9.Ski Instructor
Page 6
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Do you know that things weren't always this great? The last few years have been pretty poor for skiing and boarding. There has been a lot of snow but also a lot of wind - and the old chairlift couldn't operate in winds above 25mph. When you consider that on Cairngorm wind speeds are greater than this 50% of the time, that's a lot of days the chairlift was closed and skiing just wasn't an option. What made this particularly frustrating was that these winds often created snowdrifts in both Corries - which is fabulous for skiing. The only problem was you couldn't get to them as the Chairlift was halted! These problems happened time and time again and each passing year saw fewer and fewer skiers taking to the slopes. And what about the queues? Oh I don't even like to think back to these queues - they were horrendous! No wonder skiing in the Cairngorms was in the doldrums - there was a good chance it would be too windy for the chairlift and even if it wasn't you would spend more time in a queue than on the slopes. I could fully understand why people were heading off to the Alps - believe me I was tempted!
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Press play to view one of the old style chairlifts in action. © Scottish Media Group
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