Heat shuts Alpine summer skiing as glaciers shrink

Heatwaves and a lack of snow have disrupted glacier ski resorts across the Alps, with deep crevasses making summer skiing impossible by mid-August at the latest, BR reported. Ski clubs and associations are now looking for alternatives.

The glacier ski areas in Zermatt and Saas-Fee were temporarily closed. Their high-altitude pistes normally offer reliable conditions throughout the summer for training camps and recreational skiing. Operations at the Stilfser Joch, an area internationally known for summer skiing, also halted for weeks.

“We had five heatwaves this summer,” said Karl Thöni, who works at the Stilfser Joch. “The glacier has suffered badly and has shrunk by several metres.” The freezing level was often well above 4,000 metres.

Colder nights in recent days have allowed Thöni and his colleagues to reopen two lifts. Several crevasses had formed on the pistes during the warm weather, he said, but they could now be filled safely.

Environmental concerns

Glacier ski areas prepare pistes and fill crevasses with artificial snow. Glacier and climate researcher Georg Kaser said this was ecologically defensible. Skiing, ski operations and maintenance did not harm the ice, he said, adding that operators might even make a marginal contribution to preserving the ice mass because it was the basis of their income.

Operators were also doing more for the environment, Kaser said. Soot and oil residues were no longer a problem in glacier ski areas because of sulphur-free biodiesel. Operators also use solar energy and microbiological sewage treatment plants.

However, Kaser and Andrea Fischer, a glaciologist from Innsbruck, agreed that climate change was putting severe pressure on the Alps as a whole. Fischer said the environmental concerns linked to ski tourism were the same as those affecting tourism generally, including its impact on the energy balance, traffic and infrastructure.

Car journeys, roads and car parks alter the landscape and worsen the carbon dioxide balance. “What is massively harming the glaciers is this human-made climate change, which is currently costing us 5 to 10 percent of the glacier area per year,” Fischer said. People therefore urgently needed to reduce their ecological carbon footprint.

Bavarian skiers seek alternatives

By mid-August, no pistes in the Alps were still open. That created a problem for European professional skiers and national teams, which moved their training camps to South America this year. Some are training in Chile on four metres of fresh snow.

Bavaria’s junior skiers cannot and do not want to afford that, said Fabian Emmert, the Bavarian Ski Association’s performance sport coordinator. At this point, he said, they did not necessarily need to train on snow and could instead focus on athletic development, including strength and core stability, endurance through running and cycling, and coordination.

The Bavarian junior skiers otherwise use indoor ski centres in Wittenburg or the Netherlands. Last year, they were still able to train at the Stilfser Joch and in Saas-Fee in August, Emmert said, but that was not possible this year.

In the long term, the competition calendar in elite sport will also have to adapt to climate change, Emmert said. Races will need to be held when reliable snow conditions prevail in the mountains. Training is already becoming difficult for the world’s top slalom skiers because the World Cup season begins in mid-November in Levi, Finland.