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If you can Ski Scotland, you can ski anywhere !
The Scottish highlands have one of the harshest mountain climates in Europe, in fact the Cairngorms are officially designated as a sub-arctic plateau. This makes skiing in Scotland a somewhat unusual and unpredictable experience. The Scottish mountains certainly get a lot of snow, unfortunately because of the prevailing maritime climate and the associated large fluctuations in temperature, large accumulations of the type seen in the Alps are far less common. Persistently strong winds will also tend to blow away the snow from exposed ridges, making the snow cover somewhat inconsistent, especially at lower altitudes.
However, in spite of this a long established ski industry has grown up in the highlands, with skiing recorded in the area of Glencoe from the 1930's onwards, although the first lift was not installed until 1956. There are now five proper ski centres in the central Scottish highlands, with around 70 lifts between them. Because of the prevailing weather, the majority of these lifts are surface lifts, though there are also a small number of chair lifts, a gondola at Nevis and Cairngorms Funicular. Scottish skiing can be a very rewarding experience if you're patient and come properly prepared.
Day light hours during the early part of the season (December/January) are very short, with lifts closing at 3.30pm at this time of year. You may also find that the sun doesn't get above the level of the mountains. You'll see that most of my January pictures are very dark.
Ski Centres
Google Earth Overlay
This overlay shows the various Scottish Ski areas. It shows all current lifts and pistes. I'm gradually adding buildings, historical infrastructure and other useful information, so please come back from time to time to get an update. If you want to download the areas as seperate .kmz files, please visit the ski centre pages linked above. This overlay is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) licence, so feel free to edit and create your own derivatives.
Last update 10/9/2011.
Note:Using the Google maps link will cause a lot of speculative/mad proposals of my own to be displayed on the Glenshee part of the overlay, these are swtiched off by default when using Google Earth, but Maps has everything on by default, so you should manually switch of the "Fantasy" section.
It is also possible to view these overlays in Bing Maps if you have Internet Explorer, however Bing only seems to be able to import a limited number of objects, so the complete overlay can't be used. Visit the individual resort pages above for the necessary links. Bing also strips out all of the groupings, so you won't be able to turn off any of the information showing historical/mothballed/proposed lifts. However, Bing does have high res satelite images of Glenshee, which Google currently lacks, so it's worth looking at the Glenshee overlay using Bing.
Information
- Ski Scotland. Official web site, includes live snow reports, resort info
- Winterhighland The original and best Scottish skiing website.
Conditions
Scottish snow conditions tend to be quite icy, so make sure you have sharp edges. Also, Scotland is cold, very cold. This is mainly due to the high wind chill factor, with average wind speeds at about 35mph, wind chill is considerably higher than in Alpine resorts. So wrap up warm ! Although you do get some very nice sunny days, its more likely to be cloudy and overcast, so goggles will be of more use than sun glasses.
;)