Moving home

I’m no longer posting on this site, but on a new one at www.thesnowtourist.com. Hope to see you there

Cairngorm ‘optimistic’ about coming winter

I travelled to the Scottish Highlands in the early part of this week for the first skiing of the new winter. There is a lot of talk there inevitably about global warming damaging the European ski industry. The mountain was taken into public ownership in March this year because it fell into financial trouble and the building of the expensive funicular is being investigated by the Scottish executive. But the people who run Cairngorm are “cautiously optimistic” about this winter and have sold a good number of season tickets. The plan is to react quickly to snow when it arrives and get the right bits of the mountain open, the new chief executive, Ian Whitaker said. Reports he’s seen show there might be snow enough to ski at the top of the mountain for another 60 years. After decades of steady decline, however, the number of summer and non-skiing visitors outnumber the winter by around three to one, and even in winter many people come just to look at the snow rather than ski on it. Perhaps this is how many ski areas will do things in future.

Top 10 snow books

Here is my list of 10 good works of snow literature, fiction and non-fiction, some more literary than others.

Yuki-onna

The traditional Japanese snow spirit Yuki-onna appears as a beautiful woman who may carry a baby which she will ask you to hold. When you do, you find the child is really a block of ice which will freeeze you to death. Yuki-onna appears in several traditional stories as well as in popular culture. One of the most vivid Yuki-onna stories was collected by Lafcadio Hearn. It tells of a woodcutter who married Yuki-onna and had 10 children with her.

Golden snowfall

Winter has started good and cold with the highest November snowfall in parts of the Alps for 10 years seeing ski resorts open early. In the US, the Golden Snowball competition between the five snowbelt cities south of Lake Ontario is up and running, with Syracuse, last year’s winner, leading the pack of five lake effect snow cities with almost 16 inches, six inches more than an average year. Though European ski resorts are optimistic, long range forecast for the whole winter is that it is going to be slightly milder than average.