Original subtitles

This is the Cairngorm National Park -

Scotland's greatest winter wilderness,

where snow is a way of life.

Yeah, snow's amazing. We love snow.

Through the depths of winter, we'll be following the lives

of the people who depend on Cairngorm for their very survival.

Can't see where we're going, but we're just going anyway.

We'll witness their battles to keep the mountain open,

whatever the weather.

Every day's different. So, some days we'll come here,

you could use a leaf blower to get rid of it. And then,

the next time you come back, it's like digging concrete.

Hi, guys!

We'll get to know the struggles of the businesses of Aviemore, serving

thousands of tourists attracted by the snow and the stunning landscape.

If there's snow up there, and it's good snow,

I mean, there's thousands and thousands of people that can turn up.

And we'll meet the remarkable people who inhabit this very special world.

Everybody's always happy.

And may all your children be as cute as the piper.

You've just got to try and be as happy as you can.

Welcome to winter on The Mountain.

It's been a mild winter on the mountain so far,

so the team are hoping for a white Christmas and some exciting skiing.

Looking forward to another bumper season.

Some snow has arrived,

and they managed to open the slopes for a day.

It's going great today. Just got the one run on the Ciste open,

so people are enjoying themselves and getting a wee bit

of pre-Christmas skiing in, which is always good.

But as so often in Scotland,

the weather gods are not reading the script.

Lift's closed now. Excuse me!

Hey! 'Scuse me! Stop!

It's 6am on a cold December morning

and Colin Matthew is on the road to the mountain to check the slopes.

Colin's the man in charge of making sure the UK's busiest ski resort

can open for the Christmas holiday season.

But it all depends on the weather.

Whoa!

That's icy.

Don't panic.

Bit of pressure now, see if we can get opened or not.

It all depends on what snow's fell last night.

But on the hill, the snow cover is still thin,

so the RAF Search and Rescue helicopter is called in to

give the team some emergency rescue training.

King137, this is Cairngorm Iain. Good morning.

The ski patrollers are the heart of the mountain crew.

They're all experienced skiers - some full-time, some-part time.

Their job is to ensure the safety of everyone on the mountain,

so they need to have the skills to rescue and evacuate any casualties.

The likelihood is the next time you'll see us will be

at two o'clock in the morning

and we're asking you to get winched in and winched out.

We're going to go and do a winch practice.

It just gets you used to working with the kit.

Jo Smith is a part-time ski patroller.

We would get in front of you

and block this doorway to make sure you can't fall out.

In her other life, she's a mother of three

and a lecturer at Stirling University,

so being winched into a helicopter is a bit out of her comfort zone.

I'm really nervous at flying,

so this makes me very nervous,

looking at the helicopter and thinking,

"If I had to get on it..."

Cos it might be that one day I will have to go on it.

I think in that situation,

you would just lose your nerves then anyway.

But I think I will try it today. Hopefully!

I'm going to give it a go.

Oh! You're going to give it a go? Yes, yes...

She's a good sort,

so she's going to have a go at getting winched in and out.

And it'll probably cure her fear of flying.

It's quite hard to manage to get time to go training with

the RAF, so if you get a chance like this, you want to use it.

And she'd probably regret it if she didn't do it,

so it's a good thing to do.

She looks happy now, look.

They're away to Lossie now. Yeah, that's them gone.

You're OK, Jo, you're OK, they've gone away.

Oh, no, they're coming back. They're coming back.

Very nervous.

Just got to get on with it and do it!

The Ski Patrol can expect to handle up to 350 casualties

throughout the winter.

For Jo, overcoming her fear of flying

is an essential step forward in her training

I was absolutely petrified.

I was petrified in the helicopter as well

cos I didn't realise that they didn't shut the door.

So I was sitting there with a big wide open door,

and I was closest to the door,

but actually seeing the area

once I was up in the flight, it was worth it all.

Now that I know I've done it, and I know I can do it,

and I'll be thinking more about the emergency situation than actually my

fear of flying as well, so focus on the things that I need to focus on.

'How was it?'

Amazing! Scary... I can't talk, but it was amazing!

