“We had started the Christmas holidays with a good situation following a wave of cold and snow, but from the end of last week, the mild weather and the rains led to the closure of half of the slopes”, explained to AFP Laurent Reynaud, general delegate of DSF.
The Southern Alps, with three quarters of the slopes open, and the Northern Alps, in particular Savoie, are the least penalized, but in the other massifs such as the Pyrenees (a quarter of the slopes open), the Vosges or the Jura ( less than a quarter of the slopes open), the situation is more worrying.
Thus, many resorts such as La Pierre-Saint-Martin (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), Saint-Pierre de Chartreuse/Le Planolet (Isère), Semnoz (Haute-Savoie), Le Tanet (Vosges) or Croix de Bauzon (Massif Central) have had to close their domains in recent days.
On the other hand, specifies Mr. Reynaud, “most of the resorts in the Southern Alps are operating at full capacity, as in Maurienne, Tarentaise or Oisans”.
“We are worried, the raw material is missing. There is anxiety about maintaining reservations, time will tell how much the situation will have an impact on them”, confided for his part Jean- Luc Boch, President of the National Association of Mountain Resort Mayors (ANMSM).
“The non-opening two years ago due to the Covid epidemic has already left its mark, even if last year the season was good. Conditions must become favorable again for the approximately 400,000 people who live mountain activity,” he urged.
“We are seeing more and more difficulties at the beginning of December, and the snow is falling more and more at altitude, on the slopes facing north. This climatic upheaval has led us to adapt, with artificial snow but also by developing new ‘other activities’, pleads the mayor of La Plagne Tarentaise, whose area is relatively spared by the lack of snow.