Weardale Ski Club celebrates its 60th anniversary this year

This scene has been repeated on snowy days for exactly 60 years: it was on February 24, 1964, that the first members of the Weardale Ski Club launched themselves down the first run – rather than Ski Sunday, this is ski 60.

The first skiers in Weardale over the weekend of February 24/25, 1964, as pictured in The Northern Echo: Bill Tait, Jim Harris, Mary Nattrass and Oliver Smith

“Weardale was turned into a winter playground for sportsmen yesterday when skiers made the first downhill run from a thousand foot slope to launch the sport in the area,” said The Northern Echo the following day. “About a dozen keen skiers made the first trials over the course, gliding at moderate speeds over the thin covering of snow on the peak into the valley below.”

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Man has been skiing for millennia – the oldest skis in the world have been found in Finland and Russia dating from 6000BC – although the word “ski” didn’t come across from Scandinavian languages into English until 1755. This enabled the first skier to be spotted in Weardale in 1790, although remote farmers must have been strapping pieces of wood to their boots to check on their animals long before then.

Skiing as a sport began to evolve in the late 19th Century, with the Ski Club of Great Britain being formed in London in 1903.

In 1957, Durham School installed a rope tow to drag people up Observatory Hill so they could ski down, which created the first ski community in the area.

The first skiers 60 years ago in Weardale wait for a lift which was run off a wheel on the back of an old green Fordson tractor

The winter of 1962-63 really fired their interest. It was the “Big Freeze”: snow fell on Boxing Day and lasted until mid-March – only three winters since 1658 have been colder.

It encouraged those skiing on Observatory Hill to wonder if they could develop a higher home for their sport, and the snow lingered long enough for them to have a good scout round the dales.

They were university lecturers and students coupled with Durham natives, several of whom had discovered skiing while on national service. Names like Eric Peart, Jimmy Harris, Bill Hall, Sluggy Slowe, Bill Saunders, George Proud, Mary Smith, William Nattrass and Bill Tate frequently crop up in the early reports.

Through their Ordnance Survey studies, they discovered that Swinhope on the south side of Weardale, above Westgate, was their ideal location. It was easily reachable from Durham and its runs were north facing, meaning the snow would stay longer. Dora’s Seat at its peak is 2,159ft (658 metres) above sea level – Stanhope down below is about 202ft above sea level and is usually at least four degrees warmer.

The Weardale Ski Club held its first meeting on November 27, 1963, at Bede College in Durham. It soon had 130 members, including a judge, and a tractor without any working lights. Jim Harris, still a club member, drove the tractor 30 miles up to Swinhope, with cars front and back lighting the way, and was stopped twice on the four hour journey by police who seemed to accept the unlikely explanation that the tractor was going to be turned into a makeshift ski lift.

Then the club members waited for snow.

The previous winter had suggested that an Ice Age was coming but, of course, the British weather is not predictable, and so it wasn’t until late February 60 years ago that there was enough snow for the inaugural ski.

The first skiers at Swinhope 60 years ago when the clubhouse was just an old henhouse

Then came the real work in the summer of 1964. A large old henhouse was dragged up to the slopes where it was positioned on old railway sleepers and so the first clubhouse was born.

The club recruited an army of volunteers that skied during the winter and worked improving the facilities in the summer, and then they recruited the Army itself: in 1975, an Air Corps helicopter from RAF Topcliffe lifted the homemade pylons into position as the club upgraded the rope tow.

A second rope tow was added in 1979 so that today there’s a half-a-mile walk from the car park across the fell to F1, the first rope tow, which pulls skiers up to Fendrith Lodge, the upgraded henhouse which now has solar and wind-generated electricity plus even a compostable toilet. From the lodge, the F2 rope tow hauls skiers up to the slopes.

Skiiers on the tow lift in Weardale. Below: The fully heated Fendrith Lodge

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Together, the lifts take five minutes to drag skiers 787 metres until they reach the peak at 2,150ft, which is just beneath Dora’s Seat. Then the runs back down are the longest in England.

“There is something for everything: gullies of deep snow for boarders, kite skiing for miles on the tops, and then the runs down for the skiers,” says club chair Judy Tait whose father, Bill, features on the Echo photo that was taken 60 years ago of the first run.

But it needs snow. A newspaper headline in 1963 as news of the formation of the club broke said: “Wanted – Six to Twelve Inches of Snow.”

The Kässbohrer Pisten Bully (known as "the KB") collecting snow caught by the snowfences and distributing it onto the runs

The club’s volunteers have built snowfences on the fells to catch windblown snow. Then, the Kässbohrer Pisten Bully, one of several curious tracked vehicles that the club has had over the years, collects the snow and spreads it on the runs.

But the weather is not what it was.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, the club averaged 45 days of skiing a year, and the Daily Telegraph published Weardale’s snow conditions every Friday. There were times when the snow was so deep that skiers had to crawl across it to the runs on their bellies to avoid sinking in and one mid-summer day in 1986, there was such a sudden, severe blizzard that 100 people were stranded on the slopes in their shorts and needing to be led down to more temperate climes.

There was a decade of poor winters from 1998, but in January 2010, so much snow fell that club membership was closed at 600 and they were turning people away.

In January 2010, after a decade of mild winters, skiers returned to Weardale in large numbers

There are still nearly 600 members and in most recent years, they’ve averaged 10 days of skiing as global warming changes our weather.

“We are facing the same problems as the Alps as far as snow goes,” says Judy. “We get a whole lot of snow but because the ground is wet and warm, it doesn’t stay, so we have to keep everything ready so we can make the most of it when it comes. We’re also noticing that winters are creeping in earlier, into November and December.”

The club is completely run by volunteers who have amazing skills to upgrade the electricity supply and maintain, and operate, the lifts. Names like Kevin Moore, Steve Luard and Steve Lumb regularly crop up in latter day reports.

Skiing in Weardale

“It is a massive effort by the board and our volunteers, and we are only here because of the work of those who have gone before,” says Judy, “but when you stand on the veranda of the lodge, with the sun glinting off the sun, it is beautiful, and if you have been down the slopes – that’s what it is all about.

“It genuinely is my favourite place in the world to ski.”

And, even better, the forecast suggests they could be skiing this weekend as well, just as they were 60 years ago.

“There’s snow due,” says Judy. “We are ever hopeful.”

The old clubhouse in the snow in the early days

• Go to skiweardale.com for details of how to join and also to see live webcams showing the snow (or grass) on the slopes. Only members can ski. An annual pass is £48 for an adult. There is no tuition so people are advised to learn the basics at somewhere like the Silksworth ski slope in Sunderland before heading out onto the real snow.

One of Weardale's two Doppelmayer drag lifts taking skiers up the side of Swinhope

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