The year has ended and for most folk the memory of
a fine summer lingers on. And how marvellous it was after a tardy
spring! Of course, people grew very tired of that long, hard winter.
But not if you were a skier, for seldom have weather and snow
conditions combined to produce such a run of perfect week-ends.
Friends of mine notched up over a hundred ski-ing days with hardly a
wetting.And in May an old friend celebrated his 83rd
birthday by skiing from Cairngorm to Ben Macdui. In the blaze of the
mid-summer sun there was still good skiing being enjoyed up there.
I, too shared in the bonanza, and the skiing
days that shine brightest as I look back were the first two of 1977.
Even the drive up to Glencoe on Hogmanay night was memorable, with
snow crunching beneath the car tyres and the icy peaks hard and
brilliant under a silver moon. My destination was the hotel where the Scottish
Mountaineering Club meet was being held, and it was great to see so
many old friends. Sergeant Whillans of the Glencoe rescue team was
there, face shining with health, having just climbed the Pap of
Glencoe to enjoy the moonlight glitter on snow-shrouded peaks and
sea. Other friends who had been climbing that day spoke of the depth
of snow which made very hard work of getting to the tops. Hearing
this, Iain and I nodded to each other; we had brought our skis with
us.
Soon the bells were ringing for midnight and we
were toasting the New Year. The company was good, but we stole away
to bed within the hour to be ready for what we knew was going to be a
great morning. And it was icy perfection, looking across glass-calm
Loch Linnhe to Garbh Bheinn of Ardgour as the first rays of sun
touched it with pink. Great to head off into Glencoe for the skiing
mountain, Meall a’ Bhuiridh. It is equipped with chair- lifts and
ski-tows, and the operators were just starting up, so we were amongst
the first half-dozen to be hoisted up above a glittering Rannoch
Moor. From the top of the first chair you climb gently
for a mile to reach the second chair and ski-tows, which brings you
into shadow on the north face. Soon we were on the drag-lift heading
into the sunshine of the summit ridge where barnacles of ice
festooning the crags sparked like diamonds in the sunlight.
We climbed up the edge of the pendulous snow
cornice overhanging Corrie Ba to enjoy in isolation the incredible
vision of Arctic Scotland in the low light of the January sun. What a welter of peaks! In front of us Ben Dorain,
Ben More, Lui, Starav, Cruachan and the hills of Mull above a soft
gleam of Atlantic; behind us Nevis and the Mamores ; eastward Ben
Alder. Nor was it just a white world. It was full of texture, colour
and moulded by shadow.
Now I braced myself for the big test. Could I
handle my skis as of yore? Meall a’ Bhuiridh is rockier, steeper
and more daunting than the smoother Cairngorms of Glen Shee. Two
skiers were killed on it last season. You always feel slightly
nervous about your first run, so there is an inclination to be
tentative rather than bold. On the other hand there is a special,
delicious quality about the feeling of the skis below you when you
have been off them for some time.
I don’t think I shall ever forget the take-off
on the unflawed powder of that New Year’s Day as the skis floated
smoothly, responding to the slightest direction of knees and
shoulder. One felt almost disembodied, moving as effortlessly as if
through the air. Whooping with delight, we threw caution to the wind
as we swung across each other’s powder sprays in a 500-ft. plunge
loop away on a fast leftward traverse into Happy Valley for its
wall-of-death narrows leading eventually to the plateau.
By mid-afternoon we had notched up about 15,000
feet of downhill-running, yet not a muscle felt tired. When the lifts
closed we climbed to the summit and in a bitter wind watched the red
ball of the sun go down, casting a crimson light in Alpenglow on
every peak. It was magical, especially when snow spume blown
vertically upwards from the corrie showered round us like sparks from
a fire. We took the descent from the 3000-ft. top with only one
stop—to watch the full moon rising over the wan shoulder of
Schiehallion.The skiing was even better next day, but some of
the magic had gone with the arrival of hordes of skiers, now
recovered from Hogmanay. Queues were vast, so we went seeking the
remoter corners of the mountain.
To an old-timer like myself, who has been skiing
since 1947, the standard of ski-ing to be seen on a busy day like
this is nothing short of miraculous—certainly as high as you will
see in any Alpine resort. Look at the fashions, too, colourful
ski-suits built for warmth and to show off the slim line. Examine the
rigid clip-boots, the short poles and the streamlined skis built of
modern materials which do not warp like wood. Talk to the skiers and
you will find that most are working class, as are so many climbers
nowadays. I have been exercising myself tracing the
evolution of Scottish skiing, which begins with W. W. Naismith and a
friend skiing to the Meikle Bin on the Campsies in 1892. Naismith
has been called the father of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, and
he observed that they moved faster and with less effort than on foot,
also “… that a very slight gradient was sufficient to get up a
tremendous speed.” Summing up, he thought that skis might often be
employed with advantage in Scotland, and the sport might even become
popular in the Alps.
In fact, it was the British who took the sport
from Scandinavia to Switzerland, but it was a German called W. R.
Rickmers who stimulated interest in it in Scotland when lie took a
party of Scottish friends to Ben Nevis at Easter 1904. His article in
the S.M.C. Journal called “Aquatic Sport on Ben Nevis,” describes
eight days of rain teaching a party to ski on the summit slopes of
our biggest Ben. Rickmers thought nothing of the big carry-up there
because the 2000-ft. skiing slope from summit to lochan was so good.
Rickmers was teaching a technique that had no real future in
Scotland. The short, grooveless skis steered by a single pole were
all right for soft spring snow or deep powder, but no use on the icy
conditions which are so common in Scotland.