'Jo, Jo!'

I feel quite sick, but it was absolutely amazing

and I'm really, really pleased that I just felt that wee bit of pressure

and got out my comfort zone and did it, so it's just absolutely amazing.

Halfway down the hill, between the mountain and the village

of Aviemore, lies Scotland's only free-range Reindeer Centre, a small

business almost entirely dependent on a successful Christmas season.

Owner Tilly Smith is getting the reindeer

prepared for the biggest week of their year.

What are you going to be doing? We're just going to put

a Christmas harness on them. Oh, right.

A little practice session for reindeer.

OK. You look like you'd make a good Santa -

you've got a nice red jumper on. Yeah, I would.

THEY LAUGH

Shame about the lack of beard.

That can be arranged. Yeah!

For Tilly and her daughter, Fiona, this is their busiest time.

Their reindeer are in demand all over the country,

from Harrods in London to Aviemore's high street.

Whenever you touch a reindeer, for them, it's like an insect

landing or something, so you're better being quite firm with them.

Sometimes they shake a little bit.

The reindeer are to be the star attraction at Aviemore's

annual children's parade on Christmas Eve.

For the past 12 years, the parade has been

the centrepiece of the village celebrations.

We follow the pipe band all the way down

the main street of Aviemore.

And the parade itself is about half a mile,

so it's quite a long parade.

But it's nice, it's really nice.

The Reindeer Centre was established in Aviemore in 1952,

and there are now around 150 of the animals,

allowed to range freely across the mountainside.

You know, we should really put collars on the reindeer,

with tinsel on them, it'd be hilarious!

Aye, that would be very cute! It would be very cute, wouldn't it?

That's such a good idea!

Tilly has been looking after them since 1981 and sees them

as an essential part of the Christmas spirit.

I love going out and about with these boys on the run up to

Christmas. You bring so much joy to people.

At the weekend, I was in Inverness,

and there was this little girl, she had Down's syndrome.

She was so excited. She was just...

just shivering with excitement.

Do you know? I made that girl's day. Well, I didn't, the reindeer did.

For me, that's the best.

Day two of survival training -

and this time, it's avalanche rescue work.

Oh, yeah!

Training's over, let's go to the pub!

High on the mountain, avalanches are an ever-present risk,

so the team is learning how to find bodies buried deep in the snow.

Jo has recovered her composure somewhat.

The technique is, emm...

You go up and down!

You go up and down.

We're probing to see if we can find something buried in the snow.

Everybody'll probe once, twice, three times and then

if nobody gets a strike, we'll move on with the line in a small step.

And that's as technical as I can say!

Colin takes the survival training a step further

when he buries one of his team in the snow.

I'm OK.

You're OK? Yeah.

He sets his Labrador Coire to sniff her out for the avalanche patrol.

The volunteer just happens to be his wife, Jackie.

I hope he finds her or I'm cooking dinner tonight!

Where is he? Where is he? Where is he?

Right. Indication here with the dog.

Get some shovelers here, please!

What is it? Right, I'll take the dog

out the way cos he's done an indication,

so hopefully the shovelers will go in. C'mon here!

Come here, good boy. Sit. Sit.

Yeah, Coire's my dog, and got him ten years ago.

Got him for the guys on the Patrol who are more at risk

in the morning to get avalanched.

We got the head!

Oh, good, thank God for that!

It's a game to the dog. He just loves it.

Then he gets a glove to play with when he's done it,

and that's his reward. Good boy! Good boy!

I wouldn't like to be in there too long.

My breathing rate was picking up.

I could feel like getting very warm in that wee area.

So dinner's safe, then.

Ten miles below the mountain lies the village of Aviemore.

Clustered around its long high street, it's a mix of guesthouses,

hotels, mountain shops and bars, all of them geared at the

holiday market, and all dependent on a big winter for their survival.

At Pine Bank Chalets, Simon Hughes is already worried

by the mild season so far.

Certainly, in winter-time, if the mountain's open, without

a doubt, there's increased trade, particularly at weekends.

But, yeah, certainly in our three years here, the previous years

the mountain's been open at this point in time,

so we are sort of seeing an impact on sales.

