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Alpine skiing in its present form has been going less than ninety
years. A canny fellow by the name of Arnold Lunn started organising ski
holidays to the village of Murren in the Bernese Oberland of
Switzerland around 1920. There were no ski lifts, no ski
instructors and the word 'piste' in a skiing context did not exist.
Lunn rounded up fellow Oxford undergraduates and installed them in the
village eyrie of Murren (Ski Jungle's current page banner). From here
they hiked up the Schilthorn, had a well
deserved picnic at the top, and skied back down for tea. In 1922 Lunn
used the family travel business to transport his fellow countrymen and
women out to Murren, where he set up the first
slalom races to the amusement of the locals, and modern skiing was born.
Since the second world war the ski market has continued a remarkable
upward trend, hardly stopping when other markets took a dive. Although
hard to quantify accurately, reliable estimates suggest that today
nearly sixty million people worldwide ski, with thirty million of those
coming from Europe. Roughly fifteen million skiers are American, with
most of the rest coming from Japan.
Out of 4500 ski resorts worldwide, 2500 of them are in Europe, with
nearly 2000 nestling in the Alps and 600 in Scandinavia. Most of the
others are in Japan (700) and North America (750). (*1)
There is an important conclusion to be drawn here. Worldwide holiday
skiing is predominantly concentrated on the European Alps, which
swallow up half of the world skiing market in 44% of the world's ski
resorts. And these ski resorts are primarily under threat from the old
chestnut, climate change.
You would be forgiven for thinking that the alpine snowfalls of the
past two winters would kick that last remark into the long grass, but
we need to differentiate between weather and climate. As far as
climate is concerned, there is a strong belief that by the end of this
century the snow/rain isotherm will have risen by around 3000ft. If
this happens, all low ski resorts will close down with greatly
restricted skiing in all the rest. (See snow
levels)
While accepting quite clearly that the world is getting warmer and is
likely to produce more precipitation on seaboard landmasses, the stuff
that falls out of the sky will increasingly fall as rain.
Climate change will ensure that. What muddies this clarity, however, is
the weather in the European Alps, which has been unusually cold for
the past two winters. It seems most likely that an oscillating jet
stream (currently positioned over the Alps) is to blame, allowing cold polar air from the north to meet
tropical maritime air coming in from the west. How long this will
affect the Alps is not known, but it is unlikely to be a permanent
feature.
So disregarding present conditions, which give a false impression for
the long term, climate change is going to have a disastrous effect on
the ski industry. But that's not all. In the short term, say for the
next five years, the market is going to take some battering from the
present global economic downturn. Some of the richer countries will
take longer to recover than others, the UK being among them, where the
annual ski
holiday will not be a priority for the average skier. Having said that, only a million
people ski from the UK so their influence on the world market will be
negligible.
There is also a political dimension to a warming alpine climate in the ski
regions of the world - the possible conflict over a dwindling water
supply. The great European rivers, for example, the Rhine, the Rhone
the Po and the Danube all rise in mountain areas where ski resorts
consume quantities of water to generate artificial snow. Even in
relatively small quantities, abstraction to generate artificial snow
could well be seen as frivolous when there is a water shortage for
more important things lower down the river. (*2)
Finally we need to look at the practical changes to skiing. The development of snowboarding and
the introduction of the short ski have already made tremendous changes
to the way we ski and not necessarily for the better.
Technical improvements
have made skiing accessible to more people and the pistes have become
very crowded. The temporary solution to reducing lift queues with
faster and more efficient lifts does not necessarily solve this problem
and can crowd the pistes even more. This encourages less experienced
skiers to venture off piste, where they are outside the
controls of a pisted environment, and raises safety concerns
with avalanche risk and an increasing desire to
jump off higher and higher cliffs.
There are also safety issues on the piste as snowboarders jockey
for position with skiers, each engaged in hopelessly incompatible
techniques. Except for Japan where skiers and snowboarders are kept to
separate pistes, they can mix willy nilly elsewhere. Many skiers now listen to
music as they ski which apparently enhances the experience for the
individual, but does not help to make that experience safer for
everybody else. As a concession to justify the sport as a safer pastime
around 50% of skiers and snowboarders now wear ski helmets, which
contrary to expectations, does
not necessarily improve matters. (See ski
helmets)
These issues will have to be sorted if alpine skiing, even in the
short term, is going to survive as an enjoyable and for many an
exhilarating past time, just like it was ninety years ago. I've no doubt it will make the
hundred years to 2020, but how many years beyond that is anybody's
guess.
*1 Source: Snow Business: a Study of the International
Ski
Industry - Simon Hudson - 2000
*2 Source: Prediction of Climate Change Impacts on Alpine Discharge
Regimes - Pascal Horton and others - 2009
How will there be a water shortage if precipitation increases? At
the present time snow melt feeds these rivers continuously throughout
the year with peaks during the summer months. If the warming pattern continues as predicted, the snow cover
will shrink and heavier rainfall will initially cause flooding as there
is no way to hold it in the mountains as snow and ice. In sustained dry periods
the river levels will fall and may well cause water shortages.
*This picture is faked and is roughly
double the skiers in the original photo
©Simon Dewhurst - 11 March 2010
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