Ice Factory To Open This Year

Good news for indoor ice climbers, the Ice Factory development in Kinlochleven, just around the corner from Glencoe, has been given the go ahead and will open in December 2003.

We told you a little about the concept - think Centre Parcs for ice climbers - which is going ahead in the disused aluminium works in the West Highland Way town a few weeks back, but here's a little more information to chew on.

The centre will house Europe's largest indoor ice climbing wall with with '800 square metres of ice, neve, frozen turf and mixed tooling with a large simple snow slope for beginners' it says here. If the merest idea of indoor frozen turf freaks you out, don't panic, there's also due to be approximately 1000 square metres of indoor rock climbing in the form of Scotland's first articulated climbing wall.

The ability to vary the angle of the wall allows the Ice Factory to be classified as up to 'competition standard' and there will also be a bouldering wall, dedicated rock climbing Instruction facility, shop, caff, lecture theatre, sauna/steam room (yum), gym and warm-up area.

Oh, and the instructors and staff will be strutting around in brand, spanking new Haglofs kit after the Swedish brand was chosen as the Ice Factory's clothing partner. There's also going to be a 'try before you buy' test pool of Haglofs clothing, which is a top idea - watch out for a quick take on the Climber Motion jacket later this week on OM by the way.

On paper it looks like the sort of facility that could propel the standard of Scottish climbing into the stratosphere - one enduring weakness of UK climbers is that we get to climb real, steep ice relatively rarely - the Ice Factory could make that a thing of the past.

But is Kinlochleven - see map - the right place for it? Anyone who's been there will know that it's a small, sleepy town and a bit of a trek up the valley, even from Glencoe. In its favour, the weather outside is generally disgusting, though of course that's all part of the charm of Scottish climbing.

We don't know how many users it needs to break even, but there are some pretty impressive stats knocking around suggesting that 280,000 climbers visit the area every year, 25,000 joint service mountaineering students come to Glencoe to climb every year and 18,000 NATO Commandos start the Arctic Warfare Training Course in Kinlochleven.

There's a big press conference next month when doubtless all with become clear, more info when we have it. Centre Parcs for ice climbers?