Roger Cox: Running this new tourist attraction didn't turn out to be a particularly glamorous way of life

Glencoe ski area was born out of a passion for snow, but will that be enough to keep it going?

If you want to find out how the Glencoe ski area came to be, the best place to start is in the corridor outside the toilets at the Log Cabin Restaurant, next to the main chairlift.

Here you'll find three articles from the Scottish Ski Club Journal, framed and hanging on the wall. In the first, published in the 1952/53 season, a contributor called Philip Rankin takes issue with Ben Lawers in Perthshire, which at that time was the epicentre of the Scottish skiing universe. He complains that, as a ski hill, it hasn't "got what it takes" and calls for alternative, more challenging slopes to be identified and then made more accessible by the construction of ski tows.

In a second article from the same season, Rankin suggests the mountain known as Meall a'Bhuiridh in Glencoe might fit the bill, because its upper part consists of "an ample corrie deeply scored with ravines which collect such a mass of snow as to be virtually impervious to even weeks of thaw." He also notes the steepness of the terrain, which he suggests may cause even the bravest skiers to "consider carefully the merits of prudence as against taking it straight."

Evidently Rankin got tired of waiting for the Scottish skiing community to get its act together, because by 1956, with the help of a posse of snow-mad engineers from Glasgow, he had turned Meall a'Bhuiridh into the first commercial ski resort in the UK.

Running this new tourist attraction didn't turn out to be a particularly glamorous way of life. "Only occasionally," he wrote years later, "when there is a lull in the traffic up our shocking road, can I furtively close the doors, grab my skis, and sneak off up the hill in my dungarees. My ski clothes long ago dissolved in oil."

Rankin finally retired in 1992, 40 years after publication of his first visionary article in the SSC Journal, and since then Glencoe has suffered a period of steady decline. Last March, when its latest owner David Campbell put it up for sale, it seemed the end had finally come, but in October, with the new ski season fast approaching, Falkirk businessman and self-confessed ski nut Andy Meldrum stepped in to save the day and keep the antique lifts running – for another few years, at least.

As reported in these pages earlier in the month, Meldrum has plenty of ideas for developing the business, not least an application to turn the resort into a Community Interest Company, which would allow him to access funding from the EU, the National Lottery and elsewhere. For all his nous and enthusiasm, however, Glencoe's future is still far from secure.

Up at the Ski Patrol Hut by the Main Basin T-Bar, Bobby Munro, operations manager at Glencoe for ten years, isn't taking anything for granted. "I think this is last chance saloon for Glencoe," he says. "If it doesn't happen with Andy (Meldrum] then I think it's doomed."

With four other ski resorts now functioning in Scotland – two of them, Cairngorm and Nevis Range generously funded by the government – would it really matter if Glencoe were allowed to quietly slide off the edge of the map? Well, yes, and you don't need to spend long on the hill to find out why.

Dianne Lee McCormick has been working as a liftie at Glencoe for four seasons now, and she nails the sense of intimacy and community spirit that makes it a special place to go skiing.

"I love it here," she says. "I think Glencoe's got the reputation for being the friendliest ski centre in Scotland and it gets a lot of support from the locals as well. You get a lot of people who have been coming here for years and bringing their kids and then their grandkids. I just think it would be terrible if it were to close."

There will doubtless be tough times ahead for Glencoe's new owner, but he can at least take solace from the fact that, as a skier first and a businessman second, he has his priorities the same way round as the resort's founding father.

The third article outside the Log Cabin loos dates from 1966. With his dream of ski lifts linking the summit of Meall a'Bhuiridh to the valley floor now a reality, Rankin writes: "This is the beginning, not the end, of the (Glencoe] tale. There is much to do for the betterment of fun and frolic, some of which we have thought of and some of which will no doubt occur to us later… Essentially, Meall a'Bhuiridh is a mountain developed by skiers for skiers and, as such, a happy place, come fair or foul. Our best achievement will be to keep it so."