‘Those not worried about the future of European skiing are in denial': The French resorts reinventing the ski holiday
This season, over New Year, I skied at Isola 2000, Alpes-Maritimes. Half the resort was closed; 2/13 red runs left open. The pistes ran ribbons of white in a sludge-coloured landscape, like slides in a playground. It bore little resemblance to the photos I'd been shown by a childhood friend, who used to ski here each year.
High-altitude resorts suffer from a sense of complacency. Sure, Les Deux Alpes with summer skiing on its glacier at 3,600m isn't going to be the first to swap snowparks for skateboarding, but as more and more downhill ski resorts shut up shop, those left open risk mass overtourism, or hiking their prices so astronomically that skiing becomes reserved for an ever-smaller elite.
One hundred and eighty-six ski stations have already closed in France. Size and altitude aside, the fact remains that these sites once had enough snow to make downhill skiing possible, and no longer do. We're looking at a dystopian future where disused ski lifts pepper France's mountains.
Métabief, Jura, has chosen to jump before being pushed, investing in cross-country skiing over downhill. Studies by Météo France and INRAE found that by 2040 artificial snow would be the only way to guarantee downhill skiing in the resort, and by 2050, downhill skiing was likely to be impossible. In spite of this, councillors for the Départment du Doubs, of which Métabief is a part, wanted to invest €24 million in replacing their chairlifts.
'To what end, when we weren't going to have any snow left by 2040?' said Philippe Alpy, who became vice president of Doubs in 2015. He scrapped the funding, instead investing a significantly lower sum into repairing the existing chairlifts.
'Many of the councillors weren't happy with the decision; downhill skiing is very close to their hearts,' said Alpy. 'There's a lot of climate-scepticism, fuelled by the media. People say 'we've always had years without much snow'. Not consecutive years like this, and when you're the one keeping the accounts, you see the financial deficit straight away.'
I'd love to bury my head in the sand (or snowdrift, should there be enough of it), because what beats the joy of downhill skiing? Even worse, I came to the sport late, just three years ago, having wasted years at school and working when I could have been skiing. To secure my snow-sports future, I decided to do as Métabief has done, and give cross-country skiing a go.
Les Menuires, in the giant Trois Vallées ski area, would hardly be first to appear in a dystopian series on abandoned ski resorts, but that doesn't mean its day won't come. I'd skied here before and never considered that there might be cross-country pistes tucked out of sight of the concrete buildings. A weekend of classes awaited my partner and I.
The boots slid on painlessly, coddling my feet like, well, regular boots rather than the instruments of torture we use for downhill skiing. The skis, absurdly long and light, made me feel like an upended Edward Scissorhands. Les Menuires' cross-country ski slopes were as quiet as a Christmas card scene. Pushing off on a slope with little more incline than a wedge of cheese, I gathered speed. Neither snowplough nor a skid brake seemed to work with cross-country skis, and I went crashing to the ground, knowing no other way to stop.
A bruise to my ego, my partner, a Frenchman who has been skiing since birth, made far quicker progress than I did. My knees, butt and even my face were also bruised, repeatedly, as I crashed to the ground in every direction. Nonetheless, by the end of the first lesson we'd both completed a 4km blue run (cross-country pistes are graded the same as downhill). Buoyed by our success, we stayed after the lesson and tackled it again.
On day two, our instructor took us off-piste, where the snow was unspoilt and glittering. We were pitted against each other with circuit training, a competitiveness that brought out the best of our skiing and the worst of our personalities. We sweated, ached and had such a good time that we spent the whole journey home looking up cross-country ski gear, and hut-to-hut routes we could try.
We were converts, and we're not alone. The cross-country ski station Crévoux, Serre-Ponçon, saw cross-country participation increase by 60 per cent in a single year, from 2023 to 2024. It's particularly popular with youngsters in France..
'The Olympic biathlon champion Martin Fourcade inspired lots of young people to try cross-country skiing,' said Thomas Giovannangeli, marketing director at Serre-Ponçon Tourist Office. 'He made it young, cool and dynamic again.'
If the future of skiing is to be flat, I don't mind as much as I thought.
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