Europe’s high-altitude year-round ski season has turned to slush

Summer skiing has been a fixture on Europe’s high Alpine glaciers for decades, but enthusiasts fear this year’s unprecedented heat could cause operators to switch off the lifts in the warmer months for good.

A handful of high-altitude resorts such as Zermatt and Saas-Fee in Switzerland, Tignes and Les 2 Alpes in France and Passo Stelvio on the Swiss-Italian border still champion skiing on their high-altitude slopes for at least part of each summer.

But as human-driven climate change fueled successive Northern Hemisphere heat waves from May to August, high temperatures and a lack of overnight freezing in the Alps exacerbated the summer melting of glaciers and forced operators to pull the plug on skiing for safety reasons.

The shutdown marked the first time in years that organized, lift-access skiing has not been available anywhere in the Alps during the entire summer season.

“It’s quite sad,” says Simon Wells, a Zermatt-based instructor with PDS Snowsport . “It takes away the opportunity for the kids’ teams, the local teams to train.”

Zermatt aims to offer skiing 365 days a year and in a normal summer from May to late October, the resort operates 13 miles (21 kilometers) of groomed runs plus a snow park on the Theodul Glacier near the border with Italy. It is accessed via the cable car to the summit of the Klein Matterhorn, which at 12,739 feet (3,883 meters) is the highest lift station in Europe. On exit, the drag lift to Gobba di Rollin at 12,791 feet reaches higher still. The lifts for skiing typically run from early morning until about midday in summer.

“It’s absolutely stunning, you’re on top of the Alps at dawn with the sun coming up around you,” adds Wells. “You can see the valley below with all the pastureland and greenery and you’re on top of Europe on this white-sheeted glacier. It’s just magical.”

Typical ski visitors are local and international race and freestyle ski and snowboard squads training for the upcoming season, alongside the pedestrians who ride the cable car for sweeping views of the celebrated Matterhorn at 14,692 feet, the high Alpine glaciers and other 13,000-feet giants of the Alps. Then there are the keen local skiers and a significant number of summer vacationers from “all four corners of the globe” who want to experience skiing for the first time, according to Wells.

“By about lunchtime, it’s time to finish. The conditions do melt and become very soft,” he adds. “By then everyone wants to head down and sunbathe or swim in the lakes or play golf or whatever.”

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This year, however, Zermatt announced a temporary suspension of its ski operation on August 1, citing “persistently high temperatures, the lack of a night-time cool-down, repeated thunderstorms and the changed snow and glacier conditions.”

The closure marked only the second time — alongside the summer of 2022 — when operators had to stop the lifts for safety reasons.

“The safety of guests and staff is always our top priority,” said Martin Hug, CEO of lift operator Zermatt Bergbahnen in a statement. The only exception was the Swiss ski team which had special dispensation to keep training.

Wells says he has seen some “very visual changes” in 38 years of being involved in snow sports, notably the shrinking glaciers. This year, it has been the “extremes” of weather, he added.

“One moment there is loads of snow, then there is brutal, sustained heat,” he adds. “Whereas you always used to get freeze-thaw conditions at night, this summer it has not been there. It has changed the landscape: things that weren’t around a couple of years ago like big boulders and rocks coming through the glacier, more crevasses being exposed.”

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Nearby, Saas-Fee operates more than 12 miles of summer ski runs on its Fee Glacier but it halted operations on August 10 this year.

The Passo Stelvio ski area near the 2026 Winter Olympics venue of Bormio in Italy normally operates from May to November with a similar distance of runs.

But skiing on the Stelvio glacier was also suspended “until further notice” on August 15 because of “persistent heat waves recorded even at high altitudes” alongside “lack of nighttime cooling and refreezing of the snowpack,” according to a statement on the resort’s website. Operators described it as a “painful but necessary” decision made “unavoidable by the adverse weather conditions.”

With the closure on July 19 of Timberline in Oregon, the United States’ only remaining summer ski destination, this meant there was a time during the summer that there was no skiing available anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere.

In Les 2 Alpes, skiing is possible for the public on the Mont de Lans glacier up to 3,600 meters until the end of May, while top athletes and ski teams can train until early July. Before 2023, it was possible to ski until late August but the hot summer of 2022 forced a change in policy and shifted the program earlier for safety reasons and to preserve the glacier.

The village of Hintertux operates the longest ski season in Austria but in recent years this has begun to shorten.

