Hundreds of snowsports enthusiasts headed for the CairnGorm slopes at the weekend as the winter sports season started early.
Around 500 skiers and snowboarders took advantage of the clear, calm weather at CairnGorm Mountain Resort on Saturday and Sunday.
The resort will be closed again today but the operators are keeping a close eye on the weather and hope to be open again this coming weekend.
CairnGorm Mountain Resort customer service assistant manager Amanda Shepherd: “We’re just doing weekends at the moment. It’s going to turn milder on Monday but we will be opening weekends as long as the weather lets us. This weekend has been fantastic, we’ve had about 500 skiers over both days. There has been blue sky and very little wind so there has been great ski-ing.”
The early-November start to the season is the earliest for five years and three weeks earlier than last year. The 2012-13 season closed on May 19 – just 170 days ago.
CairnGorm Mountain Resort was the only one of Scotland’s five ski centres to officially open to the public. Glenshee is not yet open for the season and the Lecht is still closed for winter maintenance.
Nevis Range and Glencoe were both not officially open for the season but this did not deter hardy thrill-seekers who trekked up the slopes in order to ski or snowboard back down.
Nevis Range office manager Mark Jordan said: “We’ve got quite a lot of snow on the mountain and it’s looking pretty good as a base. We’ve not started yet but we will wait and see what happens this week.”
He said there was the possibility the ski centre would open this weekend if conditions were favourable.
A spokeswoman for Glencoe Mountain Resort said it was expecting to open officially around the start of December.
She added: “We’re not officially open but people have been going up to ski and snowboard by walking up the mountain.”