Simon and his wife, Tanja,

moved up from London just over three years ago.

How you doing?

This is my wife, Tanja, and our daughter, Maisie, six months old!

The decision meant quite a lifestyle change for the young couple,

especially for Tanja, who quit her high-powered job

as a property fund manager.

I quite liked my job and I was...

Well, I suppose my career was...

I was doing OK.

So it was a bit of a surprise

when Simon first suggested it, but he somehow convinced me

to give up everything and run up to the Highlands with him!

For Simon, changing beds and cleaning chalets is a long way

from the world he left behind in London.

Last job in London was in marketing at L'Oreal,

in the luxury fragrance division.

Always take the cloth! That's all good. So...

Happy for people to arrive.

It's a far cry from luxury fragrances,

but not content with running Pine Bank Chalets, the couple bought

over an ailing bar in Aviemore's high street, and transformed

it into Super Panther - their take on a sophisticated London bar.

Cocktail menu. Mm-hm.

How many are you thinking? About six or eight...

But then baby Maisie arrived, and

with virtually no prior experience of the hospitality industry,

they find themselves struggling to keep across both the businesses

and the family.

The hard bit, I think, is having...being able to give

a personal touch and being able to oversee everything.

Being two businesses and having a baby, kind of means that we

can only really do that in one place at any one time.

So... Oops, that's the vom.

Mountain boss Colin Matthew has got a plan to beat the weather.

He's ordered up a massive new snow gun from Italy,

to create artificial snow where the real stuff is thin.

This huge machine turns water into snow,

allowing the team to build up the ski runs.

It's the first gun of this size in the UK,

and can deliver four litres of snow per second.

For Colin, it's a key weapon in his battle to get the resort open

for Christmas.

P-man, the mechanic, doesn't quite share his enthusiasm.

Just another thing to fix at the end of the day...when Colin breaks it.

I break things, he fixes them.

Ready?

The gang arrives to celebrate the big moment as the water is

connected, and the snow gun switched on for the first time.

The big lady's ready to...get a wee tickle.

Start gushing. Start gushing, hopefully.

If that doesn't start gushing, I'll be gushing.

Here we go.

Oh-ho! Incoming!

Look at that! Whoa-ho-ho!

Anything to make him happy.

Aye, if you keep him happy, he feeds you with bacon rolls.

It's like a trade-off.

He's happy. Stops girning at us.

Makes our life easier.

But as always on the mountain,

there's a serious purpose behind the banter.

For Colin the snow guns could prove

the difference between a mediocre season and a great one.

Some resorts in the Alps have hundreds of these things

all over the mountain, so we're just building up to that hopefully.

Yeah, you want to be a top resort.

Up there with the best of them.

We fight the weather, we can't help that.

When we do get the weather, we want to make the best conditions,

the best snow.

Keep the runs open longer. Encourage more people to come to Scotland.

Stay home, go skiing -

if they can accept the weather conditions we get.

As the crowds of hopeful skiers descend on Aviemore,

at Super Panther, Simon suddenly has more business

than he can cope with.

One of his chefs has failed to show.

Well, the mountain's closed, which is bad for skiing,

but good for us cos it means no-one's up there

and everyone's down here in the village spending money.

So, yeah, it's just been a bit hectic.

We're chasing our tails a little bit.

Hey, Katie.

Do you know who took that order, the last one that just came up?

Yeah, that was me. OK, how many wings is it?

Nine. Nine wings. Yeah, for all of them.

OK, so... Perfect. Thank you. Cheers.

One of our chefs didn't turn up for work,

so it's been a bit all-hands-on-deck.

Just a bit hectic.

Everyone's come in at once, which always happens

and everyone expects their food immediately, so we'll see.

Here's the one with the cheese on the side.

Well, the hills, the mountain's shut.

The Cairngorm mountain, that's shut.

And a cafe just along the road's shut as well.

So, I think everyone's just trying to get in to the warm.

It's not very nice weather either.

Just... Are you looking for some food?

Yes, please. Just to let you know,

there's going to be a half-hour wait on it. OK, we'll pass on it.

