Cairngorm Mountain
United Kingdom
1 / 21Cairngorm Mountain ski resort in the Scottish Highlands offers 32 km of pistes for skiing and snowboarding at elevations of 640 to 1,230 m.
Trail information
Cairngorm lies above Aviemore in the heart of the national park of the same name and is Scotland's second largest area. A funicular climbs to the top, the only ski funicular in Britain; defects in its piers kept it closed from 2018 to 2023 until the viaduct was rebuilt. The runs are nearly all easy on open treeless slopes, and above the lifts begins the Cairngorm plateau - Britain's only stretch of arctic tundra, with a climate and a protected status of its own.
Maps
Lifts
- 1Funiculars
- 9T-bars and platters
- 1Rope tows
- 2Magic carpets
Video
Contacts and opening hours
Average monthly snowfall at Cairngorm Mountain
Snowfall per month - cm. Below each bar - how many days it snowed that month. Observation data for the last 3 completed seasons.
Accommodation
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Aviemore
Other accommodation near the resort
What visitors say about the resort
The funicular collects most of the praise: it lifts you from the car park to the Ptarmigan restaurant in minutes and comes free with a lift pass. Facilities are a clear step above the other Scottish hills, and on a clear day the place gets compared to small European resorts. Reviewers value the terrace views, the overflow car park with a shuttle at peak times and the hourly Aviemore bus with room for skis.
Unreliability and queues are the recurring gripes. The funicular has sat idle for long stretches: out of action from August 2023 until late February 2025, then closed again for maintenance. Guests describe an hour from car park to top station, half waiting for the bus and half for the railway. Summit wind can strand everyone at the base, and weather shuts the pistes roughly a third of the time. Full price when only a few lifts turn, and poor overpriced food, annoy people.
An editorial summary of public reviews on specialist sites. This is not a visitor review: we retell what is written about the resort most often, both praise and criticism.
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