All the tours on these pages are covered by the Ordnance Survey 1:25000 Outdoor Leisure series numbers 30 (Yorkshire Dales Northern and Central Areas) and 31 (Teesdale). These maps are now being integrated into the "Explorer" (orange covers) series, with numbers OL30 and OL31. These maps each consist of two sheets printed back to back. As anyone who has tried swapping sides either inside a small car, or outside in anything more than a very light breeze will realise, its worth buying two copies of each, and folding appropriately. It is now possible to get these maps in a plastic laminated form, which is an excellent idea for winter conditions - both able to survive the wet and less likely to tear in the wind. The 1:25000 maps are preferable for ski navigation as they not only show walls (which may be the only identifiable features in a white-out) but also the vegetation type over which you must ski. If you prefer the greater area to be taken in at one glance of the 1:50000 maps, sheets 91 (Appleby), 92 (Barnard Castle) and 98 (Wensleydale and Wharfedale) cover the area.

There is also the millennium map from getmapping.com - their site is mainly set up to show a half kilometre square area for you to choose to buy an aerial photograph, but the actual 2m-resolution map tiles are freely accessible and can be put together in a table in a web page to build a map of as large an area as you want, if you can stand waiting for the download times (you'd need to download about 25 Gb to cover the whole of England and Wales:). I have some software which will automate this for you (if you run Linux) which I use to print 5x7 km areas at 1:25000 on A4 sheets which I then laminate. I will see about the legal position of putting this up on the site, although anyone with a few hours programming experience will find it very easy to generate their own scripts to do the job. Whilst all the photos were flown in summer, so are not useful for predicting snow cover, they do give an excellent idea of the vegetation which enables you to choose routes avoiding the worst of the heather and bracken.

When planning your own tours, or variations on the ones here, from Ordnance Survey maps, it is as well to take careful note of the subtle difference between the symbols for "heath" and "rough grassland" (the latter may be combined with the symbol for bracken). Rough grassland may give good skiing in marginal snow conditions, but heather requires deep consolidated snow, or it will be akin to skiing on a badly maintained Dendix slope filled with concealed croquet hoops ! Even a few inches of soft snow will effectively be knee deep as the heather doesn't support its weight with skis on top. If you have to cross heather in poor conditions, try to link areas where the heather has been burned off. The snow invariably lies on the ground surface here and can be surprisingly good. The remaining twigs rarely form loops to trip you up and the terrain is much easier to read.

Previous page (Weather)   Next page (Skiing skills)
Contents page