[Closed] AIMUp - Action for the Innerleithen Mechanical Uplift

Generally I agree. Better 10 new trails / investments of £50,000 than one chairlift for £5M.

for xc riders, yes, but for DH riders, they'd probably prefer the one-off investment in a lift and a single trail, more trails can be added later. Whistler's single lower lift provides 49 (i think) trails, all dh-oriented, but some xc-able, and is busy all the time its open (at around £25/day after multi-day discounts).

it'd not be hard to add a load of lift-assisted xc into the mix, if the space was there. It'd not suit everyone, but some could argue there's enough investment in xc riding already?

I think a 'blue' lift assisted xc trail could be a massive success in getting people out onto the trails

The plans do include an xc route or two as well - and there is some already there.

whistler has snow as well in the winter does it not? Innerleithan would have to stand alone on MTB usage - thats the issue and there is not really the room for 50+ trails anyway.

The issue is simply one of visitor numbers. It would need hundreds of people a day every day of the year to be viable. How many people would be paying on a miserable winters wednesday?

The only way it could be done is with massive subsidy. Think a million a year as well as writing off the capital cost

...I think a 'blue' lift assisted xc trail could be a massive success in getting people out onto the trails...

or, just design the climbs so that they're fun too, My Girlfriend loves the climbs at G-T and Ae.

(gentle gradient, use switchbacks, include features)

don't get me wrong, i'd love to see a chairlift. But there are cheaper/easier steps that could be taken to give the local tourist industry a massive boost.

A swoopy blue at innerleithen for example, it'd be ace, i could take my dad/nephew/girlfriend to stay in Inners/Peebles for the weekend, and we'd all have 2 great days out.

(and spend a load of money on accomodation, food, innertubes, coaching, etc.)

as it is now, there's no point taking them there for the weekend; what would we ride on the sunday? - my dad's 70, my nephew is 6, and my girlfriend is still a bit of novice.

If you spend £5M on getting a lift in then I suspect it'll be an even bigger struggle to get yet more cash to build even more trails. If the economics are already stretched trying to justify the installation itself, there's unlikley to be "spare" revenue to pay for more trail development, nevermind basic upkeep / wear & tear due to increased numbers.

So you're talking £5M + however much to achieve something that appeals to the widest cross section of riders. As others have said DH's a pretty small niche, of sport overall and even, some might argue, of MTBing (if you accept it is part of that wider group, call it what you like, folks on bikes 😉

It is tricky balancing mass appeal, accessibility and stuff that provides challenge or opportunity for progression. I still fall on the side of building loads of quality stuff accessible for lots of people compared to one chairlift. You'd certainly want to see some far reaching commitments form the land manager / owners to the future maintenance and development / expansion of the location. Is that in place or is it an assumption it'll happen.

You've got to bear in mind FC'll have to be dealt with.

The only way it could be done is with massive subsidy. Think a million a year as well as writing off the capital cost

Apply the same logic to GT or any of the other Stanes? Are any of them actualy financialy viable on their own or do they rely on a subsidy?

nothing on that sort of scale in terms of subsidy. No staff needed to run th trails, no massive capitol investment, no large ongoing maintenance bill

£6million just for the cafe/bike shop apparently

The £5m capital funding from Forestry Commission Scotland is supported with £200k from Sport Scotland and £740k from Scottish Enterprise.

nothing on that sort of scale in terms of subsidy. No staff needed to run th trails, no massive capitol investment, no large ongoing maintenance bill

Hang on, have you seen the finances for GT or the like. Or FC(S) and the Borders trails? Ought to be careful about such a sweeping statement.

There has been significant capital investment to develop the Stanes (European funding), there are staff (and all the associate expenses of kit, existence etc) and there's always (AFAIK) been a bone of contention that the trails were put in and there wasn't a sufficient or appropriate allowance for ongoing maintenance. Also, how do you think the numerous rebuilds etc have been achieved and new additions.

Might not be same scale as imagined for an uplift at Inners but if we're criticising the proposal for a lack of reality lets not get too caught up in the fact that although comparitively cheap (to £5M) it hasn't been "free" to develop the rest of the Stanes.

whilst the alps/whistler do have a high-paying winter season to provide funding, they also have 4 months of 'downtime' per year. a lift for year-round biking wouldn't suffer from that.

incidentally, i just got back from Armenia, there was a lift there as part of a small town's public transport system (ie not a tourist attraction). Each way was a massive..

