rope and damaging the sheave assembly on the tower. This would be a lengthy stoppage at the best of times, but with dusk rapidly enveloping the mountain it meant the end of play and no last run for those waiting in the Cas queue.
Such stoppages by day ruin the uplift capacity, create queues and detract from everyone’s day, thus it’s everyones job to do their bit to help keep the lifts turning.
DON’Ts:
Don’t use lifts that are unsuitable for your ability level, consider the difficulty of terrain that surface tows pass through.
Don’t practice on ski tows and pomas that are not intended for novices, they are harder to ride and falls can cause lengthy stoppages (Pomas are particularly vulnerable to derailments due to miss-loads).
Don’t jump of moving T-bars mid-line (esp just before towers!).
Don’t get on a lift without knowing how to get off! It’s your responsibility to know how to ride a lift safely, if in doubt about any aspect of a given lift please ASK or take a lesson.
DO’s:
DO stay under the tow line on surface lifts. This is CRITICAL to preventing derailments in high winds, do NOT drift outwards with the wind.
DO get off the lift at the correct point using the correct unload procedure for that lift.
DO pair up on T-bars. One skier + one boarder is more stable than one single boarder or two boarders, esp for inexperienced riders. (Shout for singles).
BULL WHEEL UNLOADING:
The majority of T-bars in Scotland are designed for bullwheel unloading. Where this system is in use there will be a flat get off area underneath the bullwheel.
Decide which person will deal with the T-bar, the other person should push off on arrival to the unload area so not to obstruct the person dealing with the T-bar.
Keep hold of the T-bar as the springbox goes round the bullwheel and until the T-bar has fully retracted (or as close to fully as possible) before letting go.
Do not drop T-bars in the snow or throw them at the bullwheel mast, the swinging bar could cause serious injury to yourself or others and potentially severe damage to the lift resulting in a major stoppage.
Tows are fitted with Emergency Stop Buttons at the Top Station. In the event of accident or thrown T-bar going over the line, don’t be afraid to use them - a controlled stop is a quicker fix than an uncontrolled one!
QUEUING ETIQUTE:
Queuing is an art form here, not fastest, fittest or biggest first!
Form multiple short queues, long windy queues waste valuable skiing space.
As the first queue clears into the lift loading area, the second queue should move forward to take it’s place, the first person in the 2nd queue joining onto the end of the 1st. Repeat as needed.
SPREAD THE WORD…. Many skiers and boarders may be relatively unfamiliar with surface lifts and particularly the common bullwheel unloading uses on many T-bars here, similarly to the unique Scottish queuing method. Everyone can help educate other users here, politely and courteously point out some of the oddities of Scottish skiing that help everything go smoothly.
A second absolutely full house in Inverness’ Eden Court cinema with a 138 people watching Warren Miller’s Dynasty on the 15th. It’s been fantastic for Winterhighland being able to take the film to extra screenings that wouldn’t be possible within the confines of the UK tour, with a great turnout at all the showings and a fantastic party atmosphere.
Many £100s of free gear given away during the Intermission give-aways, if you missed out on something, better luck next year.
A big thank you to everyone who came along each night, I know the weather wasn’t exactly the best on some of the nights!! Also we’ve raised a bit over £400 for Disability Snowsports UK across the five screenings put on by Winterhighland, a very very big thank you and if you want to help Winterhighland raise even more money for a brilliant cause, look out for full details of the 2010 White Lady Challenge on CairnGorm Mountain, provisionally the final Sat of Feb and 1st Monday of March.
An absolutely full house in the Queens Links Cineworld on Monday evening as the Warren Miller film tour rolled back into town with Winterhighland, the manager got a bit nervous watching the seats dwindle but the queue still there, there were no spare seats!
A fantastic turnout and glad to report no repeat of the gremlins in the projection room that afflicted last year’s screening of Children of Winter in the Lighthouse cinema.
Big thank you for raising £110 for Disability Snowsports UK on Monday evening, the donations from all five Winterhighland screenings will be winging it’s way along with a final batch of White Lady Challenge sponsorship money after the final Inverness show on 15th December.
If you haven’t got your tickets for the second Inverness screening, don’t delay the first show sold out in advance and there’s only about 30 tickets left for the 2nd.
Having been spoilt by perfect weather and fantastic cover and surface conditions for so early in the season on Friday it was a bit more Scottish on Sunday at CairnGorm Mountain for my 3rd day of the season , with the wind ratcheting up during the day. However the visibility was often better than it was on Saturday by all accounts with some brighter spells. Drifting of what loose snow there was meant every changing stashes and surface conditions.
Top to middle riding on offer, that’s just a shade less than 1300ft of vertical from the top of the Ptarmigan Tow, pretty good for early Dec and having a base on the mid-mountain. While we did have top to Daylodge skiing on the first day open in Dec 08 after the maintainence shutdown, it was quite short lived with most of the early Dec days in the past few seasons restricted to the Ptarmigan Tow.
Was doing some work on Wed afternoon on the Glencoe Webcams and network. The SSC Hut computer is back online, but was brought back up too late to take any photos (as it was dark), but should be taking images from first light Thursday (fingers crossed!).
