When Ben Feldman began skiing in his 20s, he could count on snow-filled winters buffeting the slopes. Not anymore. When he took his family to Liberty Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania last winter, the slopes looked very different.
“It’s the first time I saw where basically there’s no snow anywhere and then you get to the mountain and it’s snow covered in the middle of otherwise no snow,” said Feldman, now 62.
Ski resorts, more than perhaps any other industry, rely on the climate to deliver the conditions necessary for a profitable business. The trend the past couple decades looks bleak. In 1992, there were 546 ski areas in operation. As of last year, that number has dropped to 486.
“When I think about where to ski in the world, I’d like to go to a first class place again,” said Feldman. “But then I have to think much more about, ‘Did they get good snow this year.’”
How vulnerable a ski area is to anthropogenic climate change depends on how high an area is in the sky.
“The higher you are in elevation, the more you’re protected from the warming that’s taking place,” said Dr. Michael Pidwirny, associate professor at the Department of Earth, Environmental and Geographic Sciences at the University of British Columbia. “High altitude ski resorts that are quite some distance from the west coast are more protected. They have colder climates.”
Lower-altitude resorts on the East Coast, however, are being forced to change their business models to adapt to a warming world. Take Blue Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania’s Carbon County for example. The resort used to be solely a skiing destination but opened their first mountain biking trails in the early 2000s and have been expanding their green season amenities ever since as they now boast 31 downhill bike trails.
It’s an adaptation many areas have to make in order to stay afloat, says Daniel Scott, a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo.
“Many of the ski areas, what used to be called ski resorts, are now called mountain resorts,” said Scott, who has worked on sustainable tourism for over two decades. “They’ve moved to four season activities, so mountain bikes on the hills, conference centers, spas, pools, you name it.”
Since 1992, the average temperature measured in Carbon County has shot up by four degrees Fahrenheit. Although the emergence of snowmaking technology extended the ski season length in the 1990s and into the 2000s, that is no longer the case. The average length of the ski season at Blue Mountain fell by 17 days from 2017 to 2023.
Even ski resorts in more well-positioned regions like Colorado are feeling the pressure.
“A lot of ski areas are expanding into summer operations,” said Hannah Berman, senior sustainability and philanthropy manager at Aspen One in Colorado. “We’re seeing more erratic winters, and it’s nice to spread your business out over the full year and provide mountain biking, alpine coasters and all those fun summer activities in case you have a bad winter due to climate change.”
Aspen One, much like Blue Mountain, has hedged against climate change through such seasonal offerings. Yet the pivot to year-round activities only goes so far: for most resorts, non-skiing activities “are about 10% of revenue at this point,” said Senior Vice President of Sustainability Auden Schendler.
People still want to ski, now more than ever according to the numbers. Since 1992, skier visits have increased by 19% and domestic snowsport participants reached 10.6 million last season, the third highest number recorded.
These trends suggest ski companies such as Aspen One are set up to absorb some of the growing customer base as more local areas close down or are rendered obsolete by humans’ effects on nature.
“There is kind of a near term business advantage to places in Colorado or in Utah that are at higher elevations,” said the Director of the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University Russ Schumacher. “That certainly doesn’t mean that the high elevation resorts are immune from the effects of climate change. It might just take a little longer for those effects to be apparent.”
For the entire skiing industry, snowmaking became a lifeline on a warming planet. Yet snowmaking itself requires clear access to water and cold enough temperatures for artificial snow not to melt quickly. The necessary conditions to make snow are deteriorating.
“Using Aspen as an example, compared to 1980, there are 31 days on average that no longer get below freezing,” said Berman. “That’s very bad for business.”
For now, higher altitude skiing areas are sitting pretty atop the melting mountain of their industry. But sooner or later, swelling global temperatures will come for high elevation resorts as well.
“By 2080 or 2085, about 70% of the resorts will probably not be economically feasible because they just can’t get a ski season beyond a hundred days,” said Dr. Pidwirny.