Roger Cox: Wanted: a few snow guns, a pisting machine and a north-facing hillside with generous tree

Yes, I know it’s August, and yes, I know nobody wants to talk about snow at this time of year – well, not in the northern hemisphere, anyway – but humour me.

I’ve just been given a sneak preview of what the future of skiing in Scotland might look like, and there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to keep it to myself until the start of the new season.

Imagine a warm, sunny spring day in March 2025. You’ve just skied from the top of the White Lady to the bottom of the funicular and now you’re off to grab a quick snack before tackling the recently opened “Johnston’s Run”, which plunges from what used to be the ski resort’s base station all the way down to Glenmore village, a distance of almost 4km. The snow on this run, you know, is mostly artificial, created by a series of state-of-the-art snow guns, but because the 15m wide piste is protected by trees for most of its length, it remains in good nick for around 120 days each year. In fact, it’s often still skiable long after some of the other, more exposed runs higher up the mountain have started to become patchy. As you finish your energy bar and click into your bindings, you watch a group of snowboarders arriving from Glenmore aboard the new Glenmore Gondola (first proposed in 1996, finally constructed in 2021), and you chuckle quietly to yourself, remembering all the hours you wasted in winters gone by, waiting in traffic jams halfway up the mountain while resort staff valiantly tried to clear drifting snow from the access road. Why they didn’t build the gondola when it was first suggested is anyone’s guess. Still, you reflect, as you lean into the first turn of your descent, sending a wave of artificial snow skooshing off into the trees, better late than never.

Sounds far fetched? OK, perhaps I’ve embellished a little here and there, but according to extreme skier and recent Edinburgh University graduate Jamie Johnston, the above scenario is technically possible.

Johnston has just been awarded a first for his final year geography thesis, which looked at whether the shortlived 1960s ski development at Mar Lodge could turn a profit today using modern snowmaking equipment. The Mar Lodge centre was doomed for all sorts of reasons – not least because the owners chose a south-facing, low altitude site and because their snow guns didn’t work properly – but Johnston’s research shows that, with modern snowmaking gear, it could be made borderline viable today, even in the mildest of winters.

And now, building on his Mar Lodge study, and using the same modelling technique (it’s called degree-day modelling – don’t ask because I don’t understand) Johnston has produced figures that show that it should be possible to create a ski slope from what is now the Coire Cas car park at CairnGorm all the way down to Glenmore.

According to his calculations, even in an extremely mild winter like 2007, ten Ratnik Sky Giant IV snow guns would be enough to create a piste 15-20m wide for 120 days. (Most ski resorts reckon on a minimum of 100 days skiing per season.) Although it would be much lower than the other runs at CairnGorm, this new piste would be protected from sun, wind and rain by trees to either side, so rates of snow loss suffered during periods of thaw would be substantially reduced. Not only that, a lower level, gladed run could operate in wild, windy conditions, when the upper mountain has to be closed.

None of the senior staff at CairnGorm were available to comment on Johnston’s findings at the time of going to press, but even if they love the idea, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to raise the funds for such an ambitious project. Government help is even less likely to be forthcoming – I suspect expanding ski resorts may be fairly low on the agenda at Holyrood at the moment.

But the beauty of Johnston’s findings is that they don’t just apply to Mar Lodge or the land between the CairnGorm resort and Glenmore – they apply to any forested, north-facing slope in north-east Scotland. Surely, one day in the future, a canny businessman will have the vision to invest in a few snow guns, a pisting machine and a north-facing hillside with generous tree cover. And when that happens, I’ll be first in line for a season ticket.