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Ah, so you’re planning a ski trip to the Pyrenees, are you?

Fair enough – I hear it’s a lovely part of the world to ski, and they even have electricity for 24 hours a day.

Just the one issue you might want to look into, and that’s the amount of snow that awaits upon your arrival.

In the Luchon-Superbagnères resort, for example, helicopters are being used to deliver snow to dried out slopes, with the threat of closure hanging over the resort.

The BBC reports:

Taken from higher mountains, the snow was dumped on slopes for beginners and children on Friday and Saturday.

Temperatures have risen above 10C across the Pyrenees this week, leaving ski slopes devoid of snow.

Milder weather and a lack of snow during winter are trends that meteorologists have linked to climate change.

In order to keep Luchon-Superbagnères open, the local council arranged for snow to be sent at a cost of more than 5,000 euros (£4,150).

If you’re more experienced (or you’re the off-piste type), your runs were still snow-covered, but the slopes where the beginners and the ski schools operate were heavily affected during what is one of the busiest times of the year.

Some footage of the chopper delivering the goods:

Whilst Hervé Pounau, the director of the local council, said the cost of bringing in the snow was justified, as the closure of the resort would affect the jobs of more than 80 people, some environmental groups aren’t impressed:

“Instead of adapting to global warming we’re going to end up with a double problem: something that costs a lot of energy, that contributes heavily to global warming and that in addition is only for an elite group of people who can afford it. It is the world upside down,” Bastien Ho, of green group Europe Écologie Les Verts (EELV), told French television.

Other ski resorts in the Pyrenees range have also been adversely affected by poor snowfall, thanks in large part to the mildest January in France since 1900, which in turn has resulted in fewer visitors.

Helicoptering in the snow is a short term solution, but it’s not going to put a dent in the climate change crisis.

Also, what would Greta say?

[source:bbc]