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The Skiing Industry Faces a Future
with Less Snow

Professor Bruce E. Johansen

Around the world, ski resorts have found themselves threatened by warming temperatures that turn snow to slush and shorten their seasons. The largest ski resorts in the United States have found their average seasons shortened from an average of 158 days a year in 1997 to 146 days in 2005-2006. Even artificial snow doesn’t work if temperatures are above freezing. As a result, many ski resorts are offering activities that do not require snow, such as golf and mountain biking. In Europe, some resorts have turned into aquatic parks and shopping malls planning for a snow-less future.

Higher-than-usual European temperatures interfered with the Alpine skiing World Cup in 2006, raising fundamental questions about the future of a sport that depends on snow and ice. “It will very quickly be a big crisis for us if we continue canceling races in December,” said Atle Skaardal, who supervised the women’s portion of the tour for the International Ski Federation. “I think it’s very critical, not only for racing but for public skiing, which also has a big impact on racing. We all have to hope for colder temperatures and snowfall in Europe.” The event took place on a pristine strip of artificial snow, on a race course otherwise notable for vegetation and rocks. Some ski resorts in the Alps have wrapped glaciers and snowfields with foam insulation in an attempt (usually futile) to shelter glaciers in the summer.

The Warming Alps

The Alps are the warmest they have been in at least 1,250 years. A few more degrees of warmth will melt nearly all the snow that Alpine resorts require. Bruno Abegg, a researcher at the University of Zurich, said low-lying resorts faced an insuperable problem. “Let’s put it this way,” he said, “I wouldn’t invest in Kitzbühel” — a resort that sits in a low Tyrolean valley, at an altitude of only 2,624 feet. Val d’Isère, in France, and St. Moritz, in Switzerland — which are twice as high — were forced to cancel World Cup races during 2006, lacking snow. The Alps are warming twice as quickly as the global average. In 1980, 75 percent of Alpine glaciers were advancing; now, 90 percent are retreating.

St. Moritz, Switzerland, canceled World Cup races scheduled for December 9 and 10, 2006, because temperatures were too high even for artificial snow. A month earlier, a race in Sölden, Austria, had been canceled because of persistent rain that melted snow off the Rettenbach glacier. “Of course we’re all very worried about the future of our sport,” said Anja Paerson of Sweden, the gold medalist in slalom at the Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy. “Every year we have more trouble finding places to train.” Indoor skiing venues have opened in countries such as Germany, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. Some Scottish Highlands ski areas are being redone as mountain-biking destinations. In the United States, resorts in the Pacific Northwest received a harbinger last season when a warm winter led to a 78-percent drop in skier visits.

At the bottom of the Hahnenkamm, a downhill course in the Austrian Alps, the slope ended in a grassy field during mid-December 2006. Artificial snow was abandoned because temperatures remained persistently above freezing. “Of course I’m nervous about the snow, but what am I supposed to do?” said Signe Kramheller- Reisch, as she walked in a bare field near a hotel her family owns. “We have classic winters and we have non-classic winters.”

Ski Lifts to Swimming Pools

As snow becomes scarcer in Europe’s Alps, resorts are transforming ski resorts into spas and shopping centers, advertising them as escapes from sweltering low-land cities. In Davos, Switzerland, the InterContinental Resort will by 2010 become a huge spa with 186 luxury hotel rooms, residential apartments, shops, and conference rooms. “A lot of people are telling us: you guys are doing fine because you’re far above the critical height line where ski areas will have a problem,” said Armin Egger, former director of Davos Tourism. “But we know if about 40 percent of skiing areas in the European Alps will be gone in 50, 100 years, then we will have a problem as well.” Davos earns money hosting United Nations conferences on climate change.

Atop Little Matterhorn, the highest point in the Alps that tourists can reach on cable cars (at 13,120 feet above sea level), the featured attraction has become indoor swimming pools. A new “Aqua Dome” has opened near the Austrian ski resort of Solden, which a New York Times account described as “hard to miss” with its three enormous concrete bowls that resemble outdoor birdbaths. Each contains a different soaking experience: one is a super-size whirlpool tub, the second has a battery of massage jets, and the third is filled with saltwater and has piped-in underwater music. Inside, a dome-topped spa has two more pools and a waterfall.”

A Green-Skiing Movement

Ten years ago, radical environmentalists torched ski operations at Vail to emphasize the industry’s role in environmental destruction. That event, Auden Schendler, environmental-affairs director for the Aspen Skiing Co in Aspen, Colorado, said was a “wake-up call” that has led to the formation of the “Green-Skiing Movement.” Schendler told Daniel Shaw of Grist magazine that “Climate change should be driving everything we all do.” His company has closely examined its operations to conserve energy and water, and is reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions by operating a small hydroelectric plant and slope groomer powered by biodiesel fuel and wind power. The National Ski Areas Association now operates a “sustainable slopes program” that has enrolled about 180 of 492 ski resorts in the United States.

Since 2000, the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, on the eastern slope of California’s Sierra Nevada, has also gotten into the act, reducing electricity use 9 per cent and cutting propane use by 70,000 gallons per year. “All the people I talk to in this industry, they’re scared,” says Lisa Isaacs, the resort’s environmental program director. “I’m scared. Global warming trumps everything. If it continues, we won’t even be able to make snow.”

Frederick W. Kayser Professor of Communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Johansen is the author of the three-volume “Global Warming in the Twenty-First Century” (Praeger, 2006).