The Access 2200ft Camera is being re-configured to work with a different network configuration and it’s hoped to have it back on the mountain and updating within the next couple of weeks, all being well sooner.
CairnGorm Mountain kicked of the 2009/10 Scottish Snowsports Season on Saturday with great early season conditions in the Top Basin for warming up those ski legs with the first turns of winter.
All Top Basin Runs are complete and opened on Saturday with the Ptarmigan Tow available from the start and the Coire Na Ciste Tow opening up about lunchtime. The Ciste Fairway is loaded, really good cover and full width between the fences and was the pick of the day on Saturday.
Alas at time of writing the weather in a combination of wind, low cloud and snow shower has prevented the top tows running on Sunday due to appalling visibility. However it’s helping fill the runs in more and more snow is forecast for the coming days.
The upper 2/3rds of the middle slopes on CairnGorm are filling in quite nicely, but the snow level was a couple of hundred feet too high last week. However I managed to post the first full length descent of the M1 on Saturday on a visit to the Timing Hut, a bit of precision rock slalom required right at the top, then a pleasant full width stretch of wind packed snow before the surface turned into ego sapping breakable crust. Some classic Scottish Combat Skiing down the final fenced narrow into the queuing area took me to the foot of the M1 Poma (I haven’t yet looked at the bottom of the skis…). However for those who stick to the prepared area up top, no need to worry about rocks or bringing the old planks.
There is a pisted track from the upper Zig Zags up the 105 and Traverse to the top which provides a easy way up for those touring. You can ski back down this way, but it’s not patrolled and you’ll need to walkout to the Daylodge until there is enough snow to formally open the middle mountain.
The Sortie back down the mountain included a check on the weather stations and webcams and all were functioning correctly with no icing problems on the anemometers. If wind speed at one AWS is consistently 0mph with changing wind direction, and temps have recently fallen below 0c with either wet snow/sleet for a time or thick mist, be suspicious that icing may be an issue. In such conditions take all the AWS’s together and consider what’s happening on the short webcam video clips such as for the SSC balcony to get an idea of whether the calm conditions being reported by the wind vane is factual or not!
It was fantastic to be back on the planks again and the pisted snow was just perfect for making those first turns on, at present Wednesday is looking like the day for a mid-week slide, mostly sunny and winds going Southerly which shouldn’t affect the tows, but provides a great tail wind to spice up the Top Basin. Here’s to a hopefully snowy 2010.
A blustery and snowy Autumn day at Glencoe on Friday, which wasn’t the best for lugging computer equipment to 2800ft on a Scottish Mountain. www.winterhighland.info/cams/glencoe .
Snow starting to lie to the top of the Access.
Thanks to the Scottish Ski Club (for their support and hosting the kit ), the staff at Glencoe for their assistance today and to those who have generously contributed to the Winterhighland cause this autumn, we now have two new Winterhighland Webcams up and running at the Glencoe Scottish Ski Club Hut on Meall a’ Bhuiridh.
For now this is a very temporary installation that will be made more permanent in due course. With snow on the ground and more forecast the mission was to get some webcams to let people see the weather and snow asap. So with the wind forecast markedly improving for Friday with Thursday’s updated forecasts, after a couple of phone calls, a computer system was hurriedly set up and a Vodafone usb dongle bought shortly before 7pm, once some frantic googling appeared to confirm ways existed to get it to fire up under Xubuntu linux on a ancient P3 with 256mb of RAM!
Here comes the computer on it's way up the Cliffhanger Chairlift on Friday afternoon.
The equipment and that necessary to set-up the gear up and get it on-line were carried up on the Access and Cliffhanger Chair, and lugged over the Plateau. The views currently on offer are dictated by proximity to power and the need to keep the cameras close to the computer, a new power supply and usb extender cables will be used when the system is permanently installed, this will provide an improved view up to the Top Tows, plus allow a camera to be higher up looking down over the Canyon to the Wall. There is also the possibility of sitting the cameras at the other side of the hut, looking down the Cliffy line and over the upper part of Mugs Alley (or indeed an additional camera for this), so let us know what view you’d prefer and this will guide the final placement.
A few days ago I posted up a video from Heavenly Ski Resort at Lake Tahoe California as their snow making team started up their snow making operations ahead of the 2010 season. With opening day less than 48hours away on Friday 20th November, have the Heavenly snow making crew worked enough magic ?
Currently at Loch Morlich Water Sports to complete the re-installation of the AWS and level the webcam, so fortunately we can see not the mountains this lunchtime!
The thermometer and hydrometer are now housed in a radiation screen which should solve the issue of sudden and unrealistic spikes in temperature when the sun comes out at certain times of day.
The webcam has been levelled (easier when there is something to see!) and is now also uploading a short video clip every 15minutes. This clip will be useful for gauging the conditions on the Loch as well as over the mountain tops, where scudding clouds give a clear indication of very high wind speeds.
If you find the existing Winterhighland webcams useful and can afford to do so, perhaps you would like to consider a donation or voluntary subscription to help secure continued expansion and operation of Winterhighland’s webcam and weather station network?
