January 11, 2025
Ronnie MacDonald
from
United Kingdom
A total disgrace today starting late, told there would be runs opening, which was a lie. Extremely unprofessional staff. Tow kept breaking down and they over sold tickets for the number of uplift tows. They appealed for support recently but the best option would be if they went into receivership and got taken over by a proper management team.
By 12.30 some skiers only had one run and the staff had no idea how to arrange queues.
Lecht, you should have refunded your customers after a disgraceful day with old poorly maintained equipment.
Been to the Lecht many times and always had a hoot.
The owners are a lovely family; very friendly and helpful.
Thankfully it is still family owned so they are not just in the game to make fast cash, unlike natural retreats aka 'the gorm'.
A much smaller resort than 'the gorm', but cheaper and not as busy which means more runs and is also hidden from the wind that closed Cairngorm every other day.
Best food in any resort in Scotland; well priced unlike the robbing fools at Cairngorm who are only interested in profits.
Being over 1000ft below 'the gorm' height, they do suffer from lack of snow at times and have to make do with what they get.
We visited the Lecht in Feburary 2013. We were a mixed ability group, some complete beginners and some intermediates. We found a great mixture of runs for all our levels. Short, but I found more interesting than over at Cairngorm. No queues and we found an efficient system for hiring equipment. All in all, we had a great day on the slopes.
We were staying in Tomintoul, just a few minutes down a very snowing road, which meant we had flexibility about which day we went. I strongly advise that future visitors show flexibility when visiting, as we waited all week for the right conditions (15cm the night before). This covered up all icy patches that you often find in Scotland.
One more thing, I also advise potential visitors to check this website and the webcams before visiting, and not trust the Lecht website. Though personally I would only choose to ski in Scotland when there has been some fresh snow a day or two before, if there is no snow in the week, the conditions are most likely icy.
We are a family of 5. One adult had skied many years ago, rest of us never tried before. We pre booked equipment and one lesson to start with. Ian was a great instructors and after 1 hour we were all hooked. Skied over the next 5 days, 2 hours instruction with Duncan each day (well worth doing this), he managed to accommodate both adults and all 3 children, all with varying ability and confidence. Ideal resort for our first experience of skiing, friendly staff, loved it all!
We visited the Lecht on the 6th Feb 2013. This was our first time Snowboarding in Scotland.
We arrived late because the road from Tomintoul was blocked by 3 cars that could not get up the snow covered road - we hadn't expected this as the Lecht website had earlier said the roads were fine, they were anything but. No one was offered any assistance from the Lecht staff in their tractor and we eventually freed the cars ourselves.
On arrival we hired our gear and were rather disappointed with the quality, the boots had certainly seen some hard times, were looking very ragged and didn't even lace up properly.
Once on the slopes we were further shocked, the snow condition report on their site that morning said:
"Main runs complete good cover of new snow, some icy patches. Ample areas for beginners.There is good snow cover across the whole ski area."
In reality, all of the green runs were solid sheet ice that you could not snowboard safely on. The blue runs were considerably more difficult and as we are relativly inexperienced they were beyond our skill level. There is no good learner snow here, the green runs have no gradient and are only a few tens of metres long before they flatten out completely. There are no intermediate runs for beginners.
Several other things that we were not impressed by:
* No obvious signposting of runs or routes and no one around to help you out.
* No maps of piste outside to let you work out where to go.
* Car park snow clearance poor - massive drifts in the car park and no help getting out, a group of us had to get together to help each other out of the car park.
* No information on road conditions posted anywhere and no staff who knew what was going on.
We will not be going here again, ever; I strongly recommend you do not either. In contrast, the next day (today), we went to Cairngorm mountain and had a fantastic day on some great snow with good pistes and friendly, helpful staff.
I hope this report prevents somebody else from wasting their time and money at the Lecht - go somewhere else instead!
Couldn't agree more with the previous submission. Avoid Avoid Avoid. This is a dreadful ski 'resort' - they reported snow as hard packed and patchy. It wasn't even that good but still they take people's money..... Dreadful!
Avoid, avoid, avoid. We have a timeshare at Hilton coylumbridge and ski at the Cairngorms each year. This year we decided to travel to the Lecht ski area, big, big mistake. They were open and showing 6 runs were open to ski. We paid and took the button lift to the top of a run where we were disgusted, none of them were skiable. They were in terrible, terrible condition, barely any snow cover at all. 3 of our party decided to try and make it down, others walked back. The 3 that did ski damaged there skis and needed them re-waxing and another was too badly damaged. We had to argue with the manager to cover the re-waxing, a new set of skis, and a refund of our tickets. All this took time to sort and ruined our whole day with our family.
I live near The Lecht and have had many fabulous days there when the conditions are good. I have also been there quite a number of times and have been very disappointed. Of course, the conditions are very changeable this being Scotland. However, what I take issue with is the conditions report from The Lecht. It is often highly optimistic and sometimes sheer lies. Today they claimed "Runs complete with packed snow some icy patches". The slopes were on fact 1 sheet of ice. If they were a bit more honest their valued customers would not waste their time when conditions are inadequate and believe them when conditions are fantastic.
I went to Nevis after Boxing day 2009 for my first attempt at skiing. It was a little too much as the nursery slopes were not ready. We went to The Lecht in Feb for 3 days and I'm returning over new year this year, it was fantastic. As a beginner The Lecht was brilliant with 2 nursery slopes running, and no steep walks to the slopes. The only problem was the queue for the hire, we got there early but still waited for 1.5hrs.