People are just wondering why we don't have enough staff on.

Why it's taking so long for food and stuff like that.

Stressful. Really busy.

It's really busy now. Yeah, I know.

Och! I'm going to cry!

Aviemore's only independent butcher's sits

just off the high street.

It's very much a family business,

presided over by Fraser Mackinnon, and employing his three sons,

Rory, the twins - Lewis and Scott - and his daughter, Connie.

This is Scott, one of the twins.

They call us Thick and Thin!

Born and bred into it, so...not much choice to be doing it or not.

'What's it like working with your dad?'

Oh, no comment!

Can't even answer that question, to be honest with you.

Need to ask him when his dad's not here!

Although Fraser's been a butcher for 35 years,

he's only recently returned to Aviemore,

seeing a gap in the market for a quality private butcher.

He opened this shop just ten weeks ago, so with all those

family mouths to feed, he needs it to be a good Christmas.

And as Christmas Eve looms,

the turkeys are going out the door fast.

We're seeing the end of it now, that's the final, maybe,

dozen orders just to be picked up.

A wee bit too fast for Fraser.

I'm not going to be a happy man when I go home,

cos I've had to sell my own Christmas dinner.

My darling daughter didn't take the order onto the computer.

The very first order.

And they came in for it this morning and there was nothing,

absolutely nothing left apart from our Christmas dinner.

Connie's not in the mood to take the blame for this one.

They just always gang up on me.

THEY IMITATE CRYING BABY, VIOLIN

Yeah, like that. That's exactly what I'm talking about.

The Christmas spirit is already under

pressure in the Mackinnon household.

Maybe it's going to be a steak pie, or a bit of beef, or something.

I'll see what the mood's like.

Maybe I'll just come back down here and work all day.

And leave them at home. They can fight amongst themselves.

Overnight, the snow which everyone's been waiting for

has finally arrived...

with a vengeance.

On the road that is the only link between Aviemore and the hill,

the snow gates are closed.

There was about 12 inches

of snow last night in the valley,

so pretty hard even just getting into work this morning.

None of the roads have been ploughed beyond Aviemore.

Electricity was off last night at the house.

And we're just waiting at the snow gates to let the ploughs

do a little bit of work.

If the skiers are to get to the slopes, it's vital to get

the road open,

but there's so much snow, even the snowploughs are struggling to cope.

Whoa!

Trying to get through, but the snow's heavier than yesterday

so we'll just get pushed against the barrier

and end up going over the edge.

By seven o'clock, a route has been cut through,

the snow gates are open, and the staff can get on with

preparing the slopes for the day ahead.

High on the hill, Adam McInnes takes out the Winch Cat - one of the

massive machines designed to groom the slopes into peak condition.

He takes it high up the ski runs to assess the chances of getting

open today.

Quite windy up here today, so...

The wind's across the line, so...

It's not looking too promising right now.

Adam's a long-term mountain man -

he's worked on Cairngorm for 20 years.

Like the rest of the team, he lives in the valley below,

and is all too well aware that a good season for them

means success for Aviemore as well.

When you've been up here so long and you're local to the area,

you want it to be better when you know how many

people down in the valley rely on having a good season up here.

All the...all the shops, even the petrol stations,

all the guest houses and hotels.

So many people up here are involved in the tourist industry, you know.

If you've got no snow up here, it definitely affects them down there.

VOICE ON WALKIE-TALKIE

Yeah, I'm up here just now. Too windy for any uplift, I'd say.

Adam radios in with the bad news.

Although there's no lack of snow,

the wind is too strong to safely operate any of the ski-lifts.

We can see by the swing on the bars here the direction of the wind.

It's just...it's too dangerous to open the lift.

The team is called off the hill for their own safety.

The mountain is closed.

Winter's come back with a little bit of vengeance today.

Been snowing heavily all day,

having problems with the access road just now,

it's shut to up-hill traffic.

Pulling out early, but it's great to see the snow coming back.

It's just it's come back with storm-force winds.

It's a huge disappointment.

On Christmas Eve, gales lash both village and mountain.

