When the doors to Scotland’s flagship ice climbing facility opened, there were high hopes it might help transform the sport, encourage a new generation of climbers and even make the hills safer.

Backed by £2.4 million of public money, it converted an Edwardian B-listed building in Kinlochleven to award-winning facility at the heart of ‘climbing country’, at the tip of the West Highland Way, ideally placed to capture climbers heading to Ben Nevis and Glencoe.

Opened in 2003, the new National Climbing Centre created around 20 jobs and attracted tens of thousands of tourists - all part of efforts to prop up the area in the wake of the demise of the  Highland village's aluminium industry.

A safe and all-weather space for beginners and experts to improve and test their skills, mountain rescue teams and the police backed it, saying it offered potential to produce better prepared climbers and reduce the sad loss of life on Scotland’s mountains.

Now, however, its future is on a knife-edge: closed for more than 18 months, with talks between Kinlochleven Community Trust that runs the vacant building and the climbing business that seemed set to take it on having collapsed, fears are mounting that its days as a leading climbing centre may be behind it.

To add to concerns, the Ice Factor Activity Centre building, once part of the aluminium smelter works, is now being advertised for lease.

Although mention is made of its status as the former National Climbing Centre and that its recent use as a climbing wall and leisure centre could continue, the lease prospectus also suggests it may lend itself to other uses.

Photographs show its interior: once a magnet for climbing enthusiasts from around the country and which even attracted world famous climber Alex Honnold in 2021 to climb its ice wall and praise the facility, now with tables and chairs piled high, exposed cables and buckets and containers placed around the floor.

The Ice Factor, located in a former aluminium factory building, has been shut for 18 monthsThe Ice Factor, located in a former aluminium factory building, has been shut for 18 months (Image: Colin Mearns)

In July, Kinlochleven Community Trust learned its grant application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for money to carry out roof repairs at the building, had been rejected.  

The request for funds had highlighted the former factory’s role in the industrial heritage of the village, which sprang up around the aluminium smelter and a hydroelectric scheme which saw it dubbed ‘the Electric Village’, the first in the world to have every house connected to electricity.

The opening of the climbing facility in 2003 – officially opened by the late Queen in 2005 - brought the village into the sporting spotlight. At its peak, it was said to attract around 100,000 visitors a year, with the biggest indoor ice climbing wall in the world at the time, the UK's highest indoor articulated rock-climbing wall and a competition bouldering wall voted the best in the UK.

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Mountain rescue teams and the military used it regularly for training, sharing the facilities with local climbers, beginners, experts and tourists, among them around 300,000 climbers who head for Ben Nevis and Glencoe each year and walkers on the West Highland Way.

However, a fire in a sauna in 2015 saw it close for around a year, and a clean up operation involved melting and removing walls of ice and cleaning thousands of individual handholds.

Having reopened, it closed in March 2023, four months after parent company, the Ice Factor Group announced the closure of its other winter sports centre, Snow Factor at XSite Braehead in Renfrewshire, and the appointment of a liquidator.

Kinlochleven Community Trust said at the time it had started legal proceedings in a dispute over rent. According to the Trust’s 2023 financial statement, it was left with bad debts of £30,000 and legal fees of £17,000.

The Ice Factor in Kinlochleven was officially opened by the late Queen in 2005The Ice Factor in Kinlochleven was officially opened by the late Queen in 2005 (Image: PA)

Now it’s emerged that lease talks with Fort William-based 3 Wise Monkeys Climbing have collapsed at the last gasp, throwing the future of the facility into doubt.

Concerns have mounted over recent weeks, with tourists arriving during the summer holiday season to find the facility shut. Now, with the first sprinkling of snow arriving on mountains heralding another winter season for climbers, it appears unlikely it will be back in operation any time soon. 

“The building is a unique old factory with very high, open space so it is perfect for a climbing wall,” says David Gunn, an experienced climber, former member of Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team, and of outdoor equipment supplier, CranKitUp.

“It was really busy all summer round and it not being open is a sad loss for the area.

“In particular this summer when it’s been wet, we’ve seen tourists leaving the area because there’s been nothing to do other than go for a walk.

“When it was open, it gave people with families somewhere to go. There were high ropes, they could try rock climbing for the first time.

“At weekends the car park was littered with campervans. People would drive up, to do a warmup day at Ice Factor before going on the mountain the next day.

“Lots of young people would go from school, join climbing clubs and get into climbing from there.”

He adds that as well as the loss of jobs linked to the centre, its café and bar, there are knock-on impacts: “It’s a huge loss in a lot of other ways: on a Tuesday and Thursday night, rescue teams would go there to practice.

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“Then you have the older climbers. There are hundreds of us, and this was a place that was good for our mental health and well-being. You had widowers and such like getting together to meet up and climb there. You can’t quantify those benefits in money terms.

“Now, there is actually a few of the older climbers who use their bus passes to travel from this area to Glasgow Climbing Centre and back again.”

The facility’s opening in a disused carbon bunker was heavily supported by SportScotland and Highlands and Islands Enterprise and was touted as an all-weather alternative to the mountains for climbers who had travelled only to face bad weather, and as a training centre for local guides and instructors.

Kinlochleven's aluminium industry, with the building that would become Ice Factor in the backgroundKinlochleven's aluminium industry, with the building that would become Ice Factor in the background (Image: Newsquest Archive)

Since then, interest in rock and ice climbing has ballooned: rock climbing made its debut at the 2020 Olympics, and ice climbing was an exhibition sport at the 2014 Winter Olympics and is expected to feature in 2026.

Kinlochleven Community Trust has not responded to requests to comment.

However local SNP councillor Sarah Fanet said: “Ice Factor has played a central role of  the life in Kinlochleven over the last 20 years.

“In addition to bringing people into the village, it has been a meeting point for residents and families and its social role cannot be overstated.  

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“I hope the building will be used again in a way that benefits the people of Kinlochleven and brings new opportunities to the community’’.    

Meanwhile, the issue of what happens next for what was once the crown jewel of Scottish indoor climbing has become a topic on climbing forums, including a suggestion it might be run by a climbing cooperative.

Mr Gunn said: “We are supposed to be the outdoor capital of the UK and there’s bugger all here to support that.

“There’s a climbing wall in an old church in Fort William but it’s nothing like what the area deserves.

“I was in Palma in Majorca recently, it’s one of the hottest places in Europe and there are three climbing walls there.

“Climbing is a growing sport yet our area, the outdoor capital of the UK, doesn’t have a big facility to support it.”