He certainly liked what he saw on Ben Nevis,
saying that such perfect slopes of 2000 ft. length in such line
conditions for skiing are rarely met with. But the shrewdest
observation he made was that in a climate like ours the best skiing
possibilities would be in spring rather than winter. Four years after these adventures on Ben Nevis
another advocate of ski-ing, Allan Arthur, of the Scottish
Mountaineering Club, was advising fellow climbers, “Make a start
and keep it up till you master the art a little, and very soon—if I
am not mistaken—you will be down badly with ski-fever.” From his
own experience, he thought the best conditions were from about Feb.
10 till March 15.
Arthur was a real enthusiast: “It was a morning
to delight the skier’s heart when I tumbled out of bed shortly
after 4 a.m., with a clear, crisp atmosphere and not less than twenty
degrees of frost.” He describes the perfect snow and his peace with
the world on the summits in hot sunshine: “the snow was as keen and
dry as any I ever skied on in Switzerland.”
Fifty years after he wrote these words I met Allan
Arthur. He was old and deaf by that time, but his interest in skiing
was undiminished and he was a regular attender at club lectures. I
found myself thinking of him last March as I skied up the north ridge
of Ben Vane and looked across to the adjacent top of a flawless white
Ben Ledi. Following the line down from the summit, I fancied
I saw him with three other members of the Scottish Ski Club, swinging
down in wide turns for a full 1500 ft., then shouldering their skis
to climb to the summit again for another run down.
Of that particular occasion, he wrote, “We one
and all agreed that even in Switzerland such an expedition, on such a
day, could not well be beaten.”
I echoed these sentiments as I swung down from the
summit after half an hour of glorious views from the summit
stretching from the Forth to the hills of Arran.
Scottish skiing, like Scottish mountaineering,
received a big setback because so many keen men died in the 1914-18
war. But in 1929 the moribund Scottish Ski Club was revived by a new
kind of skier, one who had mastered the art of making fast turns on
icy snow, and the emphasis now was on harder and steeper ways down
from the summits. This revolutionary turn was known as the stem-
christie—now regarded as the hall-mark of old-fashioned skiers.
The new technique could be said to have come in with motor car ownership. By 1938, membership of the Scottish Ski Club was 400, and the Ben Lawers region became the focal point of week-end activity since it was within reasonable motoring distance of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Perth. The high road to 1800 ft. cut down walking time to the slopes, where a spacious hut was built between Beinn Ghlas and Meall Corranaich. Then came the installation of two small ski-tows above the hut in January 1952, precursors of the first Continental-type ski-tow in Scotland.
For this most ambitious development on any
Scottish hill the Scottish Ski Club wisely chose Meall a’ Bhuiridh.
It is in a bad weather area, but possesses north-facing, snow —
holding corries — the major deficiency of the Lawers range. Nor
were Dundee skiers idle at this time. They had put up small ski-tows
in Glen Shee, on Ben Gulabin above the Spittal, and on Cam an Tuirc. It didn’t take long for me to see that touring
men like myself, who had thought of themselves as competent skiers,
were being left very far behind by comparative beginners applying
themselves to a new style of dynamic ski-ing based on the parallel
swing.
Chair-lifts on Meall a Bhuindh, in Glen Shee and a
big mechanisation programme above Loch Morlich in the Cairngorms,
speeded the technical advance as ski-teachers, trained in the latest
Continental methods, imparted their knowledge to the thousands
wishing to learn it. Ski business became big business, especially in
the Spey Valley where local hoteliers provided entertainment every
evening long before the concrete towers of the Aviemore Centre arose
to offer skating, curling, skittles, sauna baths, cinema, a heated
swimming pool and an artificial ski slope.
In terms of mechanisation, Glen Slice and the
Cairngorms have attained the status of ski-complexes offering a whole
variety of permutations, while Meall a’ Bhuiridh of Glen Coc
remains small-scale because of the nature of the mountain. The two
big centres operate every day of the season, whereas the Meall a’
Bhuiridh ski-tows run only at week¬ends and holidays or on special
charters. Ski-ing there is therefore more expensive because of the
small financial return for a big outlay.
When it comes to comparing the relative merits of
Scotland or the Continent for skiing there is no doubt at all that
you stand a better chance of getting value for your money in terms of
sunshine and ample snow than in Scotland. What we offer is sport for
spartans. True, last winter was marvellous, and so was 1963 and 1952,
but let’s face it, in the name of ski-ing we endure whiteout, wind,
rain and sunless grey days that would be intolerable to Continentals.
We cannot even guarantee snow until the February storms fill the
gullies. Rickmers was right when he nominated the spring as
the season for Scottish skiing. Yet it is also true that it can be
winter any day of the year on the Scottish hills, and that January,
February and March usually provide excellent ski conditions
somewhere, sometime.
I am all for advertising and attracting people
to the Scottish ski resorts, but they should be warned what to
expect. The best bet is the Spey Valley because of the lovely variety
of walks in sheltering woods should the weather be rough. There is
little to do in Glen Coe or Glen Shee in foul weather. At Continental resorts it is usually pleasant
standing in a queue waiting for a ski-tow or chair-lift. In
Scotland you can feel you are slowly freezing to death, and in
addition, be buffeted by wind and flying spume, and half-blinded as
you are being towed uphill. Which is one of the reasons why I do not
favour special boots and bindings that are so rigid on your feet that
you cannot walk comfortably.
I prefer boots in which I can walk and climb, and
I use a touring binding on my skis which enables me to lift the heel
and ski in the good old cross-country Scandinavian way.
Allan Arthur was right about ski-fever being an
incurable disease. And so was the late Harry Mac Robert when he
advised climbers to take up the sport, “even if only for something
less strenuous than rock-climbing to fall back on in old age.”
Tom Weir: First published in the Scots Magazine 1978
