POLICE were forced to close the access road to a mountain resort yesterday and other centres turned people away as they were swamped by snowsports enthusiasts.
Huge crowds headed for the hills to take advantage of ideal conditions on what is traditionally one of the busiest weekends of the year for ski-ing and snowboarding.
Officers were called to Glenshee to help staff redirect traffic as car parks filled up rapidly.
But as the day wore on, families were being turned away before they were able to reach the slopes.
It had been feared high winds would prevent resorts from opening, but CairnGorm Mountain, Nevis Range, Glencoe and the Lecht were all operating on both days of the weekend.
Glenshee company director Stewart Davidson, said conditions were “excellent”, with 19 out of the 22 lifts open.
He added: “It’s been great. The sun is shining and we’ve no wind.
“There are two lifts we still need to get dug out. It’s the first chance we’ve had to get the whole area open.”
However, police had to stop vehicles on the access road when the resort became full.
A police spokeswoman said: “Officers went up about 9am and I think, due to the volume of traffic, they stayed all morning, helping out the centre staff and making sure people were kept safe.”
Meanwhile, Colin Kirkwood, of CairnGorm Mountain, said yesterday the resort had six out of 11 tows operating and was extremely busy. He said: “It’s been a glorious day here, improving as the day went on, with blue skies and sunshine in the afternoon.
“We had more than 1,700 skiers and had to stop selling tickets mid to late morning as we had reached capacity relative to the amount of uplift we had operating.”
A team of volunteers – including members of Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team – turned out to help staff dig out the Cairngorm funicular railway, which had been out of action for nine days because of the high volume of snow.
He said: “We’re hoping to be able to reopen the funicular on Monday. Large parts of the track were covered with a significant amount of snow. They cleared the track and moved on to digging out the tunnel mouth at the top.
“We’re very grateful to all those who came to help.”
He added that there had been 940 skiers on the slopes on Saturday.
Glencoe Mountain Resort manager Angela Dingwall said the resort had reached capacity and had to stop selling tickets for the chair lift about 11am yesterday. She said: “We’ve got five out of seven lifts working and about 950 people on the hill.
“The other two, which are totally buried, are the ones that open up the top of the mountain.
“It’s beautiful ski-ing weather and such a shame that we’re having to turn people away.”
She added that the resort opened half an hour late on Saturday after high winds were forecast, but there were about 580 skiers during the course of the day.
Nevis Range managing director Marian Austin said the centre was still selling tickets for the lifts early yesterday afternoon, but was having to turn away anyone who wanted to hire equipment as there was none left.
She said: “We’re having a very, very busy day. We’ve got seven lifts open out of 11 and we’re working to dig out more. We also had a good day on Saturday as the wind was from the north, which is better for us. We had about 1,200 people here.”
Ms Austin added that the resort expected to run out of hire stock for the next few days and advised skiers to bring equipment.
Despite parking problems, things ran smoothly at the Lecht ski centre, which had 10 lifts open.
Managing director Pieter du Pon said: “It’s been very good, very busy, beautiful weather, with a little bit of extra snow overnight. A lot of people have come from CairnGorm.
“We’ve tried to keep everybody happy.”
He added: “We haven’t turned anybody away. We’ve had problems parking, but we’ve squeezed everybody in where we can.”