“For several years now, there has been a scheduled pause in ski operations during the summer months,” a spokesperson for the resort said. “In summer, our primary guests are hikers, families and day visitors, and the mountain’s offerings are designed with this in mind. Ski operations will resume in early autumn, depending on weather conditions.”

The Grande Motte Glacier high above Tignes in France’s Tarentaise valley offered summer skiing from June 20 to July 20 this year, attracting a host of international ski teams training for moguls and cross-country skiing on a purpose-built 12-mile track.

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“In the first part of the summer the skiing was very good in Tignes, the conditions were great,” says Clement Colin, director of resources for ALTTA , the newly formed ski lift and mountain management company for Tignes. “But then with the heat we had this year, it started to be more difficult.”

In days gone by, Tignes marketed itself with the slogan, “365 days of skiing a year,” but the number of days that skiing is available has dropped “progressively” over the past couple of decades, according to Colin.

“Summer skiing was popular in the past, but it has been slower these last few years,” adds Colin. “We have more pedestrians and fewer skiers in the summer.”

Since 1850, Alpine glaciers have lost 30-40% of their surface area and about half their volume because of warming temperatures, according to the Chamonix-based Research Center for Alpine Ecosystems (CREA Mont-Blanc).

Recent acceleration has been significant. Between 2000 and 2023, glaciers in Central Europe — the Alps and Pyrenees — have lost about 39% of their ice, according to a study by the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) published in the journal Nature .

Colin is witnessing the effect in Tignes.

“The glacier is losing 3-4 meters’ ice thickness every year and it’s going faster and faster. The surface is shrinking,” he says. “The slopes are more and more difficult to keep in good shape. When the ice melts, you have a lot of rocks that emerge. Even in the winter, we have less snow that falls on the glacier so it does not regenerate. We know that in 10-15 years it will disappear. It’s very hard to see.”

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Switzerland’s glaciers, which number close to 1,400, lost 3% of their total volume in 2025 — the fourth-largest annual drop on record — according to a report by Swiss glacier monitoring group GLAMOS and the Swiss Academy of Sciences. Over the last decade, Switzerland has lost one quarter of its glacial ice, the report added.

Glaciologist Matthias Huss, writing on X, said Swiss glaciers reached the point where all snow reserves accumulated from the winter are used up — known as Glacier Loss Day — on the second earliest date in history this year (June 29), second only to the record-breaking hot summer of 2022.

In an earlier post in June, Huss showed a time-lapse of the Alps’ biggest glacier, the Aletschgletscher in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, going from snow-covered to bare ice. “Not absolutely exceptional,” he wrote. “It’s the timing that is worrying. This should occur 1-2 months later in the season.”

For Colin, the changing conditions in the mountains and a growing recognition that seasons are shifting means operators and visitors might need to recalibrate their ski calendars.

“Today we guarantee we can open on November 20 but that may be more difficult in years to come,” he says. “People have to consider we often now have better snow in March and April than in January.

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“Summer skiing we know will go more at the end of the winter season so May and June and no more in July and August.

“It’s a mindset that is changing but it has to be faster.”

He insists he is “not too worried” about the main ski season. “Tignes and Val d’Isère are some of the highest resorts in the Alps and we have some studies that show that in the next 50, 80, 100 years, we will have snowfall and cold periods to produce artificial snow,” he says. “So we know we have a future for skiing even if the glacier is more difficult.”

The key for the summer is to “adapt our products” he says, promoting other activities available such as hiking and mountain biking and perhaps encouraging cyclists and pedestrians to visit the glaciers to see the impact of a changing climate. “Maybe we can help people to see what happens if we continue like this in global warming,” he says.

Wells is trying to remain philosophical. “We consider the mountains to be alive and dictate to us what we’re going to do,” he says.

“Even in winter, the mountain will decide. As far as when we can open the glacier again, it’s down to the mountain and the weather. We need consistent low temperatures and we need some snow. I’m staying as positive as possible.”

