In the week that the blueprint for the new Cairngorms National Park was unveiled Dave Hewitt looks at the continuing problems of visitor management at the funicular and says maybe it is time for both sides of the dispute to sit down together and talk.
Scarcely a month seems to go by without some report of problems involving the Cairn Gorm funicular and the frequency of these reports is a bit worrying. With the formal opening - by Scottish tourism minister Mike Watson - now only a week away, the teething troubles of the railway's first five-and-a-half months appear to be worsening rather than easing.
Looking behind the anecdotes and incidents, the central concern is whether the funicular is both safe and economically sustainable. If so - and the safety/sustainability aspects are interlinked - then it might in time come to be something that a lot of hill folk quietly accept, even if they never write poems of enthusiasm about it. After all, there is - as far as I'm aware - no retrospective lobby for the removal of the railway up Snowdon. That appears to be seen as serving a reasonable purpose from a tourism point of view, and while a lot of people (conservationists, climbers, landscape aesthetes) don't like it, they have come round to tolerating its presence, to letting it blend into the background of their perceptions.
Having written about the Cairn Gorm funicular often enough to qualify as some kind of railway journalist, I should say at this point that while I was strongly against its construction, the thing (I'm tempted to write "the damned thing") now exists, like it or not, and so there's no point banging that particular drum any more. The debate has moved on.
The funicular is of course primarily in the public eye due to its newness and the complex eco-political shenanigans that accompanied its - er - railroading through the various planning procedures. But, like the Snowdon railway, it is now a nuts-and-bolts reality and we need to start from there. The questions that need to be asked relate to its viability, its safety record, and the effect it is having - and will have over time - on the landscape into which it has been so rudely inserted.
Safety first. It would appear that, in general, two types of accident could arise from the presence of the funicular. One is a crash involving the hardware, the railway itself. As previously reported, there have already been a couple of incidents of this kind, although no one has been seriously injured. (I hesitate to adopt the language of the CairnGorm Mountain press releases however and to describe these incidents as "minor" - they were not minor to those who suffered bruises, whiplash and worry.)
Thankfully no one has died or suffered serious long-term injury, so that side of things mustn't be blown out of proportion. It's the other type of accident that worries a lot of people the most, that relating to the basic geography of the site. One of the prime arguments against the construction of the funicular was its inappropriateness in a high-mountain setting in general and in the Cairngorms in particular. It's nonsensical and dangerous, so the argument goes, to coax ill-equipped and inexperienced tourists into a situation where the weather and underfoot conditions are often the most hostile in Britain. This, crucially, is where Cairn Gorm differs from Snowdon. Both are serious hills but Cairn Gorm stands over 150m or 500ft higher, is at a markedly higher latitude, lies deep inland and so plays host to a climate far removed from the temperate-maritime conditions seen on the near-coastal Snowdon. And, crucially, it's on the rim of a massive plateau rather than being a sharp summit on a ridge system.
It's this latter aspect which has led to the most contentious part of the construction/access equation - the extent to which funicular users should or shouldn't be allowed out of the upper station area. The current agreement - signed by Scottish Natural Heritage, Highland Council and the operating company CairnGorm Mountain - allows "summer" passengers to potter about at the top station without escaping to the summit of Cairn Gorm and beyond. (Unlike the days of the chairlift, note, when there were ethical debates among Munrobaggers as to whether someone who bagged Cairn Gorm nine-tenths mechanically ought to count it as a legitimate tick. Ironically, the current situation - in which a bagger can only reach the top by a degree of subterfuge - would probably make such an ascent feel more valid and satisfying despite not being any harder physically, if only because it requires a degree of initiative and evasiveness.)
So the barriers around the top station should, in effect, be an impermeable membrane, preventing any ingress or egress except in times of emergency. Increasingly, however, we are hearing of what might be called "osmosis" on Cairn Gorm. Passengers are trying - and in some cases succeeding - in getting out on to the hill, while walkers are lobbying to be allowed access to the top station. There have been several recent incidents of this kind.
