Summer skiing has been a tradition on Europe’s alpine glaciers for decades, but enthusiasts fear this year’s unprecedented heat could force operators to permanently shut down lifts during the warmer months.
Several high-altitude resorts, including Zermatt and Saas-Fee in Switzerland, Tignes and Les Deux Alpes in France, and Passo Stelvio on the Swiss-Italian border, still offer skiing on their high-altitude slopes for at least part of each summer.
However, human-induced climate change caused consecutive heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere from May to August, and the high temperatures and lack of overnight freezing in the Alps exacerbated summer glacier melt, forcing operators to cancel skiing for safety reasons.
The closure marks the first time in recent years that lift-operated ski resorts will not be available anywhere in the Alps during the summer season.
“It’s very sad,” says Simon Wells, an instructor at Zermatt-based PDS Snowsports. “It takes away the opportunity for kids’ teams and local teams to practice.”
Zermatt aims to offer skiing 365 days a year, operating 13 miles (21 kilometers) of groomed trails and a snow park on the Theodul Glacier near the Italian border in a typical summer season from May to late October. A cable car takes you to the top of the Klein Matterhorn, Europe’s highest lift station at 3,883 meters (12,739 feet). At the exit, there is an even higher drag lift to Gobba di Rollin at 12,791 feet. Ski lifts typically operate from early morning until around noon in the summer.
“It’s really amazing. You’re on top of the Alps at dawn and the sun is coming up all around you,” Wells added. “Below you can see meadows and green valleys, and on this white glacier you’re on top of Europe. It’s just magical.”
Typical ski tourists are local and international race, freestyle ski and snowboard teams training for the upcoming season, riding cable cars with walkers and overlooking the famous 14,692-foot Matterhorn, high Alpine glaciers and other 13,000-foot Alpine giants. Wells said there are also avid local skiers and a significant number of summer vacationers who come from “the four corners of the globe” to experience skiing for the first time.
“By around noon, it’s time to finish. The situation melts and becomes very soft,” he added. “By that time everyone wants to go down the mountain and sunbathe, swim in the lake, play golf, etc.”
But this year, Zermatt announced a temporary suspension of ski operations on August 1, citing “persistent high temperatures, lack of cool nights, frequent thunderstorms, and changing snow and glacier conditions.”
This is the second time in the summer of 2022 that operators have had to shut down lifts for safety reasons.
“The safety of our guests and staff is always our top priority,” Martin Hug, CEO of lift operator Zermatt Bergbanen, said in a statement. The only exception was the Swiss ski team, which was given special allowances to continue training.
In his 38 years in snowsports, Wells said he has seen some “very visible changes,” particularly the shrinking of glaciers. This year has been “extraordinary weather,” he added.
“One minute it’s a lot of snow, and then it’s brutal heat,” he added. “We used to often have freeze-thaw events during the night, but that hasn’t happened this summer. The landscape has changed. Large boulders and boulders are breaking through the glacier and more crevasses are being exposed that weren’t there a few years ago.”
Nearby Saas-Fee operates more than 19 miles of summer ski trails on the Fe Glacier, but it closed on August 10 this year.
The Passo Stelvio ski area near the 2026 Winter Olympics venue in Bormio, Italy, typically operates a similar distance from May to November.
However, skiing at Stelvio Glacier was also canceled on August 15 “until further notice” due to “lack of overnight cooling and refreezing of the snowpack” as well as “a sustained heat wave also recorded at high altitudes”, according to a statement on the resort’s website. Operators described the decision as a “painful but necessary” decision that was “unavoidable due to inclement weather.”
The closure of Oregon’s Timberline, the only remaining summer ski area in the United States, on July 19 meant there was a period of summer when skiing was not possible anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere.
In Les Deux Alpes, the Mont de Rhin glacier at an altitude of 3,600 meters is open to the public for skiing until the end of May, and top athletes and ski teams can train until early July. Prior to 2023, it was possible to ski until late August, but the hot summer of 2022 forced a change in policy and the program was changed early for safety reasons and to protect the glacier.