几十年来，夏季滑雪一直是欧洲高山冰川上的一项传统活动，但滑雪爱好者担心今年前所未有的高温可能会导致运营商在温暖的月份永久关闭缆车。

瑞士的采尔马特和萨斯费、法国的蒂涅和莱德阿尔卑斯以及瑞士-意大利边境的斯泰尔维奥山口等少数高海拔度假胜地，仍然在每个夏季的部分时间里大力推广高海拔滑雪运动。

但随着人为气候变化导致北半球从 5 月到 8 月连续出现热浪，阿尔卑斯山的高温和夜间缺乏冰冻加剧了夏季冰川的融化，迫使滑雪场经营者出于安全原因停止滑雪活动。

此次关闭标志着多年来阿尔卑斯山脉整个夏季首次完全没有有组织的、可乘坐缆车的滑雪活动。

“这很令人遗憾，”来自采尔马特的PDS Snowsport教练西蒙·威尔斯说。“这剥夺了孩子们和当地队伍的训练机会。”

采尔马特的目标是全年365天提供滑雪服务。在正常的夏季（5月至10月下旬），度假村运营着21公里（13英里）长的平整雪道，以及位于靠近意大利边境的特奥杜尔冰川上的雪地公园。游客可乘坐缆车到达小马特洪峰顶，该峰海拔3883米（12739英尺），是欧洲最高的缆车站。下山后，游客还可以乘坐拖牵式缆车前往海拔3900米（12791英尺）的戈巴迪罗林，继续向上攀登。夏季，滑雪缆车通常从清晨运营至中午左右。

“景色美得令人窒息，黎明时分，你站在阿尔卑斯山之巅，太阳从你身边缓缓升起，”威尔斯补充道。“你可以看到山谷下方的牧场和绿地，而你则站在欧洲之巅，脚下是一片洁白的冰川。简直太神奇了。”

典型的滑雪游客包括为即将到来的赛季进行训练的本地和国际竞技滑雪及自由式滑雪和单板滑雪队，以及乘坐缆车欣赏海拔14,692英尺（4,500米）的著名马特洪峰、高山冰川和阿尔卑斯山脉其他海拔超过13,000英尺（4,900米）的巍峨山峰的行人。此外，还有热情的本地滑雪爱好者，以及来自“世界各地”的大量夏季度假者，他们都想体验滑雪的乐趣，威尔斯说道。

“到了午饭时间左右，就该收工了。积雪会融化，变得非常松软，”他补充道。“到那时，大家都想下去晒晒太阳、在湖里游泳、打高尔夫或者做其他什么事。”

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然而，今年 8 月 1 日，采尔马特宣布暂时停止滑雪运营，理由是“持续高温、夜间降温不足、雷暴天气频发以及积雪和冰川状况发生变化”。

此次关闭是继 2022 年夏季之后，运营商第二次因安全原因不得不停止电梯运营。

“保障游客和员工的安全始终是我们的首要任务，”采尔马特缆车公司首席执行官马丁·胡格在一份声明中表示。唯一的例外是瑞士滑雪队，他们获得了特殊许可，可以继续训练。

威尔斯表示，在他从事冰雪运动的38年里，他目睹了一些“非常明显的改变”，尤其是冰川的消融。他还补充说，今年最显著的变化是极端天气。

“一会儿积雪很厚，一会儿又酷热难耐，”他补充道。“以前晚上总会有冻融循环，但今年夏天却没有。这改变了地貌：几年前没有的景象，比如冰川中露出的巨石和岩石，以及更多暴露出来的冰裂缝，现在都出现了。”

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附近的萨斯费在其费冰川上运营着超过 12 英里的夏季滑雪道，但已于今年 8 月 10 日停止运营。

位于意大利博尔米奥（2026 年冬季奥运会举办地）附近的斯泰尔维奥山口滑雪场通常从 5 月到 11 月开放，滑雪道长度也大致相同。

但根据度假村网站上的一份声明，由于“即使在高海拔地区也持续出现热浪”，以及“夜间降温和积雪重新冻结不足”，斯泰尔维奥冰川的滑雪活动也于8月15日暂停，“直至另行通知”。运营商称，这是一个“令人痛心但又必要的”决定，“由于恶劣的天气条件，这是不可避免的”。

随着俄勒冈州廷伯莱恩滑雪场于 7 月 19 日关闭，美国仅存的夏季滑雪胜地也随之关闭，这意味着在夏季的某个时期，北半球任何地方都无法滑雪。

在莱德萨尔普，公众可以在海拔3600米以下的蒙德朗冰川滑雪，滑雪季持续到5月底，而顶尖运动员和滑雪队则可以训练到7月初。2023年之前，滑雪季可以持续到8月底，但2022年炎热的夏季迫使政府改变政策，出于安全考虑和保护冰川的需要，滑雪季提前结束。

欣特图克斯村拥有奥地利最长的滑雪季，但近年来滑雪季开始缩短。

度假村发言人表示：“多年来，夏季滑雪运营一直按计划暂停。夏季，我们的主要客人是徒步旅行者、家庭游客和一日游游客，山上的各项服务也是根据这些需求设计的。滑雪运营将于初秋恢复，具体时间取决于天气情况。”