Neil Cuthbert has mailed to tell of a visit with his wife on Saturday 4 May. The plan was to walk up Cairn Gorm, then across the plateau to Ben Macdui before returning via Coire an Lochain. "We took the path up to the Ptarmigan restaurant that follows the spur coming down to the car park," he writes. "Given that there was a lack of other walkers around I was rather surprised on the way up to see a steady stream of people on the path from the restaurant to the top of Cairn Gorm. I thought people were not allowed out of the funicular top station but this is not happening in practice. There is a gate in the wall through which lots of people were exiting for the short walk to the top.
"As we approached, the ranger had arrived and told us we couldn't get in to look around. He was having quite a hard time stopping people leaving the station as well. This is no criticism of the ranger - he was very pleasant and helpful but clearly has a very difficult job to do." It's significant that Neil also adds, "Personally speaking I support the funicular. I do however think the current situation as regards exit/entry to the top station is unsustainable and frankly, ridiculous."
This situation sounds not dissimilar to that on the first bank holiday in May, when a "mass breakout" occurred. In fine weather (remember when we had fine weather in May?) a trainload of tourists took the ride up the hill without, apparently, having read the information about the closed system. They were reportedly "far from happy at being fenced in on such a fine day" and felt conned and short-changed. This led to an argument with the staff on duty, followed by an attempted breakout over the barriers. A number of the party succeeded in getting out but whether they were later allowed back in for the train-ride back down is unclear.
Along with these incidents there has also been the first stirrings of a campaign, by former political adviser Charlie Whelan in the Herald, to allow free access to the summit area and beyond - an argument that has been countered by Cameron McNeish, current Scottish Ramblers president, in the same paper. While McNeish undoubtedly has more hill experience than the lobby-loving Whelan, the latter is the cannier operator and it's likely that his campaign will achieve at least some success over time.
Quite what will happen if people are allowed out - or simply keep barging their way out - is difficult to assess. On the one hand there could be little or no problem, with Cairn Gorm summit proving to be the limit of the soft-shoe brigade's ambitions (again think back to the chairlift era). But should they go any further then the wildlife and the soil will undoubtedly suffer, while it surely wouldn't be long before rescue teams were being called out for some hellish incident involving someone in stilettos straying down Coire Raibeirt, or a Saga party turning up at the Shelter Stone. Such things, should they ever happened, would clarify the situation up top but we can't really wait or hope for test-case accidents to happen.
And then, as the flipside to all this, there has been recent Sunday-paper coverage concerning complaints from ordinary walkers on the outside of the funicular system wanting to be let in to use the facilities, such as they are, at the top station. The local MSP, Fergus Ewing, has joined in with this, being quoted as saying that, "This latest revelation that walkers and climbers are locked out so they are prohibited from entry to the Ptarmigan top station, even to use the facilities or have a meal, shows how ludicrous the Visitor Management Plan restrictions are."
Now unless I'm missing something, keeping non-paying walkers (the likes of me, I guess) out is perfectly logical and consistent. If the closed system is to operate successfully then it would be crazy to allow interlopers inside, apart from in cases of injury or illness, as it would then be nigh on impossible to know who to let back out again. The "outsiders" can't have it both ways. For once, I'm in agreement with Tania Adams of the operating company, who responded to Ewing's statement by saying, "If we let walkers in we would be obliged to let them out again and that creates a management issue for those who have used the Cairn Gorm funicular train to reach the Ptarmigan and who would feel entitled to be allowed out on to the plateau as well."
The situation does appear to be fraying at the edges somewhat and it looks like the various interested parties ought to sit down together, reassess the situation and come up with a modified access plan - although this is never going to be easy given the amount of ill-feeling involved over the years. It would need both sides to swallow a few slices of humble pie - for the funicular company to start talking properly to the conservationists and ecologists and for the conservationists and ecologists to accept that the railway is now in the real world and needs to be, for now at least, lived with.
Dave Hewitt
30/5/2002
Dave can be contacted at Dave.Hewitt@dial.pipex.com