7pence.

They may have lower overheads, and cheap labor, but things can be made cheap 🙂

Actualy, off the 7stanes website this time.............

it has a brand new state of the art [b]£8.5m[/b] visitor centre with the following facilities:

•Car parks and bike wash
•Peel Gateway Building: Information, Toilets, Showers & Changing (open 9am – 6pm daily); Wild Watch Room (open 10am – 5pm daily)
•Glentress Peel Bikes operated by Alpine Bikes. Bike Shop and Bike Hire (open 9am - 6pm daily).
•Glentress Peel Café (open 10am – 5.30pm Mon to Fri and 9am – 6pm on Sat and Sun)

And £20/meter was mentioned upt here for trail building, GT has 50miles of trails, that's another £1.6million.

So GT has probably cost over £10million + maintenance.

And downhillers don't complain about braking bumps :-p

or, just design the climbs so that they're fun too, My Girlfriend loves the climbs at G-T and Ae.

(gentle gradient, use switchbacks, include features)

whilst that will help attract folks, I think if you advertised a destination with 'never have to pedal - outdoor fun for all the family', get it in the national rags, people will come from all directions. The idea of riding uphill on a bike is far worse (for a lot of people) than the reality, and I think this makes them stay away.

20 years to build the trails at GT.

Look - if this is such a good idea why has it remained only a pipe dream for so long? Because its simply not viable

thing is, 10 years ago you'd have said a £8m cafe at a trail center would have seemed like an impossible dream. Depends what each government feels like investing in

That will not have ongoing annual costs of many hundreds of thousands of pounds

To be honest £5 million isnt a lot of money when you look at the wider picture. Yes current numbers (downhillers) would make it look unfeasible but riding numbers would probably double at least if there was lift assisted riding if not more. Then factor in the all mountain (140mm travel +) crowd becasue in reality you dont need a downhill bike to ride most of it apart from the obvious bits and numbers increase dramatically I know myself and other members of my riding club 50 or so riders would love something like this. A day riding the red at glentress or a day with lift assisted trails I know what most would prefer. The only reason they dont get used now is becasue people cant be bothered to push up.Spending money on blues is all well and good to encourage new riders but there isn't much difference between them as there is only so much you can do to them before interesting features make it into a red. If they built more trails I know its more money on top of the lift cost based on fun flowy reds its makes it even more appealing to a wider audience yes downhillers may see this as them loosing out but it would be a fair compromise.

That will not have ongoing annual costs of many hundreds of thousands of pounds

lets say it's £150,000 to run an uplift, that only needs an average of 14 riders per day (at £30/pop) to make it completely self-sufficient. If Nevis can make it work, and cwm down run most days of the week (with 2 full busses at weekends), why couldn't somewhere else?

Also how does a xc trail generate funds to make it sustainable beside the £3 car parking fee it can't cover it all. How is glentress paying its loan back. I think the up keep of it is very feasible with even very low numbers as someone calculated earlier.

5lab I agree with you totally 14 riders a day is nothing especially as I stated earlier it will also appeal to all mountain riders me being one. If anything it more feasible than xc trails as it generates more income

one way to look at it is..

Average XC trail : 17 miles long
Average DH trail : 1.5 miles long

based on costs earlier, the xc trail would cost £273,700 to build
DH trail costs £24,150 to build

This would leave £250k per dh trail to put towards a lift. Build 10 of them and you've nearly paid for it 😀

"build it and they will come" - lot to be said for following a dream however mad it might seem - some of the best inventions have come that way!

one way to look at it is..

Average XC trail : is ridden on an AM bike
Average DH trail : should be ridden on an AM bike

yeti - not sure of your point? there's a load of dh trails that wouldn't be much fun on an AM bike, but a trail center with lift could build trails for all abilities (as whistler\sun peaks\silverstar, for example)

A point? Errrm...

Just that it's all mountain biking really and people seem a little hung up on it being DH or XC when most own a bike capable of riding any of it. IMO there's only one DH course in the UK truly deserving of a full on DH bike and you'd still have fun riding it on a hardtail.

Out of interest does 'mechanical' exclude a minibus?

Do FC not harvest trees for a living ❓
Inners must be due to be harvested at some point in the future 😈

druidh - Member
Which raises the question - would it be better to go for uplift (and new DH trails) at Glentress given that there is already a cafe, shop, car park etc?