今年6月20日至7月20日，法国塔朗泰斯山谷蒂涅上方的格兰德莫特冰川提供了夏季滑雪，吸引了众多国际滑雪队在专门建造的12英里长的雪道上进行雪上技巧和越野滑雪训练。

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由于雪量不足，法国大型滑雪度假村难以发展，将关闭。

“今年夏天前半段，蒂涅的滑雪条件非常好，雪况极佳，”蒂涅新成立的滑雪缆车和山地管理公司ALTTA的资源总监克莱门特·科林说道，“但随着今年气温升高，滑雪条件开始变得困难起来。”

据科林称，过去蒂涅的宣传口号是“一年365天滑雪”，但过去二十年来，可供滑雪的天数“逐渐”减少。

科林补充说：“过去夏季滑雪很受欢迎，但近几年有所减少。夏天行人多了，滑雪的人少了。”

据位于霞慕尼的阿尔卑斯山生态系统研究中心（CREA Mont-Blanc）称，自 1850 年以来，由于气温升高，阿尔卑斯山冰川的表面积减少了 30-40%，体积减少了约一半。

近期冰川消融速度显著加快。根据冰川质量平衡对比研究（GlaMBIE）发表在《自然》杂志上的一项研究，2000 年至 2023 年间，中欧（阿尔卑斯山和比利牛斯山）的冰川损失了约 39% 的冰。

科林正在蒂涅亲眼目睹这种影响。

“冰川每年都在减少3到4米的冰层厚度，而且速度越来越快。冰川表面正在缩小，”他说。“冰川坡面越来越难以保持良好状态。冰层融化后，会露出很多岩石。即使在冬季，冰川上的降雪量也越来越少，因此它无法再生。我们知道，10到15年后，它将彻底消失。这令人难以接受。”

Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA/Shutterstock

瑞士冰川监测组织GLAMOS和瑞士科学院联合发布的一份报告显示，瑞士近1400座冰川预计在2025年将损失3%的总体积，这将是有记录以来第四大的年度降幅。报告还指出，过去十年间，瑞士已损失了四分之一的冰川冰。

冰川学家马蒂亚斯·胡斯在 X 上撰文称，瑞士冰川在今年（6 月 29 日）达到了冬季积雪全部耗尽的临界点——即冰川消融日——这是历史上第二早的日期，仅次于 2022 年破纪录的炎热夏季。

胡斯在六月份的一篇帖子中展示了一段延时摄影，记录了瑞士伯尔尼高地阿尔卑斯山最大的冰川——阿莱奇冰川——从积雪覆盖到裸露冰面的过程。“这并非绝对罕见，”他写道，“令人担忧的是时机。这种情况通常发生在雪季的1-2个月之后。”

对于科林来说，山区环境的变化以及人们越来越意识到季节正在转变，意味着经营者和游客可能需要重新调整他们的滑雪日程。

“今天我们保证11月20日可以开业，但未来几年可能会更难，”他说。“人们必须考虑到，现在3月和4月的雪况通常比1月更好。”

Kari Medig/Destination BC

全球降雪量减少，但以下这些滑雪胜地仍然是本季体验雪道的好去处。

“我们知道夏季滑雪活动将主要集中在冬季末期，也就是五月和六月，七月和八月将不再进行。

“这是一种正在改变的思维方式，但转变速度必须更快。”

他坚称自己“并不太担心”滑雪旺季。“蒂涅和瓦尔迪泽尔是阿尔卑斯山海拔最高的滑雪胜地之一，而且我们有一些研究表明，在未来50年、80年、100年内，我们仍然会有降雪和寒冷期，可以进行人工造雪，”他说。“所以我们知道，即使冰川滑雪变得更加困难，我们的滑雪事业依然有未来。”

他表示，夏季的关键在于“调整我们的产品”，推广其他活动，例如徒步旅行和山地自行车，或许还可以鼓励骑行者和步行者去冰川参观，亲眼目睹气候变化的影响。“或许我们可以帮助人们了解，如果我们继续这样加剧全球变暖，将会发生什么，”他说。

威尔斯试图保持一种超脱尘世的态度。“我们认为山脉是有生命的，它们会指引我们该做什么，”他说。

“即使在冬天，最终决定权也在山上。至于何时才能再次开放冰川，这取决于山的情况和天气。我们需要持续的低温和降雪。我会尽可能保持乐观。”