Ski Resort Closure
Nolan O'Connor
| 17-10-2023
· Sport Team
Ski resorts generally require specific natural conditions to ensure optimal skiing and snowboarding experiences.
Ski resorts require regular and substantial snowfall to create a sufficient snow base.
Typically, ski resorts look for areas that receive ample annual snowfall, ensuring enough coverage for skiing and snowboarding activities.
The French Alpine town of La Sambuy is known as a ski resort, but under the global warming trend, the problem of insufficient snow has become increasingly serious in recent years, and the local ski area had to be permanently closed this month.
CNN reported, citing the mayor of La Sambuy, that the town's ski slopes used to have sufficient snow from early December to the end of March, meaning that the winter season could be open to visitors for four full months.
But in recent years, the snowpack has been shortening, with only about four weeks of snow in the past winter, for example, and the lack of snow has made it difficult for the ski area to continue to operate as rocks and stones are quickly showing up on the slopes.
The town ski resort only has cable car running costs of 80,000 euros per year, with the ski resort opening time shortened significantly, the projected operating loss of a year could reach 500,000 euros.
Therefore, the local government decided to permanently close the ski resort from the 10th of this month, and the removal of cable cars and other facilities.
In recent years, France has closed several ski resorts, for example, located in the French Alps, Saint-Firmin a ski resort last year, due to the lack of snow in the winter, had to announce the removal of the cable car, the closure of the ski resort.
Britain's "Nature Climate Change" magazine published a study in August, analyzing the impact of different warming on the amount of snow in more than 2,200 ski resorts in 28 European countries.
The study showed that 53 percent of Europe's ski resorts would be at very high risk of running out of snow if temperatures rose 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
A common solution to snow shortages is artificial snowmaking, but this only partially offsets the problem of declining snowpack at ski resorts, and it also involves increased costs such as electricity and water, as well as more greenhouse gases from processes such as snowblower operations.
With global warming, perhaps more and more ski resorts will have to go out of business.