A Warming Winter Is Quietly Making Famous Ski Resorts More Dangerous

Skiers were being transported toward a ridge that appeared to be completely safe as the chairlift hummed steadily above the valley. Below, children dragged plastic sleds across crowded paths, their laughter resonating off wooden balconies, while chalet roofs were covered in tidy mounds of snow. There was nothing threatening about the scene. However, the mountain had already changed somewhere outside of the designated trails.

The majority of passengers on that lift might not have been aware that the avalanche map below them was getting out of date.

Avalanche maps were revered in alpine communities for decades; they were meticulously drew, seldom questioned, and marked areas where snow might melt and fall. Believing that those lines would remain, entire villages were constructed around them. But that certainty is being subtly erased by warming winters, which are changing snowpacks in ways that scientists acknowledge are getting more unpredictable.

Researchers at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF in Switzerland have been examining the ways in which avalanche behavior is evolving due to rising temperatures. Their results are disturbing. Once thought to occur more frequently in the spring, wet-snow avalanches are now more frequently occurring in the middle of winter, during the busiest travel season.

It sounds like a technical shift. It isn’t.

The behavior of wet avalanches is different. They carry dense, cement-like snow that crushes nearly everything in their path, making them heavier but moving more slowly. It appears more like the earth collapsing than snow when you watch footage of one going down toward a tree line.

What’s disturbing is how silently this change is taking place.

Cafés in the Alps remained full last February. Ski rental stores were bustling with activity. On top of them, however, snow was falling on brittle layers that had developed during the abnormally dry early winter weeks. According to scientists, this pattern—prolonged dry spells followed by heavy snowfall—is growing more frequent. It doesn’t bond well with the new snow. It waits.

Avalanche maps, which mainly rely on historical patterns, seem to be having difficulty keeping up with this new cadence. While some slopes that were previously thought to be reasonably safe are experiencing unexpected instability, others are experiencing lower activity levels. It appears that the risks in the mountains are shifting.

They observe sunlight bouncing off immaculate hillsides. They view Instagram images captured from carefully framed perspectives that omit warning signs and avalanche barriers. It was difficult to ignore how many people passed by without slowing down when I was standing close to one of those signs, which was partially covered in snow and next to a well-traveled path.

Perhaps they thought that someone else had already looked.

Resorts are making an effort to change. Even now, avalanche control crews get up early, use explosives to scale slopes, and purposefully start smaller slides to stop bigger ones later. However, wet-snow avalanches are more difficult to control. Their reactions to explosives are not always the same as those of dry snow.

They can occasionally be released suddenly.

Warming winters will continue to upset traditional snow patterns, according to climate scientists, including those who contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Generally speaking, less snow does not always translate into less danger. It might just indicate a different kind of danger.

That difference is important. This season, avalanches hit regions of California that were emerging from drought conditions, where new snow fell on top of icy, hardened layers. The outcome was fatal. Skiers who thought conditions were stable were caught when entire sections suddenly collapsed.

The speed at which resorts can completely modify their hazard maps is still unknown. Because the foundation of avalanche mapping is probability rather than certainty.

Lift lines are still long on sunny mornings in the French Alps. At picturesque overlooks, families continue to pose for pictures. On slopes that their parents once trusted, kids continue to learn how to ski. Beneath their outward beauty, there is a subdued tension as you watch them wrapped in vibrant jackets.

The mountains have the same appearance. As snowlines rise, avalanche activity may actually decrease in some lower-elevation avalanche zones while increasing at higher elevations. According to scientists, some avalanches may begin higher and move farther, particularly during periods of intense snowfall that continue to happen in spite of global warming.

This contradiction is odd. Not as much winter. Occasionally, however, there is greater risk.

However, that uncertainty is rarely emphasized by the industry. Confidence is essential for ski tourism. Security. custom. the notion that these locations are foreseeable.

Perhaps the attraction stems from that belief. Or perhaps it’s a risk factor.

Because the meticulously printed, laminated, and trusted maps that hang inside ski patrol offices are no longer unchangeable. They are relics of a bygone era that are gradually becoming outdated. And the chairlift continues to move outside.