Glencoe Mountain Resort

The Easter weekend after Glencoe had received a nice little top up of snow. Would it be busy? Not enough to put me off.

Conditions on the Hill

I had left Glasgow a little later to avoid road works on the M8 so I didn’t get up the hill till after 10am. The snow is still easily covering the whole hill down past the access poma. The snow at the bottom was granular but anything above Mugs Alley was firm, packed down grippy snow. It felt fantastic for getting up on your edges. Initially I thought it would be cold, but as soon as you started turning you could work up some steam. The temperature was probably just below zero with little in the way of wind.

Visibility at the top for the very start of the morning was foggy, but before 11am it had lifted and you could see the wide cover of snow all over the mountain.

And despite it being the Easter weekend, the lift lines were non-existent, especially for the summit tow.

Main Basin

The top bowl is fantastic perfectly smooth even ungroomed. The grippy snow was great fun for big turns and some little jumps are available off the uptrack down skiers right.

Happy Valley & the Wall

A longer fun run down to the bottom of the Wall. Again no real sign of ice, firm yet grippy snow all the way down from top to bottom. Cover is wide so you don’t even have to worry about rocks, which is amazing when you think it’s the end of March!

Rannoch Glades & Thrombosis

From the summit, cutting across to Rannoch glades is firm also with no rocks, but as soon as you drop onto the steeper slope that drops to mugs Alley things got a bit icy, but once through Thrombosis and onto mugs Alley you are back on to perfect groomed piste once again.

The one feature you will see under Thrombosis is the makings of the banked slalom course they are working on. The Bangers & Slash event taking place on the 14th April looks like it could be a fun event to enter. So I had a look at the unfinished course, which I think I might enjoy, unless there are large jumps. I tend to get a bit gallus when on a timed run over jump, usually ending in injury. Just ask my coccyx.

Spring Run

As they say here, “Spring is King”. And the Spring run today was really coming into its own. Grippy from top to bottom and absolutely loaded with snow. I took several runs down the Springy today and at once point it waS as part of a whole group of snowboarders. You know conditions are great when you see snowboarders criss-crossing a run like this, weaving in and out of each other’s paths.

An above average day

The snow was superb and conditions were great despite some are skies.

Easter Sunday is set to be sunny, so it could be Spring conditions all over the mountain. It may be a day for my Box Knife board. Lets see!