“White gold” is a big economic driver, with the ski industry employing some 120,000 people, both directly and indirectly.<\/p>\n
But long-term, skiing is doomed. France\u2019s space agency (CNES) predicts that around half of Europe\u2019s ski resorts will close<\/a> by 2050 and virtually all by the end of the century, due to global warming.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re heading towards fewer good winters and more poor ones,\u201d says Hugues Fran\u00e7ois, a researcher specialising in mountain tourism and climate change at INRAE <\/a>in Grenoble.<\/p>\n Chairlifts are temporarily closed due to the lack of snow in La Feclaz in the French Alps, January 2023. AP – Laurent Cipriani <\/p>\n French ski resorts warned fake snow will only worsen climate impacts<\/a><\/p>\n Model built in booming ’60s <\/p>\n France\u2019s ski industry developed rapidly from the 1960s, with heavy state support, Fran\u00e7ois explains. Large, purpose-built resorts known as “integrated or third-generation resorts” were built at high altitude, exclusively designed for winter tourism.<\/p>\n Villages at lower altitude developed their own smaller resorts \u2013 many of which are now particularly vulnerable to changing snow conditions.<\/p>\n Some 204 ski areas have closed\u00a0over the last 70 years, according to research<\/a>\u00a0from the University of Grenoble, the majority of them situated at below 2,000 metres in altitude.<\/p>\n This is not just as a result of less\u00a0snow<\/a>, however. Small communes also struggle to pay for compulsory safety inspections of their ageing ski lifts..<\/p>\n “Many aren’t profitable in themselves,” Fran\u00e7ois argues, “but they sustain the wider tourism economy which in turn supports local services, shops, schools and keeps people living in these areas.”\u00a0<\/p>\n With the future of skiing tourism melting “you risk a downward spiral \u2013 population decline, loss of services, and ultimately a form of rural desertification”, he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n Monaco’s Princess Grace rides in ski chair at the French Alps resort of La Colmaine in February 1959. France’s ski resorts developed in the 1960s thanks to big state investment. ASSOCIATED PRESS <\/p>\n Half of France’s ski slopes closed by warm weather and rain<\/a><\/p>\n Farm not ‘viable’ without skiing <\/p>\n Alpe du Grand Serre, in the northern Alps<\/a>, is living through that downward spiral. The middle-altitude resort, located in the village of La Morte, was due to close in October 2024 when the community council that manages it deemed it no longer economically viable.<\/p>\n While it reopened for another season, its future is still on the line \u2013 a source of anguish for many of La Morte’s 140 residents, who depend on skiiing for a living.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy father made it very clear: he’d hand over the farm to me on condition that I had something to do in winter,” says sheep farmer and ski instructor C\u00e9dric Fraux. “Skiing<\/a> is essential because it accounts for 70 per cent of my income. Without it, the farm simply isn’t viable.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile local ski shop manager Vincent Lionel says he’s sceptical about\u00a0depending on low-snow activities.<\/p>\n \u201cAll this talk about how \u2018snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, ski touring will keep you going\u2019 isn\u2019t the reality,\u201d he says. \u201cWe don’t know where we’re headed, that’s the hardest part.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Spotlight on France, episode 142 \u00a9 RFI <\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Listen to a report on Alpe du Grand Serre in the Spotlight on France podcast<\/a><\/p>\n Lack of state support <\/p>\n Alpe du Grand Serre has also been slow to diversify, with around 80 percent of its income still linked to snow.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Perhaps we should have started sooner,” says Florent Battistel, director of the local ski school, which employs around 20 seasonal monitors. “Now it’s time to branch out, and especially into all-season activities.”<\/p>\n But getting up to the lake for a hike or using the slopes for mountain biking in the summer requires ski lifts. And they’re in poor shape.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cForty years without investing in the resort… not a single ski lift has been replaced,” says Coraline Saurat, president of the community council since 2021. “The infrastructure is ageing, it\u2019s been on life support.\u201d<\/p>\n Since 2017, the council has spent roughly \u20ac3.4m “just to keep the resort running, not to invest in its future” she says. The council proposed a \u20ac20m private-public redevelopment plan but it had to be abandoned due a big funding gap.<\/p>\n Saurat says there was “no support plan whatsoever” for Alpe du Grand Serre, along with all the other mid-altitude resorts with similar problems. “We’re left to fend for ourselves.”<\/p>\n Skiers at the small resort of Alpe du Grand Serre have enjoyed one more winter on the slopes, but it’s set to be the last. \u00a9 Marius Laffont <\/p>\n No uplift in sight for France’s struggling ski resorts<\/a><\/p>\n Double blow <\/p>\n The local mayor, Raymond Maslo, recently got the green light to take control of managing the resort. His local council will inherit \u20ac80,000 of running costs and \u20ac1m of debt, but he believes it’s worth it.<\/p>\n \u201cLeave us to it, we’ll manage,” he says. “Even if it’s only for a decade\u2026 at least we’d have saved something.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a citizens\u2019 collective, La Morte Vivante<\/a>, has raised funds and is working on projects to diversify the local economy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a real opportunity to build the kind of mountain we want to live on,\u201d says co-founder Yohann Echardour.<\/p>\n France’s mountain populations have become emotionally attached to skiing, even if it’s a relatively recent development.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not that old but it’s a bit of a double blow,” Fran\u00e7ois points out. “What\u2019s being asked now is that the children of the generation who made a major social and economic shift \u2013 from a very rural, agricultural economy to one that\u2019s essentially based on tourism \u2013 go through a second revolution.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s clearly a model that has brought a significant improvement in quality of life for mountain communities, and given them a sense of identity. So, symbolically as well, it\u2019s very difficult to move away from that model.\u201d<\/p>\n A picture postcard view of Chamonix in 2012. REUTERS\/Robert Pratta <\/p>\n Despite the Herculean task of saving Alpe du Grand Serre’s ski season, sheep farmer turned ski monitor Fraux says he’ll carry on defending the mountain.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as we haven’t reached the summit, we’ll keep climbing, we\u2019ll pull each other up\u2026 We still have a bit of hope.”<\/p>\n This article includes interviews by RFI’s Marius Laffont<\/a>. Listen to an audio report in the Spotlight on France podcast<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This winter\u2019s heavy snowfall in the Alps and Pyrenees has given a welcome boost to France\u2019s ski resorts,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2691,824,539,5,44,2694,2692,2690,2693,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-2719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-alps","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-mountain","13":"tag-rfi-feature","14":"tag-rural-areas","15":"tag-ski","16":"tag-snow","17":"tag-tourism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Chairlifts](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP23005647270397.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Monaco's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP590220193.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Spotlight](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/episode-spotlight-on-france-episode-142-red.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Skiers](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Alpe-du-grand-serre-Marius-Laffont.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n