The ski runs are closed.

And for the first time in its 12-year history,

Aviemore's Christmas Parade is cancelled.

Tilly's reindeer have to stay on the hill.

It's Hogmanay, and in Aviemore, Spud the Piper

is heading off for one of the best nights of his year.

It's Hogmanay, it's always a very...

delightful, as well as...

What'll I say? Frightening day because

all sorts of crazy things happen today.

And it's always a laugh.

It's always a bit of craic, you know?

First, it's a stop at Fraser's, the butcher's,

to stock up for the long night ahead.

What's the craic?

I need one of these...steak and ale, please.

We've got no steak and ale. I'm sorry, darling?

Don't give me the chat, just give me a pie!

We don't have any steak and ale!

Well, a steak one, then.

What size? That one there.

How's business going? Aye. Steak pie mania.

See you tonight at the Bells.

Will you still be selling pies, or making them...?

Yes, I'll be counting pies in my sleep instead of sheep.

No, but will you manage to celebrate the New Year

with your family and...?

I'll probably be asleep, mate. Aye. Ach well.

Well, listen, all the best for New Year, when it comes.

And I wish you all the best for 2014.

Have a good day. Bill's in the post, mate.

Like the rest of Aviemore, Fraser's children are looking forward

to a good night out while their father dreams of steak pies.

They're all organised.

Connie's been to the salon - you'll see the colour of her -

she's turned from peely-wally white to golden-brown overnight.

But the family tensions are never far away.

Connie's still there, but Fraser's had to fire Lewis,

one of his twin boys.

We fired him Boxing Day. Had enough of his attitude.

Here you go. That's great. That's super. Have a good one!

Great, you too. Thanks very much.

I've fired Rory twice.

HE LAUGHS

He was the same at his age.

And just, turn your back and he was doing nothing.

And just... Terrible attitude, terrible.

Fortunately, he's turned round a bit now and he's changed,

so... Working with your father,

it's always a...it's always a dodgy experience.

Spud's first gig of the night is to welcome in the New Year

at the Cairngorm Hotel.

We're in a room, in Room 102...?

101. 101 in the Cairngorm Hotel and it's this room that the balcony's

outside on, that we go out to take in the Bells.

There's a nice tree and lots of people.

It's unbelievable how many people are out there, really. Isn't it?

This is great. I just expect this to...

Myself and Kevin have spent the last eight years on the roof

together at New Year, so he's always the first one I shake

his hand and, we don't kiss because he's got a huge big moustache.

I feel like Jon Bon Jovi!

Outside Room 101 of the Cairngorm Hotel, there's no Big Ben,

so timings are always a little approximate.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Happy New Year!

HE PLAYS SCOTLAND THE BRAVE

Pretty amazing, isn't it?

Just looking forward to a great season 2014 up the mountain.

We've started off the last few days with great snow conditions.

We've got great snow, so...tomorrow should be busy. Fantastic!

Cheers!

Excuse me. I'm trying to get out!

He's trying to get out!

I think that's the most people I've ever saw outside

the Cairngorm Hotel in my life.

I felt really a bit like Jon Bon Jovi out there with the pipes.

Anyway! Here we are! So we're going to Coylum now.

This is called first-footing.

First-footing is a very ancient tradition in Scotland.

And if you went to somebody's house after 12 o'clock on the Bells,

you would take a bit of coal with you.

And the coal would keep the fire going of the person's house

that you were going into.

You know, we're going first-footing, it doesn't really

matter about the coal because they don't have a fire anyway!

HE PLAYS

Next time on The Mountain,

the skiing finally takes off...

We've got bottom lifts on, train's ready to go. Yeah, looking good!

The mountain men come off the hill to test

themselves in a 24-hour endurance race.

Keep smiling, keep enjoying it,

giving a big, "Oi, oi's," as you come past!

Oi, oi!

And Burns Night means a traditional delight on the menu!

Haggis. Big time haggis weekend.

Our chef was out first light this morning in the mountains.

He managed to capture for us one of these elusive creatures.

They get very jumpy. Very, very jumpy. Just about Carlisle.