Roger Cox

Even the most die-hard defenders of Scottish skiing would concede that the winter of 2011/12 has been a disaster. A couple of big dumps of snow early in the season made it look as if we were in for another cold one, but then... nothing. The snow melted a bit. People waited. The snow melted some more. For the first time anyone could remember, all five Scottish resorts were forced to close for the entire month of March due to lack of snow. It was as if the weather gods had decided that, after two fantastic winters, Scotland had had its fair share of the white stuff for the time being and it was somewhere else’s turn. What a pity that somewhere else turned out to be Norfolk, where February’s surprise blizzards caused traffic chaos while benefiting precisely zero skiers.

Still, at least the season had one redeeming feature: the inaugural Coe Cup freeride event, held at Glencoe Mountain on 24 March. Organised by the resort’s forward-looking owner Andy Meldrum, in conjunction with Andrew Phyn of White Dot skis, it attracted former US Olympian-turned-freeride legend Jeremy Nobis to act as a judge and resulted in some truly heart-in-mouth skiing and boarding on the steep, cliffy area of the mountain known as The Face. The sun shone, the mercury nudged 20 degrees C and more than 30 fearless young men and women in DayGlo clobber hurled themselves off rocky precipices for the entertainment of a small but vocal crowd of onlookers.

For the uninitiated, freeriding is the most extreme branch of the snowsports family tree. Events are typically held on gnarly bits of mountain that look more like climbing routes than pistes. Rather than performing tricks off man-made obstacles, as in freestyle events, freeriders use natural features like rocks and cliffs to launch their jumps; and unlike traditional downhill ski racers, who all take exactly the same route from the top of the hill to the bottom, freeriders can pick any line they like. Speed is a factor, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. The skier or boarder who shows the most style and technical prowess will receive the highest score from the judges, regardless of how fast they’re going.

The Face is the steepest skiable bit of mountain Glencoe has to offer. It’s home to The Flypaper, the steepest in-bounds run in Scotland at an average incline of 42 degrees, and an off-piste run called Baillie’s Gully, which is even steeper. You might not think 42 degrees sounds like much, but it’s wickedly steep. Start falling on a slope like this and you’ll be lucky to stop before you hit the rocks at the bottom. Jeremy Nobis is one of the best-known extreme skiers in the world, yet even he was impressed by The Face, describing it as “as gnarly as anything I’ve ever skied”.

Just getting to the contest area was an undertaking. Although there was plenty of snow on The Face itself, the rest of the resort had been stripped bare. Competitors could use the Access Chairlift and then the Cliffhanger Chair to get close to the bottom of the runs, but from there it was a steep half an hour’s hike up the remains of the Spring Run to the top of Meall a’ Bhuiridh, kicking steps in soft snow most of the way. Once at the start gate, there were two basic choices: either blaze straight down The Flypaper and try to huck off the exposed Buttress Rock in the middle, or traverse a short way to the right and then thread your way down Baillie’s Gully, which offered more technical skiing and a series of smaller drops. Some, like Inverness skier Peter MacKenzie, took up the organisers’ invitation to modify the slope as they liked, building extra jumps on Baillie’s; others, notably Jonathan Fish, went for broke on The Flypaper.

In the afternoon, competitors had just one run each to impress Nobis and pro snowboarder Adam Gorrill. Fish would have pulled the best trick of the day had he landed a backflip off the Buttress Rock, but he just lost it on the landing, picking up the best wipeout award instead. In the men’s skiing category, Dave Biggin narrowly defeated Malcolm Roy and Benjamin Styles, while Tim McGregor posted the highest score of the day to win the men’s snowboard while Roslyn Newman won the combined women’s ski and snowboard category.

The striking thing about the competition was how friendly it all was: no machismo, no egos, just a group of enthusiastic people having fun. It was fitting, then, that the overall winner of the Coe Cup itself was Peter Mackenzie – not just a great skier (he came a respectable seventh in the men’s skiing category), but also the perfect embodiment of the competition’s ethos. At the end of the event, a tourist was struggling to make her way down the hill; without blinking, he handed his skis to someone else so he could give her a piggy-back. For that act of kindness alone, he deserved a trophy.

To watch a short film about the Coe Cup, visit scotsman.com; for more pictures, visit www.facebook.com/greatscottishoutdoors