The future of skiing

Ski resorts all across the globe are experiencing a reduction in average snow-pack every year. Whether you are a believer in global warming or a believer in natural climactic trends one thing is for sure, ski resorts could be in trouble in the near future. According to an article in the New York Times, a new study says the Alps are now the warmest they have been in 1,250 years. This increase in temperature not only causes the snowline to retreat higher and higher up the mountain each year it also causes the snow to melt up to a month sooner than it did back in the 50’s at some resorts.

To battle these challenges ski resorts are turning to high tech snowmaking devices to accommodate for their loss of snow. These machines are becoming very efficient in snow making through technology and automation. I worked at a resort that had an amazing snowmaking system that involved a mass network of underground pipes and a giant pump system at the base of the mountain. Once all of the construction was done on the system it could easily be controlled wirelessly by a small number of people from even their home computers. As impressive as these systems were, a week of warm weather would basically render this advanced, expensive system useless.

Will it be enough to implement these high tech systems to create snow or is going to take a lot more to save skiing? A lot of the big resorts have already taken the steps to help combat this problem while the smaller resorts lack the funds to implement these expensive systems and are at the mercy of the weather. I have seen the affects of these warm temperatures take their tolls on some small resorts that I grew up skiing on and can only hope they will see a dramatic change and live on to be skied for a long time.