After Alan Brattey’s expose of how the management at Cairngorm Mountain were failing to take advantage of the cold and snowy conditions (see here), it appears someone kicked ass. The following day, Susan Smith, their Chief Executive and Colin Matthews, their head of operations, appeared on a video (see here) announcing Cairngorm Mountain would open for this weekend and not Wednesday 21st December as previously announced.  Would that all parkswatch posts had such rapid results!

Susan Smith described the opening as an “early Xmas present”.  What she didn’t say is that it is a present worthy of Scrooge.

The only uplift that will be available are the two magic carpets and the car park tow so the area for downhill snowsports will be very limited.  Related to this is only 150 tickets are available – compare that to the potential demand, the 8.8k people who had viewed of the video. Lastly, the price for an adult ticket will be a whopping £38:

Earlier this week Cairngorm Mountain had not published their prices for this season.  Their management, however, is so inflexible that they cannot even adjust day prices to reflect what uplift is available and for an “early opening”.  With magic carpets being the slowest form of uplift possible, how many runs will snowsports enthusiasts get for that?

If that was the good news, the bad news is that comments on facebook reveal that people who had booked the tube slides above the lower car park over the Xmas period have had their bookings cancelled because of the snow!  If the tube slides cannot operate in these conditions, one wonders how long the magic carpets will do so?

With the met forecasting windier conditions and more precipitation tomorrow, snow should drift over and infill the magic carpets quite rapidly and will be very difficult to keep clear.  Indeed by the time someone has travelled from bottom to top, their skis and boots could  be completely submerged in snow  which will make accidents likely.  For this reason  magic carpets on the continent are often now enclosed in shelters.

Twelve days ago, just before the cold weather arrived, the magic carpets were nowhere near finished  (see here). It seems HIE had assumed there would be no natural snow in December and was planning to finish the work by the scheduled opening date on 21st.  It is therefore almost certain that beneath the snow the work is unfinished and there will be extensive bare surfaces.  These will be at high risk of being washed away when the snow melts.  The Cairngorms National Park Authority when granting planning permission should never have allowed construction work to proceed over the winter months, but then they should also have questioned the sustainability of this whole project.

Currently there is masses of snow at Cairn Gorm.  Had HIE invested in new lifts instead of spending over £26m repairing the funicular, not only would there be thousands of people able to enjoy Cairn Gorm this weekend, the business would be paying for itself.