Pleasure or Pain on Scottish Hill

After two days of blue skies, Working Man and I hustled up to Glencoe for day of Scottish snow. The forecast didn’t look too bad, but we knew were bound to get loads of ‘you should have been here yesterday’; cloudy in the morning, possibly with a touch of snow, and sunny spells in the afternoon. That would do us fine.

Up early doors, I jammed my stuff into the Working Man’s motor and we were off. The usual weather stress was in full effect - how good could it be? The clouds around Loch Lomond, looked, within the space of minutes like they could be dumping snow, that the visibility could be zero, that it could be a just low lying band, that it could be…

We arrived to gentle fluttering snow on the carpark. After being relieved of 30 quid and wading through manky bog juice to use the one loo with paper, we made our up the hill.

Into the cloud.

The visibility wasn’t bad and the fresh snow made everything soft and fun. My stiff legs got a bit more rubbery after a couple of runs. The sides and just off piste were filled with fluffy mounds of delight. Half an hour later, the snow turned to rain. And the wind, I’d forgotten to mention the wind. Three runs later and we retreated back to the car. Big Man took tested the route down to the carpark, I took the lift.

While he waited for me, Woking Man inspected the gouge he’d picked up just above the carpark. We tucked into sandwiches and flasks of tea and coffee and talked about how wet we were. Soaked to the skin.

Too soaked not to go back for some more.

On the lift back up, the wind whipped the rain into places we didn’t know were dry. Once we’d dismounted we found the light varied from poor to worse, but quieter areas of the slopes seemed almost unaffected by the rain and stayed soft and fast.

At the start and end of lifts and tows, people queued, grim faced and mading tight-lipped jokes amongst their small groups. One unhappy chappy was forcing himself up the lift, “Bloody murder man,” he called to me as we stood in the line, then pulled his soaking rain-and-breath-juice sodden scarf back over his nose and mouth. A sudden, icy gust blew the wet scarf into a mask that looked like it had been vacuumed-packed to his face. He looked like a fleecy, frozen Han Solo.

It was truly tortuous, the mountain was depriving us of our senses, we were being subjected to extreme temperatures, I had seen Han Solo being waterboarded. There was a skier in an orange all-in-one. We were in Glen-Guatamo.

We stuck it out until the back of three o’clock, then retreated back to the warmth of the car via a final soaking on the chair-lift, which could be mistaken at times for a log flume. The quickest of quick changes, and a final wade to the loo, and we were off. Working Man had neglected to bring dry trousers and was driving in a pair of wet canvas shorts. We were making good time when Working Man mentioned that he hadn’t noticed my boots in the boot. Instantly I knew the sequence of events: on the edge of the car seat; pulling off my boots; leave them outside; swing legs into car; pull door closed to keep out the draft; out of snowboarding trousers and long johns; into dry travelling strides; put on dry shirt, Working Man drives us to the midden. Boots sitting alone, outside.

Working Man launches into mission mode and we head back to the Misty Mountain. We were further away than we thought. Quite a lot further. Just over an hour after we left we returned to the rainy carpark. We drove slowly along the diminished population of cars. No boots. Reception, we agreed, then Working Man came up trumps again.

Half-tucked under the side of a Merc were my boots. Had somebody thoughtfully put themout of the rain? I hopped out to rescue my abandoned footwear, and a chubby fella get changed two cars along called, ‘They’re yours are they? Five more minutes I was having them.’

Cheers, I replied.

Working Man dropped me at my door, and I hauled myself and my wet gear up to the flat and lying in a hot, hot bath, reflecting that for all its pain Scottish snowboarding is still a pleasure.