Scottish Perseverance
By Tess Weaver Strokes
First published in Backcountry Magazine (US) #135
Tess is a freelance writer based in Aspen, Colorado. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, and Freeskier.
The climate within the Cairngorms, the United Kingdom’s largest national park, is the stuff of legend. On a high plateau, 4,000 feet above the North Sea, boulder-strewn domed summits topped with tors, or free-standing rock outcrops, attract the most severe and changeable weather in the UK. The area has twice recorded the lowest temperature in the country as well as the greatest wind speed in Britain: 176 miles per hour. Inbounds skiing at Cairngorm Mountain, one of Scotland’s five ski areas, relies on extensive snow fencing to combat the 100-mile-per-hour gusts that often blow.
“The weather in the Scottish Highlands can change rapidly, feeling like four or five seasons in a day,” Scottish photographer and filmmaker Henry Iddon says. “The snow changes just as rapidly in one run, throughout the day and week to week. You can start a run in powder then go through windblown, breakable crust before hitting boilerplate ice, tussocks of grass and spring corn. And that’s in one run. Then you can return the following day and it will be totally different. If you can ski in Scotland, you can ski anywhere.”
Variable as it may be, the arctic-alpine environment does hold long-lasting snow patches. It’s on these inaccessible last remnants of snow where Helen Rennie, 65, became the first person to ski on Scottish snow at least once a month for 10 years.
“Helen heads out in all weather and in a very modest way loves the mountains and her skiing more than almost anyone I’ve met,” says Mountaineering Scotland director Allistair Todd. “She’s an inspiration to everyone who meets her.”
Rennie actually skied 10 years and five months, stopping only because the Covid-19 lockdown limited her travel to the mountains that sit 40 miles from her home in Inverness.
“I knew it had to end sometime,” says Rennie, a newly retired teacher. “In a way it was easy—I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I have fabulous memories of the decade, and I was fortunate enough to do it.”
The hobby started in 2006 when Rennie skied 11 consecutive months on Scottish snow, but was paused in October 2007 when she was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Following two rounds of chemotherapy and surgery, Rennie was back skiing at the resort in March 2008 and ski touring again that fall. “I forget everything else—it’s very therapeutic,” Rennie says. “Once I hit snow line, all my problems are gone. It’s a lovely hobby.”
In 2010, the coldest and snowiest winter since 1978 hit the UK. “When it’s good it’s extremely good,” says Todd. “During the hallowed blue-sky days, Scotland comes into its own as a ski tour- er’s paradise.” Rennie started skiing and, up until the pandemic shut down Scotland in April 2020, she didn’t miss a month.
“It took a huge amount of commitment,” says Iddon. “To keep
chipping away month by month for 120 months is remarkable, especially with a full-time job teaching. Sometimes she had a brief weather window and knew she had to get from the school up on the hill in the late afternoon to get a few turns in.”
October is considered the hardest month to find a snow patch in Scotland, and in October 2017, Rennie had almost given up. Her go-to patch in the Cairngorms that ordinarily lasts until September or October had melted in July. The previous month, Rennie was forced to ski an intimidating patch on Aonach Beag, a peak near Fort William. Her approaches were growing longer and more difficult—Rennie walked the soles off her Scarpa Denali boots, forcing her to use re-soled La Sportiva Sparkles. Rennie was hiking down scree in the mist and happened to look to her left, and found a patch big enough to make one turn. She raked off the rocks, clicked into her bindings and made a turn that continued her record.
“I have noticed a difference in the rising temperatures over the winter in Scotland,” Rennie says. “If we do get snow, temperatures shoot up and melt it.”
Iain Cameron is known as Britain’s snow hunter, documenting snow patches in the UK and feeding his research to the Royal Meteorological Society. According to Cameron, snow has only entirely melted in Scotland six times since the 1700s and three of those years were during Rennie’s record-breaking streak. A 2019 ClimateXChange study on Cairngorms National Park shows days of snow cover at certain elevations reducing by 60 percent in the coming winters.
“The data suggests that snow in Scotland is more prone to disappearing entirely than it was even a few decades ago,” Cameron says. “In general terms, it’s the case that there is less snow around now than there was in the past.”
Iddon has produced a film about Rennie’s feat—Hilly Skiing— which covers the record, climate change and some of the skier’s personal story.
“So many action and adventure snow sports films feature remote locations, gnarly this or that, international travel and heli drops,” Iddon says. “That’s all fine and part of the culture, but there are people like Helen who ski locally year-in and year-out who are the heart and soul of skiing. Anyone who quietly goes about doing something remarkable deserves respect.”
The film, which debuted at the Kendal Mountain Festival and was screened at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival, is now part of the Scottish Screen Archives at the National Library of Scotland.
“Helen’s record is not just impressive, but with Scotland’s unreliable snow record, it is incredible,” Todd says. “As a result, not only is Helen’s record completely unrivaled but almost certainly it will never be bettered.”
