The unusually warm Winter has taken its first significant closure at the wonderful Minschuns ski area. The Communications Officer for Sportanlagen AG, Val Müstair, informs me that
“Due to the critical snow conditions in Val Müstair, the Minschuns winter sports area will close its facilities as early as Sunday, March 15, 2026”.
The Most Expensive European Resorts
Holidu has come up with a list of the most expensive resorts in Europe – and surprisingly no resort in France makes the top 10, whilst only two Swiss resorts do.
The most expensive resorts are mainly in Austria and Italy. Here is the list:
1. Obergurgl-Hochgurgl, Austria – €287 per day
2. Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – €279.50
3. Obertauern, Austria – €276.50
4. Zermatt (CH) – €273
5. Gitschberg Jochtal (IT) – €238
6. Ischgl (AT) – €228.50
7. St. Moritz – Corviglia (CH) – €222
8. Madonna di Campiglio (IT) – €221
9. Kitzbühel/Kirchberg/KitzSki (AT) – €214.75
10. Hintertux Glacier (AT) – €214
The study considers both daily ski pass prices and accommodation costs per person.
The cheapest resorts are all in France, but it is worth considering that they all have less than 40km of ski domain, have short seasons and are generally hard to get to.
Conversely, despite Zermatt’s relative expense, it has an extensive domain, a long season and excellent public transport links.
Norwegians and Skiing
In 1952 Sir Arnold Lunn noted that “The Ski Club of Great Britain is the proud possessor of the finest collection of old skis outside of the museums of Norway and Sweden. The donor of this collection, Dr. Helge Refsum, D.C.L, is a member of the Standing Committee for the Scientific Research of Ski History in Norway.”.
The donation was made in 1937 and was at one time hung on the walls of the Club House -when the Ski Club had one. Now they are variously at a ski-themed pub in Farringdon, London, or wrapped away in storage at de Montford University, where the archives and historical artefacts of the Ski Club are held. Refsum wrote an article in the British Ski Year Book in 1937 entitled “Some Aspects of Norway’s Contribution to Ski History” which provides context to the donation.
Although there is evidence of ancient people using some forms of skis all over the world, the ski has the longest unbroken history of use in Scandinavia. The oldest ski was found in a bog in Hoting, Sweden, dating back to 2500 BC; the earliest pictorial representation of skiing is a carving on a rock in Roedoey in Northern Norway; medieval Scandinavian literature references skiing; and by 1200, skiing plays a key role in how Scandinavians waged war. Although skiing was important to the military and widely used in rural communities, it’s role in leisure activities was limited. Nansen’s traverse of Greenland on skis in 1888, however, captured the imagination of people throughout the world, fuelling an interest in using Norwegian skis for recreation in the Alps and elsewhere.
The disciplines associated with Norwegian skis are largely present today in cross country, ski jumping and biathlon (emphasising the military dimension). Thanks largely to the Ski Club of Great Britain, however, those old Norwegian skis were made obsolete for the majority of recreational skiers by the new disciplines of slalom and downhill.
What is artificial snow?
The rise of artificial snow is inexorable. In 2009 about a fifth of slopes in the French Alps were supplied by snow-machines. Today it is over half, and rising fast. In some resorts in America the artificial takeover is nearly total. According to International Ski Federation rules, it would now effectively be impossible to make competition-grade slopes without using artificial snow.
An article in 1843 magazine provides the following explanation of what artificial snow is:
Snow machines take water, mix it with compressed air and blast it into a mist of tiny droplets that freeze into hard balls of ice as they fall to the ground. Under a microscope, these look nothing like snow crystals. They’re just lumpen spheres crammed together like misshapen Maltesers. Snow machines have two big advantages beyond the obvious: creating snow when none is falling. First, artificial snow is about 50 times harder than the real stuff, which makes it far less likely to melt. Compared with a piste of natural snow, an artificial one will last up to five weeks longer when temperatures rise above zero. Second, the structure of artificial snow is uniform. The natural sort settles into packs with wildly different textures.
This different structure of artificial snow can have a negative impact on the mountain ecosystem.
And why is it sometimes too warm to make snow even when it is below freezing? the article continues:
What matters for snowmaking is the combination of air temperature and humidity, what’s known as “wet-bulb temperature”. Just as human bodies struggle to cool down on humid days, so snowflakes struggle to freeze in moist air. At a wet-bulb temperature of -8℃, which, for example, registers when the air temperature is -5℃ and the humidity a low 20%, it’s easy to make snow. But as the air’s cooling capacity declines, snowmakers have to compensate by pumping less water through the machines. The result is ruinous inefficiency. It takes three times as much energy – and three times longer – to make a cubic metre of snow at a wet-bulb reading of -4℃ as it does at -8℃. At -3℃, you’re using quadruple the energy you needed at -8℃ – though it’s technically possible to make snow, you’d really rather not. Above -2℃, forget about it. The water won’t freeze as it falls to the ground.
Even snow machines do not provide a complete solution for global warming. Human ingenuity is finding increasing numbers of ways to keep skiing viable, but at a cost.
Artificial snow is an environmental disaster. Typically a ski resort will use a billion litres of water in a season to produce artificial snow, with as much as 40% of the water lost through leakage, evaporation or because artificial flakes blow away from the piste they’re supposed to land on. Snowmaking also accounts for approximately 50% of the average American ski resort’s energy costs