After a huge anticipation, I finally managed to complete my fourth day of skiing alone in Cairngorm National Park.
To ski or not to ski
Cairngorm Ski Resort closes on April 16. I’ve been keeping an eye on the snow condition and lifts opening status with this website since March, and I just decided to delay the decision to my arrival day. If the snow condition is good, then I’ll ski; if not, I’ll just go hiking.
It was quite a rollercoaster ride on my arrival day.
When I arrived at Aviemore via ScotRail, I started to look for buses to my hotel Coylumbridge … and there wasn’t one. Apparently the bus from Aviemore to Coylumbridge to the skiing area only operates on Saturday, and in a very limited time range, with the last bus ridiculously leaving before 2pm.
I went into a slight panic mode, even thinking about canceling the hotel and going back to Edinburgh or Glasgow, which obviously wouldn’t work because I had passed the free cancellation period.
Then I went into a restaurant to eat while looking for options. Turned out it was less than 2 miles from the train station to the hotel, so walkable. Then I searched for the hiking paths in Cairngorms, and there are a lot. There are even some starting around the hotel. At that point, my plan was clear: walk to the hotel and then hike for the whole day another day.
On my way to the hotel, I saw a “bike hire” sign. I walked in and asked some questions to confirm the information I saw on Google Maps, and then a plan started to form. I looked for the distance between the bike hire shop and the skiing area: 9.2 miles. Hmm, nothing crazy. And then the elevation: from 700ft to 2000ft. I had no idea what that translated to irl. But according to Google Maps, riding from the bike shop to the ski resort would take 1 hour 11 min., and it’s “mostly flat”, while the reverse would take 34 min. So if I started to ride at 9am, I’ll still have plenty of time to ski!
Working up the hill
So on the next day, I packed my bags with the skiing clothing and started to ride at a little past 9am after walking to the bike hire and rented a mountain bike, costing me ￡33.
The first two-thirds of the journey was pretty easy. The slope was very mild. The shopkeeper told me to ride on an old logging path or whatever instead of the main road, but I still went with the main road because there weren’t like a lot of cars and I didn’t want to complicate things by going through a bunch of small roads and forks and having to be on a constant struggle of trying to get past some hikers.
The views around Loch Morlich (loch = lake) were amazing. I stopped multiple times and took some photos.
The final third of the journey, however, was absolutely brutal. Most of the elevations were achieved there, and some of the slopes were just impossible. I had to hop down and walk my bike up for many sections. At the first slope I was like, ain’t no way I’m going to make it! Fortunately, it was still interleaved with some flatter sections where I could hop on my bike and soothe my legs. The sceneries on the mountain top are absolutely gorgeous tho. You can see the roads and the lake that you were at just a few moments ago.
And then I was finally there. 1.5 hr of cycling (and walking at times), 50% longer than Google Map’s estimation. I think Google Map’s estimation would have been possible if the elevation were evenly distributed instead of being stacked in the final third.
Slowly riding my bike through the parking lot full of cars gave me a sense of fulfilment.
Ski!
It was the end of the snow season, 2 weeks before the snow resort closing, and there were only 2 green runs and 2 lifts at the very top of the mountain left open. I still bought a day ticket (￡38) and rented the equipment (￡34) anyway just for the experience, so that I can say that I’ve skiied in Europe.
It was the first time that I took a funicular. Didn’t even know the word before. It was pretty cool though packed with people.
There’s a restaurant and a toilet at the top station, but no lockers. So I just left my backpack with my passports there hoping the skiiers and snowboarders were too rich to steal other people’s belongings.
The BRITS, a group of people doing freestyle, is here for 2 days, and they’re using a bunch of spaces, even occupying a run. Guess it’s my lucky day. Well obviously I can only blame myself for not doing enough homework.
The lifts are t-bars, something I’ve never seen before. I went into the 1st one completely unprepared, and didn’t even get to see how other people got up to it. Anyway, I still managed to get on pretty correctly with the help of the worker. For the first few times, I would leave and release the t-bar too early, making it clash with the pillar. After 10+ runs, I saw the person in front of me cleverly making a turn with the t-bar and then gently releasing it while facing downward, and I followed this method ever since.
The run closer to the station was moderately fun. It’s just a straight narrow slope, and you can get some real speed if you don’t brake or turn at all. Another trail is basically a big turn, also pretty narrow. This one was pretty boring tbh, but you can also go to the “freestyle park” from the same lift, which I spent most of my afternoon in.
I didn’t do any freestyles, but just skied to the jumps, flew to the sky and fell down. There are two jumping sections on the slope. The upper one is smaller while the lower one is bigger, with a big downward slope at the very front to provide speed.
In my first two attempts, I would parallel turn down the big slope and then do a tiny of no-fly at the 1st jump, but then because the 2nd jump is huge, I just kind of panicked before reaching it, making me slip and fall. Hesitation is defeat basically.
On the 3rd try, I finally succeeded by telling myself that for such a huge jump I will barely have any speed at the top anyway, and boy was it amazing! I went absolutely flying (compared to the previous jump), and then pulled back down to earth, barely managing to balance feeling like my skis are going to slip, but it went just fine. After that I just kind of kept trying and trying. Didn’t do anything crazy, but I could totally see myself trying some tricks like 180-turn in my next ski.
When riding the t-bars I would see hikers from time to time. Pretty interesting.
Gliding down the hill
From the mountain top, I flew down the slope standing on the pedals and reached … euphoria ..
The views were incredible, and the feeling of the wind swallowing you felt amazing. It was an absolute joy. I would never want to do this again though. The upward slopes really were brutal, an absolute hell. I only did this because I couldn’t rent a car. Not having a car in the highlands really is traveling in hard mode.
Coylumbridge Hotel
I booked a room with a double bed, but I was given one with two double beds instead, super lucky. The room is pretty nice, has all what it should have.
The dinner is a ￡20 buffet. There are different dishes every day. On the first day, I ate salmons some salmons and called it a night because I finished lunch just before 4pm. On the second day, I ate 4 places of lambs with pasta and vegetables. They were really amazing.
The breakfast was just like every other breakfast. Scrambled eggs, fried eggs, mushrooms, bacon, sausages, cereal, toast, salads, that’s about it. It served its purpose.
There was also a swimming pool that I didn’t use.
9/10 would recommend … if you have a car. To be fair it’s not all that far walking from Aviemore station, but I would definitely just pick one of the many hotels around the station next time if I still can’t rent a car.