Glasgow Ski Touring Club - Now defunct
Founded as Glasgow Nordic Ski Club in 1984 we are a small and friendly club based around Glasgow, but with members across Scotland. We aim to bring together like-minded people and help them get out on the hills and trails with skiing companions to suit. We welcome all kinds of free-heel skiers from track skiers to mountain tourers, telemarkers and ski-mountaineers. Our name change took place to include this wider interest. We encourage all ranges of ability from beginners to advanced.
We have a regular programme of winter weekend meets, mostly around the Cairngorm area, and usually in mountaineering club huts or in hostels.
In the variable Scottish climate we ski according to snow and weather conditions, often in small groups rather than all together. If there’s bad weather or no snow we generally go for walks or take bikes. Occasional day trips are organised at short notice more locally if the conditions are good, using local hills, parks or even golf courses.
We have a full programme of summer trips with longer visits to west coast islands and hill-walking areas as well as day cycling trips.
Groups of club members often arrange ski trips abroad – Norway, Finland and Austria are regular destinations. Social events occur throughout the year, with sessions at the Sno-zone artificial slope at Braehead, slide shows, barbecues and parties.
We have one BASI instructor in the club who is qualified to teach Level One Telemark and Level Two Alpine. Another member is a very enthusiastic and successful cross-country competitor, regularly travelling to international events.
Glasgow Nordic Ski Club
Article reproduced from the October 2025 Master Newsletter
Written by Adam Pinney
It is sad to report that the Glasgow Nordic Ski Club, founded in the mid-1980s, finally closed earlier this year, mainly due to a lack of members. Originally conceived in a discussion between yours-truly scrumptious and Bryony Lean on the train back from Edinburgh to Glasgow after a Finnish language lesson probably in 1984 (after a similar attempt had been made to establish a club within Strathclyde University), it grew to become probably the largest Nordic ski club in Scotland (this was before Huntly took off).
The first trip made by the club was to Aviemore, where Highland Guides had its shop on the road up to the downhill ski area, with a view to buying equipment and skiing (there was ample snow even down in the town of Aviemore). Those without equipment went into the shop while those of us with it started skiing just behind the shop. We’d not gone more than 100 metres or so when the call came from the shop that the police had called and, if we wanted to get back over the Drumochter Pass, we needed to leave immediately. So we could argue that the first ski trip did indeed take place in Aviemore but, in fact, much of the activity took place, once we were safely over the pass, on Pitlochry golf course!
Further trips followed, both touring and racing, over the following years, especially because snow was still plentiful in Scotland at that time. Club members were regular participants in the UK championships held at Glenmore Lodge, the Scottish championships at Glensee and the Glen Isla March held there. There was also good participation in roller ski events, including Bellahouston Park, Aviemore centre, Glamis Castle and Hetton Lyons. In addition to its trips, the club used to meet on Monday evenings (if I
remember correctly) in the Scaramouche Pub in the west end of Glasgow, a fact recorded in later editions of the famous Bohemian Rhapsody by popular beat combo Queen.
The club even inadvertently found its way onto the national TV news, when one member got lost in the Cairngorms and had to spend several nights in a snow hole he’d dug himself, before finally emerging, if I remember correctly, 5 days later. The club wasn’t entirely without controversy, either, with one chairman taking a position with regard to developments in Lurchers Gully which were diametrically opposed to those of the wider membership, and there was even an economy drive, with one member famously melting down the scrapings of his glide wax to make a sort of universal glide wax. How skis waxed with this recycled product performed remains, thankfully, unknown to this day!
There was a split from the Glasgow Nordic Ski Club because of its lack of interest in racing, to create Western Track, whose members were also very active in events for a while. I cut my editing teeth on the Newsletter of the GNSC, the first edition of which ran to a stunning two sides of A4. It was always claimed by club members in the mid- to late 1980s that it was possible to ski on snow on every day of the year, even if this meant trekking quite a long way into the Cairngorms to find a small patch to ski up and down on. Its ultimate demise is perhaps indicative of the drop of interest in roller skiing and roller ski racing, combined with the general lack of snow even in Scotland these days. It leaves the west of Scotland with no Nordic club any more.