Snow in Scotland over the past 48 hours looks to have brought about a foot of snow to the slopes (no official figures)in places. Snow depths in the valleys below were at 15cm in places and the road over to The Lecht was closed by snow today, however none of the five centres have yet indicated the liklihood of opening in the near future. Forecasts are for more wintery weather and snow in the next few days.
At Nevis Range the good news is that the centre's new piste basher was finally unloaded at the centre yesterday, in the middle of blizzard like conditions in the car park, fitting for a PistenBully 300 Polar. Coming from a resort in Switzerland, via the the PistenBully factory in Germany where is was reconditioned, it's 'new to Nevis' with just some 3,300 hours on the clock.
We're looking forward to getting it up and out on the slopes as soon as possible. Its blade is significantly larger than any of the existing groomers, so will be able to quickly shift hundreds of tonnes of snow around the pistes making it particularly useful for building jumps and shifting snow in the summit terrain park. It's also got a flex-tiller which will leave a cleaner and much better prepared piste than before.
"Now we just have to wait for enough snow to open!" said Heather Negus from Nevis Range.