The Antarctic explorer who founded a Highland winter sports centre took a trip into the mountains yesterday to see the best snow cover the resort has experienced since it opened 25 years ago.
Ian Sykes, who set up the Nevis Range at Fort William in 1989, said: “It’s snowed just about every day since Christmas and it is absolutely fantastic up there at the moment.
“We saw more snow in the early days than we’ve had in recent years, but this one really takes the biscuit. We’ve got oodles of the stuff.
“In some ways we’ve got more snow than we want, but we’re not complaining. All we need now is for the wind to drop and we’ll be in for a fabulous season.”
And the snow could be even deeper soon with more forecast for today and the rest of the week. The Highlands could be hit with two major flurries of snow as a weather front from the Atlantic brings colder weather.
Unusually, the Met Office has put out two yellow “be aware” warnings for snow across the north.
The weather system was predicted to hit inland areas from the early hours of today, bringing up to 4in on hills above 600ft.
Some could also fall on lower levels, although a Met Office forecaster said that it would probably melt quickly.
She said that the warning lasts until 3pm today and overlaps with a second more widespread warning, running to 10am on Wednesday.
Mr Sykes, 71, who was managing director of the resort from 1989 to 2000 and is still a director, said the snow was yesterday more than 5ft deep on the lower slopes and almost 12ft at the top, with a depth of around 60-70ft in some of the gullies.
“You can ski in places you could never ski before. In fact, you can ski just about everywhere,” he said.
But he stressed that some of the corries were out of bounds at the moment because 20ft cornices, snow overhangs, made them a serious avalanche risk.
He said the resort was currently getting about 900 skiers and snowboarders per day.
Meanwhile bosses at the Cairngorm Mountain resort are celebrating a bumper season after it snowed for 60 of the last 64 days.
Staff were hard at work digging out the highest railway in Scotland yesterday with the funicular train buried by snow for the third day at the top of the Ptarmigan station.
The resort has had more snow than parts of the Alps – and the Winter Olympics in Russia.