La Sambuy, a town that runs a ski resort near Mont Blanc in the French Alps, has decided to dismantle its ski lifts because global warming has reduced its ski season to just a few weeks, meaning it is no longer profitable to it keeps them functional, he reports CNN.
the chair lift from La Sambuy Photo: Geoffrey Bire / AFP / Profimedia
“Before, we had snow practically from December 1 to March 30,” La Sambuy mayor Jacques Dalex told CNN.
Last winter, however, there were only “four weeks of snow, and even then, it wasn’t much snow,” he added. That meant that “very quickly, rocks and boulders are exposed on the slope.”
The mayor said he was only able to keep the ski slope open for less than five weeks in January and February, and the resort faces an annual operating loss of around €500,000. Just maintaining the ski lifts costs 80,000 euros per year.
La Sambuy is not a large resort with only three ski lifts and a handful of slopes reaching a maximum height of 1,850 meters, but because it had slopes for both experts and beginners and relatively cheap access tickets the resort was very popular with families.
This summer, when the critical moment came for planning the winter season, La Sambuy Town Hall made the decision to close the resort that it has been running since 2016.
Although its ski infrastructure is to be dismantled as soon as possible, the mayor hopes that the town can still attract visitors.
Moreover, according to a study that was published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change in August, about half of the ski resorts in Europe face high risks of snow shortage if global climate warming causes the global average temperature to rise by 2 degrees Celsius. Artificial snow machines will only be able to partially compensate for the absence of natural snow
In the scenario where the average temperature rises by 3 degrees Celsius this century, 91% of ski resorts in Europe will face the risk of having too little snow to allow winter sports.
If global climate warming will be 4 degrees Celsius, then almost all ski resorts on the European continent risk facing a shortage of snow.
Europe is a major center for skiing on a global level, as it hosts approximately half of the resorts of this type in the world. The study analyzed 2,234 resorts from 28 European countries.
