Our series “The twilight of skiing”
In the shadow of giants like the Three Valleys, the Portes du Soleil or Paradiski, which attract tourists from all over the world every winter, they look like Lilliputians. When their prestigious neighbors invest millions of euros in heated detachable chairlifts, they struggle to maintain their aging butt lifts. So, when the bill ends up being too heavy and the snowfall too low at low altitude, it's time to close.
Since the 1950s, 186 ski sites have collapsed in the Vosges, the Jura, the Massif Central, the Pyrenees and even the Alps. And it's accelerating. This year alone, there are five. Village resorts, like Notre-Dame-du-Pré (Savoie) – an archetype of cheap, family skiing that is in danger of disappearing – which discover for the first time the dizziness of the aftermath. Or micro-domains, like that of La Morte, in Isère, weighed down by profitability problems and which gave itself a year to find a second wind.
The causes of closure are multiple: operating costs and equipment standards upgrades that are too high, lack of snow, stations finding no buyer… “The small village ski lifts established at the time in the fields of the commune have a tendency to disappear because, beyond thirty years of age, maintenance costs are too high and this sounds the death knell for the ski lift,” explains Pierre-Alexandre Métral, doctoral student in geography at Grenoble-Alpes University.
“In the villages, the inhabitants loved their little ski lifts”
Author of a thesis entitled “The disarmed mountain: analysis of the territorial trajectories of abandoned French ski resorts”, the researcher believes that “the disappearance of snow classes, which were a breeding ground for customers for these small resorts in the 1980s” , contributed to their slow agony. Turning the page on skiing is often experienced locally as heartbreaking.
“In the villages, the inhabitants loved their small ski lifts because they had the impression of being part of the great caste of ski resorts, and to detach themselves from them is to alter their DNA,” summarizes the geographer. When the old blue slopes are not returned to nature to become fields or forests again, downhill mountain biking or sealskin ski touring is practiced there.
Dismantling of obsolete ski lifts
But before that, it is still necessary to have “disarmed” the installations. The Mountain law requires the “dismantling of obsolete ski lifts” and the “rehabilitation of the site” within three years following the cessation of activities. A costly operation estimated between 10,000 and 30,000 euros, according to Domaine skiable de France (DSF), which brings together 250 operators.
“These are not large resorts known internationally but isolated sites, villages with one or two ski lifts where snow parks had been created,” explains Laurent Reynaud, general delegate of this professional union. DSF has identified 70 ski lifts to be removed from 41 sites and estimates that at the current rate we will have “completed what remains to be removed within twenty years”.
By then, it is a safe bet that the already palpable rise in the rain-snow limit will have jeopardized dozens of other stations, including those called second generation, the famous large complexes sprung from the ground ex nihilo and of which the question of future reconversion must be raised today. So as not to end up like Saint-Honoré 1500, this strange dormitory hamlet in Isère where around sixty inhabitants enjoy a breathtaking view of the Vercors in the middle of the remains of a ghost hotel complex.