All this is wonderful and heartwarming, but the dull reality is still there; the Tweed valley is not surrounded by huge mountains, its not that scenic, its got pretty poor transport links and the DH tracks are short, however sweet..
The idea that building a lift will suddenly produce a thousand new downhillers is pretty far fetched too. Add in the problems and increasing costs of transport from any major conurbation in the UK and little tiny wee doubts have to emerge.
Consider also the impact on other DH tracks around the UK, are you going to pay a substantial fee to establish and support a lift at Innerleithen then ride anywhere else?

It's a project that will benefit the downhill scene with some small knock on local effects, with little thought for anyone else.

I'd want see real numbers; how many people will actually pay up front to finance it?

Crikey how many trail centres have good transport links there all in the middle of nowhere come to think of it most descent riding is in the middle of nowhere so transport aint the issue here. As for not getting at least 1000 new riders using the trails I would expect that as the minimum as noted in several posts you open it to a much wider audience ie 140mm travel bikes who cant be bothered with push ups. More riders can only be good for the local community not harm it as it would generate much more income bars, hotels, restaurants especially when a lot of them are struggling to break even now. The only real point you make is it will mean people using other places less which would harm investment in them but that also contradicts your point about not getting 1000 new riders.
by the way im not a downhiller but would still love to see something like this happen as it can only develop the sport and attract new people to it

how many trail centres have good transport links

The M4 seems pretty handy for those that live in London and want to get to Cwm Carn...

Until there are actual figures and actual costs, its a vanity project for about 350 downhillers, I'm afraid.

there's a load of dh trails that wouldn't be much fun on an AM bike

You probably are quite mistaken about what AM bike is then...
Plus what is wrong with pedalling your bike uphill.

how many trail centres have good transport links

M6 covers loads too.

There is just not enough to justify this, be nice if it did but even doubly the current riders wouldn't pay. A nice pipe dream that's been discussed for what over decade?

First I'll admit to not being a number cruncher, I'll leave that to others.

But I also think all this talk of DH is missing the point. I love riding my trail bike up & down but I will happily drive to France/Italy, etc to enjoy an uplift as do thousands of Brits.

For the project to really stand a chance the trails would have to follow the Whistler principle of having rideable lines for all.

With multiple lines for all then people would happily travel. Have I also not read about people doing a bit off snowboarding there on the odd occasion?

I live near Bradford and there's a chap near me who runs skiing/boarding in his field when the snows right. So pretty sure Inners could open on powder days 🙂

IMO there's only one DH course in the UK truly deserving of a full on DH bike and you'd still have fun riding it on a hardtail.

I take it you haven't seen the Glencoe course?

lucien - Member

"build it and they will come" -

I agree ,but I think it would certainly need a combination of private finance with sympatheic government and local authority support to make it work and therein lies the problem.Edinburgh trams anyone??
How did the many ski resorts start and how were their lifts,roads and infrastructure funded,same goes for the many Greek and Spanish holiday resorts that needed airports and infrastructure too. No way will/can the taxpayer fund something like this and there isn't that much private capital around in the current economic climate either. Any lottery winning MTBers out there looking to invest? 🙂

I agree ,but I think it would certainly need a combination of private finance with sympatheic government and local authority support to make it work and therein lies the problem.Edinburgh trams anyone??
How did the many ski resorts start and how were their lifts,roads and infrastructure funded,same goes for the many Greek and Spanish holiday resorts that needed airports and infrastructure too. No way will/can the taxpayer fund something like this and [b]there isn't that much private capital around in the current economic climate either.[/b] Any lottery winning MTBers out there looking to invest?

This mob managed to get over £700k from a variety of sources to build trails

http://www.callendarestate.co.uk/EZ/ce/ce/index.php

Whilst I'd agree you can ride any trail on any bike, a more matched bike will make it more fun. I did the sdw in a day on my 45lb freeride rig, thus proving that all xc bikes are rubbish outside of a competetive environment 🙂

However to be successful I think this would have to have as much lift assisted xc as 'true' dh. From either perspective, I suspect that if there's a lift, trailmonkeys will appear to build up trails

I'm surprised that no-one from AIMUp has been responding to the questions on this forum. I would have thought that building a large grass-roots following could only help.

Bob, Guy Wedderburn is an old FC croney and we know how nebulous those relationships can be so its no surprise money had made its way towards his project.

