Section 02 · Altitude / Water / Closures
Snow
What a French ski area holds, how high it sits, and what the ones that sit too low are deciding.
6 pieces in this section
Snow · Lead
What a Commune Still Owns Once the Cable Comes Down
In 2024 the commune of La Morte voted to stop running the Alpe du Grand Serre ski area, which tops out around 2,200 metres but did most of its business below that.
Exhibit B
Height Itself, Listed as an Asset
Compagnie des Alpes, the largest operator of French ski areas, now describes altitude as the core holding in its portfolio rather than the number of lifts or the bed count.
Whose Water the Hillside Ponds Hold
Retenues collinaires — hillside storage ponds built to supply snowmaking — have become a contested infrastructure across the French Alps, drawing scrutiny over water rights, environmental permitting,…
The Number Operators Had Already Priced In
Météo-France and the Climsnow projections put specific figures on snow-cover reliability across French Alpine stations; this piece reads across those published projections from the low and mid…
Counting Passages, Not Winters
Domaines Skiables de France publishes the industry's headline measure — skier-days — each season, and the figure counts passages through a turnstile rather than individual visitors or the length of…
The Housing Problem That Follows the Season
Seasonal staff move between Alpine valleys each winter and face a structural shortage of affordable accommodation that resort operators and municipal authorities have documented without resolving.