The freeride season ended on a low note when young Swiss skier, Neal Valiton, died during the World Cup Final in Tignes. The tragedy has cast a shadow over an already disappointing World Cup Series that saw 2 of the 5 stages cancelled due to firmly mediocre snow conditions. Can we put this difficult season down to global warming or a freak meteorological cycle? What do the pro-skiers think?
With the exception of Western Canada the ski season has been somewhat lacklustre, characterised as it was by unseasonably warm temperatures. Denis Raffault, who is an organiser of mountain sports events such as the Les Arcs Freeride and who also worked on the Tignes final in an advisory capacity, has felt a change. “Over the last 4 seasons we have noticed the difference. Today we see snow storms rather than regular snow falls.” It seems that such freak weather patterns are not particular to the Alps. Laurent Niol, one of the judges at the Tignes' event, remarked of North America that big dumps of snow were increasingly followed by heavy rain.
The riders themselves are of the same opinion that the signs are not good. Romain Raisson explains, “I have been a pro-rider for Les Arcs for a long time and have noticed a change in the last decade.” In the skier's home town, on the Face de Thuria, which is on the Mont Pourri glacier, the snow depth has decreased by 10 metres and there are rocks coming through everywhere. The same can be said of the Grande Motte glacier in Tignes and of the Mer de Glace in Chamonix where local freeskier, Aurélien Ducroz, has observed that the cable car gains 20 steps a year.
The feedback is worrying, but no one is prepared to say whether the changes are a sign of things to come or simply a phase.
