Glencoe Mountain ski resort to keep making snow until May

One of Scotland’s mountain ski resorts is to keep artificially producing snow until May.

Andy Meldrum, managing director of Glencoe Mountain, said it had been a poor winter in terms of natural snowfall.

The site started manufacturing snow in November and has kept it topped up since then. The 80m (262ft) long slope open remains open for sledging and beginner skiing.

Mr Meldrum said: “We’ve not had a lot of snow, but have done okay. It’s certainly not the worst season we’ve had.”

The site’s snow factory can make 100 cubic metres of snow a day.

Other ski resorts, including Cairngorm Mountain, also use artificially-made snow during the winter season.

Cairngorm managed 100 days of skiing on their slope, before it melted earlier this week. The centre said snow sports could resume if conditions allowed for it.

Mr Meldrum said Glencoe has had one of its poorest seasons in terms of skiers, with about 7,000 so far when usually there would have about 25,000 visitors over the winter season.

But he said numbers of people sledging has been higher than normal – 23,000 so far compared to 15,000.

Mr Meldrum said it had been a drier winter than usual, which led to fewer days when it snowed.

He said: “We have a maritime climate. We’ve got used to that at Glencoe.

“We have amazing seasons, we have dreadful seasons, good ones and bad ones.”

“When it does snow we make sure we ready to have everything open. When it doesn’t snow we try to provide other stuff.”

The snow slope is to be open for skiing until late April and sledging until early May.

The Lecht and Glenshee snowsports centres in Aberdeenshire are closed to snowsports due to a lack of snow.