LA MONGIE The sun is shining warmly and the water is gurgling in the stream as if it were spring.
The Grand Tourmalet ski resort in the village of La Mongie in the Pyrenees is bathed in warmth, which would be a good thing, except that it’s January and you’d need snow for skiing.
Preferably fresh, nice powder snow, and no slush like this.
Slope supervisor of the ski center Maxime Bodet regrets that most of the lifts are not working because the slopes are dangerous.
– Only the small elevators nearby, which take you a little higher, are in use. The situation has been like this for three weeks already. The best slopes are closed.
According to Bodet, there was a little new snow during the night before my visit, so the landscape was even sadder the day before.
– Even yesterday, the grass on that upper slope was burning under the snow, says Bodet.
The older colleague next to me remembers winters a couple of decades ago, but he has never seen such a situation before.
There was also a little snow in the 2020–21 winter season, but there was enough all the time that most of the slopes were open. Now the weather changes more: first there is a storm and 20 centimeters of snow, and after that the temperature rises to close to 15 degrees, when the snow turns into slush and melts right away.
– Probably we will just have to get used to this whimsical nature in the future, sighs Bodet.
The young man states that he belongs to a generation for whom traditional winters are apparently just history.
Snow is needed everywhere
According to the data of Sunday, January 15, the best situation among French ski resorts was in the Alps, where 107 ski resorts were open. In a large part of them, many slopes were closed, but only 33 centers were completely closed.
In the highlands in the central parts of France, only two of the ski resorts were open, in the Vosges mountains near Alsace, only one.
In the Pyrenees, 20 centers are waiting for better times, but 15 ski centers have managed to keep at least a few slopes open.
You can also see this in Tourmalet, where normally the season would be at its best, but now some of the hotels and restaurants are closed. Ski equipment rental companies have also included fat bikes in their winter selection, because cycling is more successful than skiing.
The weather forecast now promises that it will get cooler for the next few weeks. During the weekend, it already snowed a little, so maybe the situation is starting to improve. The snow cannons will also be used again when and if the night temperatures drop suitably low.
The new normal from instability
If the problem now is the lack of snow, there was even too much snow around this time last year. In the Font-Romeau ski resort near Andorra, according to statistics, only 16 centimeters of snow has fallen this year, while last year’s figure was 156 centimeters. The recent record is from the season 2013–14, when the snow accumulation was 1,100 centimeters.
However, the decreasing trend is essential: while in the 1960s the accumulation of 300 centimeters in the winter season was normal, it is now rare. There is less and less snow.
Etienne Berthier studies glaciers based on satellite images at the Legos research facility at the Toulouse Space Campus at the Midi-Pyrenees Observatory. He and his colleagues published last week research in Science magazine (you will switch to another service)according to which the world’s glaciers are melting at an unexpectedly fast rate.
– If the global average temperature rises to 1.5 degrees, 49 percent of the world’s glaciers will melt by the year 2100. If the temperature rises by four degrees, 80 percent of the glaciers will disappear, Berthier tells .
Berthier is naturally concerned about the sea level rise caused by melting, but also that mountain glaciers in particular have acted like water towers.
– They store a large amount of water during the winter, which is gradually released during the summer. Especially during warm seasons, melting is strong, so water is available exactly when it is needed.
Glaciers are thus of great importance to ecosystems because they balance the water balance. Along with the Pyrenees, these small glaciers are important in the Alps and the Andes of South America.
– In two decades, we will no longer have glaciers in the Pyrenees. It also affects the landscape, traditional livelihoods and tourism, says Berthier.
In 1850, the Pyrenees still had 52 glaciers covering an area of 2,060 hectares. Now there are only 19 glaciers, and their area is less than 240 hectares.
According to Berthier, the glaciers could be protected to some extent by covering them with an insulating layer that reflects the Sun’s radiation, and by making artificial snow with snow cannons when the weather is suitable.
However, it is expensive and cumbersome, and only suitable for small glaciers. Furthermore, it would probably only slow down development – not prevent it.
And if the climate warms faster, at a pace of four degrees, in a few decades only the largest and highest glaciers will remain, wildly reduced. Only about one percent of the glacier mass would remain.
In La Mongie, listening to the gurgling of the stream and the splashing of the mud, I have in my mind the Gourgs Blancs glacier, located only about 40 kilometers away on the border of France and Spain at an altitude of 3,100 meters.
Perhaps this will be its last winter.
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