When Glenshee Ski Centre opens on December 21, the hills will be alive with the clack and clatter of skis, sticks and snowboards, and the excited chatter of snowsports fans.
That’s certainly what managing director David Farquharson hopes.
And even if the white stuff doesn’t come, skiers won’t be too disappointed – the centre is able to use “snow factory” snow on the basic plastic run and beginners’ area.
As Scotland’s biggest ski resort, Glenshee has a lot going for it.
Getting there, via the iconic A93 Old Miltary Road, is an adventure – whether you come from the Blairgowrie or Braemar side.
Since the centre opened in December 1962 – with a book of 12 tickets costing £1 – it’s seen its fair share of action.
The good old days at Glenshee
Instructors have come and gone, including, perhaps most famously, the legendary ski-jumper Eddie the Eagle.
Events over the decades have included slalom ski races, and ‘snow fun’ weeks in the 1980s opened by Ski Sunday presenter David Vine.
In terms of major investments, as well as the three-man Cairnwell Chair in 2015, the centre purchased a £680,000 snow machine in 2019 and three snow cannons in 2020.
The hope is that the equipment will help to future-proof the centre against bad winters.
With so much history and positivity around Glenshee, you might be forgiven for thinking it would get a fair amount of funding to continue to work its magic.
David, however, says the centre does not get the money it needs. Far from it.
He warns that the vast sums of public money being spent on the troubled Cairngorm funicular railway, “plus all their diversification infrastructure and continual quarterly funding”, will harm Scotland’s wider snowsports sector.
How could Glenshee be transformed?
Having been managing director for eight years, and worked at Glenshee in various capacities since he was 14, David has a lot of love for the centre.
And he fears that if nothing is done – and that if Cairngorm keeps getting the lion’s share of funding – that, worst case scenario, Glenshee could be forced to close.
He hopes, however that that won’t happen, and instead dreams of how the centre could be transformed.
“The huge amounts of money thrown at Cairngorm is my biggest bugbear,” says David.
“If we could get a fraction of the money, it would completely transform our business.
“All the focus in on Cairngorm. It’s so unequal. We just can’t get that sort of funding.”
Why does Cairngorm get so much funding?
Cairngorm Mountain is owned and run by a subsidiary Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), a public body of the Scottish Government. It’s fully funded by HIE and the taxpayer.
Meanwhile, Glenshee is privately owned. It gets some public funding from Scottish Enterprise instead of HIE.
David claims it’s “anti-competitive” for the Scottish Government to allow so much taxpayer money to be funnelled into one venue.
Glenshee has received just over £1 million since 2015, a huge contrast compared to Cairngorm.
The Cairngorm funicular opened in 2001 at a cost of £19.5 million.
Other projects at the resort include: £475,000 in 2022 for a mountain biking development; £780,000 in 2021 to refurbish the mountain’s Ptarmigan restaurant; £1 million in 2018 to buy snowmaking equipment.
Glenshee gets a ‘fraction’ of the funding
“In the past two years Cairngorm Mountain has received over £4 million in public funding outwith the funicular repairs,” says David.
“We get a fraction of the funding. I’ve complained for years.
“There’s no will, really, to sort anything out. It seems some politicians don’t like rocking the boat.”
In terms of skiers, David says while the last few years have seen “around double the numbers of everybody else”, that this pales into insignificance when he looks back to the heady days of the late 1980s.
Back then, the centre was seeing 200,000 a year through its gates. These days, numbers have been around 25,000 to 30,000, and less in bad weather.
Why does Glenshee sometimes struggle?
What about the infrastructure? David’s well aware of the moans and gripes of many snowsports fans who’ve flocked to Glenshee to find they have to wait to get on the slopes.
“The snow can come on quickly, overnight,” he says. “The difficulty is, everybody expects everything to be running the next day. That just can’t happen.
“So we often end up in the situation where the conditions are great and everybody tries to get here.
“Often the councils don’t get the roads open quickly – we’re not a priority – so they sit closed until about 11am.
“All of a sudden you’ve got 2,000 people appearing at 11am.
“They say – ‘it took up an hour and a half to get onto the slopes’. Well, yeah, it did, because you all turned up at once.
“The public are not very accepting when that happens. They say – ‘why can’t you do it quicker?
“We’ve got limited staff, limited windows at the ticket office and so on. That’s one of the challenges.
“If they’re coming closer to 8am it’s not an issue.”
What are the other challenges?
Another challenge the business faces – apart from weather conditions – is staffing.
With few people willing to drive, Glenshee supplies staff transport from both Blairgowrie and Ballater. But there are only so many spaces.
“Being a rural business we’ve got those extra overheads and difficulties,” says David.
“Even the driving rules are difficult for us. Our drivers, unless they go through a PSV licence, can only drive a seven-seater.
“Ideally we’d want to be driving two 15-seater minibuses either side.”
There are plenty of people applying for seasonal jobs, but David says another stumbling block can be finding them accommodation, with little on offer locally.
On a positive note, Glenshee is open year-round. And David says the resort experienced a “good summer”.
“We run the chairlift in summer for sightseeing, and the cafe’s open.
“We’re getting busier year on year with motorbike and car clubs and folk stopping off at the cafe. It’s a fairly iconic drive across the top.”
What does David wish for?
So if his dreams came true and Glenshee was more heavily funded, what would David like to see?
“We’ve got plans for mountain bike tracks all over the hill and things like that,” he says.
“If we got the same funding as Cairngorm we’d have a hostel for overnights up here, more snow-making equipment, probably two new chairlifts, and staff accommodation.
“The amount of funding Cairngorm has had is astronomical. It cost them £25m to put in that funicular and they spent £25m repairing it and God knows how much more on it.
“If we had even £5m to spend it would be fantastic.”
David’s “pet project” would be a wind turbine, and energy storage.
Currently, Glenshee, which is completely off-grid, relies on diesel generation.
What about the zip wire attraction for Glenshee that was given the go-ahead in 2021?
That plan has been shelved. “In hindsight that possibly wasn’t the best thing because of the infrastructure we’ve got,” explains David.
“It would interfere with that. We realised it had potential for lots of problems.
Funding – always the issue
“Funding was always the difficult thing for that as well.
“The problem we have is, we come out of a good snow year with a good amount of money, but then we need to do a lot of maintenance, which takes up spare cash.
“Unless you’re Cairngorm, you’ll get maybe 40% funding towards something. So unless you’ve got the other 60%, you can’t make it happen.
“It’s a difficult industry. It would be great if the playing field was level.”
Could Glenshee be forced to close?
Is there a chance Glenshee could close – as a result of financial strife?
“Anything could happen,” admits David. “So, in theory, yes, just like any of the other ski areas if they didn’t get a bit of financial support.”
Looking ahead to the ski season, David laughs that he “doesn’t have a crystal ball” but hopes it will be a strong few months ahead.
He warns visitors in January to expect a bit of disruption, with Glenshee’s public toilets being given a makeover.
“They’re in a very poor state of repair. Aberdeenshire Council has some funding from the rural tourism infrastructure fund, so they want to start redoing the toilets in January!
“It’s going to be an awkward one, that. We have to go with it or we lose the funding.”
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