Copyright scotsman
When it was announced that adventure sports and tourism specialist Mike Gifford was taking over as CEO of Cairngorm Mountain in June, the official press release alluded to the fact that recent years had been “very challenging” for the beleaguered ski resort. That’s putting it mildly. Things first started going sideways in 2017, when there was a stooshie over the demolition and removal of the West Wall and Coire na Ciste Chairlifts – a hugely unpopular exercise which led to a spirited “Save the Ciste” campaign driven by the local skiing community, who wanted to see them refurbished rather than torn down. Then there was the well-publicised funicular saga, which saw Cairngorm’s main means of uplift out of action, on and off, from 2018 until earlier this year, with repair costs spiralling to around £25 million. To make matters worse, while all this was going on a whole host of inconvenient truths – far too numerous and complicated to go into here – emerged about the way Cairngorm had been run during this period, in particular while it was being operated by the now-defunct company Natural Retreats. Gifford is under no illusions about the damage that has been done to Cairngorm’s reputation, but he believes there are still reasons to be optimistic. “I think it feels as if Cairngorm’s turning a bit of a corner,” he says. “The funicular would certainly have kept me up at night if I’d been in charge last year. But having looked over everything that’s here, spoken to the team and spoken to the contractors, we are confident that it is now in a good position and is going to be up and running all season, so that helps. “The big thing on the agenda at the moment is to try and get Cairngorm into a position of financial stability,” he continues. “Part of that is maximising the snowsports over the winter, but also we need to diversify. There’s been some diversification going on with activities such as mountain biking and mountain carting – these are all great, but I think we can do more and we hope to do more.” READ MORE: Meet Jimbob McCluskey, the 'hillbilly' who's out to give skiing a sense of humour One project that has already been attracting media attention is a plan to start allowing passengers on the funicular to make the short walk from the 1,097m top station to the 1,245m summit of Cairn Gorm. At present, foot passengers on the funicular are prevented from leaving the top station building to protect the fragile summit environment. However, if a trial period using electronic tracking devices shows that people are sticking to the footpath between the top station and the summit, this restriction may be lifted. “We’re going to try and prove that people aren’t disappearing off onto the [Cairngorm] plateau and going further afield,” says Gifford. “What we need to make sure of is that they’re doing the 20-minute walk from the Ptarmigan to the summit and then coming back again, using the paths that are in place. If they are, then we might look at removing the trackers next summer.” As part of the plan to turn Cairngorm into more of a year-round destination, Gifford also hopes to be able to build a mountain toboggan ride at Cairngorm, similar to the one that’s proving such a hit at the Midlothian Snowsports Centre in Edinburgh. “We’ve just had a designer leave a couple of weeks ago,” he says. “He’s off back to Switzerland and he’ll send his designs through soon. Then we’ll need to go through planning and from there we’ll go on and try and secure funding. Provided that all goes through we’d love to see it all in place at the back end of next summer.” More mountain bike trails may be on the cards too. “We’d love to see mountain biking from the Ptarmigan down,” says Gifford, “maybe three runs from the Ptarmigan going in different directions off the top of the hill, and potentially linking up with the trails that are already in place up to the half-way station.” The main reason Cairngorm needs to diversify into summer activities, of course, is that year after year climate change makes snowsports provision increasingly difficult. That said, Gifford seems a reassuringly long way from throwing in the towel. Born in Aberdeen and educated at Keith Grammar School, he’s an experienced ski instructor with many years of Scottish skiing under his belt, so is under no illusions about the vagaries of Scottish winters, yet he still sees reasons to be cheerful. READ MORE: How to get unlimited skiing in Scotland for the price of two days in Colorado “Snowsports seasons come in cycles,” he says, “and every five or six years you get an absolute bumper season. If you look back to 2020 it was amazing – it’s probably some of the best snow we've seen in ten or 15 years. “What we have here at Cairngorm, which is a big benefit, is that the funicular puts you out very high up, which means we can access very high without the drag lifts [which require top-to-bottom snow cover]. So I’m confident that we'll have many good seasons to come, although we might need to move our operations slightly further up the hill.” “It has been a really tough time for Cairngorm,” he adds, “you can't hide from that. What we need to do now is get people’s confidence back – and a good winter season with the funicular open would certainly help.” Would Gifford ever consider putting lifts back on the Coire na Ciste side of the mountain, perhaps even returning Cairngorm to its old dual base station model, with the pistes accessible to skiers from both the Cas and Ciste car parks? “I'm going to look at everything on the hill,” he says. “Obviously this is my first winter season up here, so I need to see how things are. I have skied at Cairngorm in the past but usually I was either at Glencoe or Glenshee, so this is reasonably new to me. “Saying that, it is part of the masterplan to look at future uplift - this was a masterplan put in by HIE, a 25-year plan. We're five years into that plan now and it does need to be reviewed, and the issue of further uplift is something we need to look at. Whether it will be in the Ciste or the Cas I don't know, and whether it'll be in the next five or ten years I don't know yet, but it's certainly something we want to look at. “The current financial climate is a real challenge, and I think we need to be very careful about what we're investing in and why. But if we could come up with a good business case for doing something around the Ciste that also involved summer activities, putting lift infrastructure in there that would support hillwalking or mountain biking or other things, then we should be discussing it. I'm open to discussing anything on the hill with anybody - we need to speak to all the different user groups and see what people want.” For more on Cairngorm Mountain, visit www.cairngormmountain.co.uk Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here.