I think the central problem was summed up nicely earlier by Crikey:

Until there are actual figures and actual costs, its a vanity project for about 350 downhillers, I'm afraid

You can hypothesise about only "needing" 14 riders per day @ 30 quid each but the bottom line is that even with those very moderate figures, on wet crappy days in November you will not consistently find those 14 riders! Even if 60 people turn up on a particularly good saturday that doesn't cover the weeks expenses, but you'll be asking the same people to come back again next weekend. and the next. and the next.
Even if you can find some day visitors on a good day they wont turn round on a crap tuesday and say "i know! Lets go up the chairlift to see bugger all at minch moor"

Its all irrelevant anyway until you[i] know[/i] how much it will cost and have done accurate, relevant and realistic market research.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record so i'll shut up now 🙂

Can I stick my neck out a bit and say that I hope it doesn't get built?
I love Inners, mainly for the reason that there are top quality trails with no-one on them, I usually have the place to myself.
Building a lift would encourage more facilities, cafes, toilets all that malarky, which GT already has. GT is far too busy as a result, which detracts from the fun and also has seen a lot of the trails sanitised for the weekend warrior.
I think Inner's charm is the fact that it is slmost hidden from the masses at GT and from a purely selfish point of view I would like it to remain that way.
And I like a few rides to the top (35LB coil sprung full suss) Usually knackered after 6-8 runs in a day but I can't see me doing many more than that with an uplift there.

If thousands can flock to the Scottish ski resorts to ride boiler plate ice in between horrendous lift queues on antiquated ski lifts, I'm sure there must be enough riders out there to support a lift at Innerleithen.

Morzine in June was heaving, and I mean absolutely stowed, with hundreds of British downhillers. There are plenty of riders out there.

Proper uplift with multiple trails less than an hour from Edinburgh and and hour and a half from Glasgow would be amazing.

GT is far too busy as a result

Havers.

The car parks are busy.

The top of Spooky Wood is busy.

But the trails are generally very quiet even on peak weekends. I've never encountered any congestion at GT.

If thousands can flock to the Scottish ski resorts to ride boiler plate ice in between horrendous lift queues on antiquated ski lifts, I'm sure there must be enough riders out there to support a lift at Innerleithen.

There's far more skiers than there is mountain bikers.

Morzine in June was heaving, and I mean absolutely stowed, with hundreds of British downhillers. There are plenty of riders out there.

Hmmm! Alps or one hill in Scotland, I wonder what they'll choose?

I'm sure I've come across as far more negative than I actually am, but the success of the whole 7 stanes project is a pretty fragile one in my opinion. Over the last 4 or more years, we would do 3 or 4 trips up a year, with the full B&B and nights out in Peebles or Innerleithen. I've not been to any of the Stanes for about 12 months, largely due to the cost of transport and accomodation, choosing to ride more locally.
I view my experience as an example of how fragile, maybe how fickle we can be in terms of our riding and in turn, how delicate the balance is in terms of economies like the Tweed Valley.

I would hate to see one large scale project like a lift go wrong and have a knock on effect on inward investment in the area for years to come. Do what works; xc trails and lots of them, rather than all eggs in one basket..

There's far more skiers than there is mountain bikers.

Both unofficial sources but

"There are nearly two million skiers in the UK and they need to be represented by a top level ski and snowboard team," said Bell.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/robhodgetts/2010/03/british_skiing_faces_slippery.html

2.5 million regular trail riders and "enthusiasts" + 3 million casual cyclists

http://www.imba.org.uk/research_and_reports/MTB_Usage_Stats.html

Hmmm! Alps or one hill in Scotland, I wonder what they'll choose?

313 racers turned up at Inners last month: http://www.sda-races.com/sda/event.asp?EventID=54

313 racers turned up at Inners last month: http://www.sda-races.com/sda/event.asp?EventID=54

but the reality is you'd be asking those 313 racers to come to inners every weekend to help make it viable. the other thing is they were all there for a race, would those 313 return irresepective of where the next round of the SDA was? i doubt it i'm afraid.

Build it and they will come! Personally I agree with this. Uplifts are ok, but you still spend most of your day sat on the bus. It is always a struggle to organise dates my friends can all make when the uplift only runs once or twice a month. Weekday trips are much better for me too, with my son in nursery my wife isn't left holding the baby for a constant 48 or 72 hours like a long weekend.

As previously stated, Cwmcarn runs most days and is usually full with only one and a half tracks to offer!