The village of Hintertux operates the longest ski season in Austria, although it has started to be shortened in recent years.
A spokesperson for the resort said, “For the past few years, we have systematically suspended ski operations during the summer.” “In the summer, hikers, families and day-trippers are the main guests, and mountain services are designed with this in mind. Ski operations will resume in early fall, depending on weather conditions.”
The Grand Motte Glacier above Tignes in France’s Tarentaise Valley hosted summer skiing this year from June 20th to July 20th, with many international ski teams training for mogul and cross-country skiing on a purpose-built 12-mile track.
“For the first half of the summer, the skiing in Tignes was very good and the conditions were excellent,” says Clement Collin, resource director at ALTTA, Tignes’ new ski lift and mountain management company. “But with the heat this year, it started to become more difficult.”
In the past, Tignes advertised itself with the slogan “Ski 365 days a year,” but Colin says the number of ski days has “gradually” declined over the past few decades.
“Summer skiing used to be popular, but it has declined in recent years,” Colin adds. “In the summer, there are more pedestrians and fewer skiers.”
Since 1850, Alpine glaciers have lost 30 to 40 percent of their surface area and about half of their volume due to rising temperatures, according to the Chamonix-based Center for Alpine Ecosystem Research (CREA Mont-Blanc).
The recent acceleration has been remarkable. Between 2000 and 2023, glaciers in the Central European Alps and Pyrenees lost about 39% of their ice, according to the Glacier Mass Equilibrium Intercomparison Experiment (GlaMBIE) study published in Nature.
Colin sees the impact firsthand in Tignes.
“Glaciers are losing 3-4 meters of ice thickness every year, and the rate is increasing. The surface is shrinking,” he says. “It’s becoming more and more difficult to keep the slopes in good condition. When the ice melts, a lot of rocks are revealed. Even in winter, there’s less snow falling on the glaciers, so they don’t regenerate. We know that glaciers disappear after 10 to 15 years. It’s very difficult to see.”
Switzerland’s nearly 1,400 glaciers will lose 3% of their total volume in 2025, making it the fourth largest annual loss on record, according to a report by Swiss glacier monitoring group GLAMOS and the Swiss Academy of Sciences. Over the past decade, Switzerland has lost a quarter of its glacier ice, the report added.
Writing in X, glaciologist Matthias Huss said that on the second-earliest day on record this year (June 29), second only to the hottest summer on record in 2022, Swiss glaciers reached the point at which all the snow they had accumulated from the winter was used up (known as the glacier-vanishing date).
In a previous post in June, Hass captured a time-lapse of the Alps’ largest glacier, the Aletschgletscher Glacier in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, changing from snow-covered to bare ice. “Not entirely exceptional,” he wrote. “The concern is timing. This will happen a month or two into the season.”
For Colin, changing mountain conditions and a growing awareness that the seasons are changing means operators and visitors may need to readjust their ski calendars.
“Today we guarantee that we will be able to open on November 20th, but the next few years may be even more difficult,” he says. “People have to think that it now snows more often in March and April than in January.
“We know that summer skiing happens more at the end of the winter season, in May and June, and no longer in July and August.
“Thinking is changing, but we need to do it 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 there are several studies that show that over the next 50, 80 or 100 years there will be a period of snow and cold with artificial snow,” he says. “So we know that skiing has a future, even if the glaciers are more difficult.”
The key for summer, he says, is to “adapt the product”, promoting other activities such as hiking and mountain biking, and encouraging cyclists and walkers to visit glaciers to see the effects of climate change. “Maybe we can help people understand what will happen if global warming continues as it is,” he says.
Wells tries to remain philosophical. “We consider the mountain to be alive and it determines what we do,” he says.
“Even in winter, it’s up to the mountain to decide. When we can open the glacier again depends on the mountain and the weather. We need stable low temperatures, we need some snow. I’m trying to be as positive as possible.”
