Scottish skiers and boarders gear up for a winter of competition (and pray for more snow)

Last winter, due to the historic lack of snow in Scotland’s hills, the competitive snowsports calendar was left with more holes in it than a Swiss cheese in a Wild West shoot-out. The organisers of the SkiMo Scotland ski mountaineering races were forced to cancel events at the Lecht in December, Glenshee in January and Glencoe in February, and it wasn’t until March that they were finally able to run the first (and last) races of the season at Nevis Range. The backcountry skiers and snowboarders of the Scottish Freedom Series also failed to see much action: the contests scheduled for Nevis Range and the Ben Lawers Range both had to be cancelled and, had the Coe Cup in March not gone ahead in somewhat marginal conditions, the series would have suffered the second total wipeout in its six year history.