Through your ski-mask you can see your own breath wisping upwards and catching on the soft breeze, and as you stop for a rest you catch the scent of pines carried across the mountain peaks where you stand. You take in a view of the Alps that has inspired artists and delighted tourists for centuries. There are few words that you could use to describe the pristine white slopes that soar and plummet for thousands of kilometres.

Remember the view, say scientists at the University of Zurich – it might not be there for very long. According to a Swiss research team, the monumentally grinding wheels of global warming are no longer to be heard solely by academics and environmentalists. Using modelling experiments based on past rates of glacier loss and future climate change forecasts, the team has predicted the potential impact of global warming on the Alps.

A Slippery Slope
The study in question points out that the Alpine landscape could be  completely bare by 2100, due to a 5oC rise in air temperature, and even if the beginning of next century seems too far off to really interfere with your fun on the pistes, there's also increasing evidence that the repercussions of global warming could be felt much sooner than that.

The European Environment Agency (AEE) released a report in 2003 saying there were fewer than 50 years in which to reverse the threat caused by a combination of deforestation, nitrous oxide in agriculture and textile manufacturing and carbon dioxide emissions from cars, power plants and other sources.

The Alps are generally divided into Western Alps and Eastern Alps. The Western Alps are located in Italy, France and Switzerland while the Eastern Alps belong to Austria, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovenia and Switzerland. Last year alone, Europe's glaciers lost a tenth of their mass and there is the very real possibility that the Swiss Alps could be reduced by 75 per cent by the year 2050.

Martin Hiller, from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) International based in Gland, Switzerland, says, "On a very general level, we are seeing warming in all of the Alps. The best indicator is the rapid melting of glaciers all over the Alps, like almost everywhere on the globe now.  "How will this affect the weather over the next 50 years or so? Generally, there will be more weather extremes – storms, excessive rainfall (or snow), and alternatively more and more severe spells of drought."

According to Professor Karl Krainer at the University of Innsbruck, global warming is doing far more than melting glaciers: it's also thawing the delicate layer of permafrost, the substance which binds a mountain's surface together. Above 2,400 meters in the Tyrol, in Austria, for example, much of the ground is permanently frozen. As the permafrost thaws, however, rocks can become dislodged, leading to rockslides.

David George, who moved to the French Alps in 1991 and has set up PistHors.com, a website dedicated to off-piste snowsports in France, describes the impending situation in the Alps. "More extreme weather poses the risks of bigger and more frequent avalanches in existing avalanche paths and avalanches in new sites not currently recorded. "At lower altitudes there is a greater risk of flooding – such as that experienced in the French Alps during August 2005." He continues, "It may also increase property maintenance costs due to degradation and here the building materials, especially the quality of exterior wood cladding and roofing, may be worth considering." Hiller concurs with this, adding, "There are many reports already that lower-lying ski areas see the ski season shortening, and resorts offering skiing on glaciers are getting very concerned about deteriorating conditions on the glacier."

Obviously the ski industry is rapidly mobilising action plans to slow the melting process, and where they can't prevent it, they are trying to adapt. Hiller explains, "Andermatt in central Switzerland has resorted to covering parts of the glacier to prevent melting during summer – the part they are covering is vital for access from the top station of their cable car to the pistes. "The people in Andermatt are realistic though – they told me that they know they can at best slow the melting. They reckon that in 30 years this part of the glacier will have gone."

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was explicit in its announcement in August that "hundreds" of ski resorts would be forced out of business due to the worsening situation in most alpine areas. Achim Steiner, then UNEP executive director, made it clear when he told  Reuters last month, "What we are seeing is stark. It is a reminder of the kind of quantum changes that we are about to witness as a consequence of global warming".

Planning off Piste
North American and Australian ski resorts, where global warming has also led to melting slopes, though to a lesser degree, have launched aggressive public relations tactics, like the 'Keep Winter Cool' and 'Sustainable Slopes' campaigns that address the problem head on. European ski resorts have been more tentative in dealing with the issue, obviously keen to prevent investors from being scared off, but this could be to their detriment, as dwindling tourist figures have been recorded in Switzerland and some experts believe Swiss banks have become reluctant to lend on ski development projects.

The resorts' use of technology to beat back the onslaught of melting glaciers is also a double-edged sword, thinks Hiller, "Another impact on skiing will likely be the availability of water and energy for snow cannons – these installations use a lot of both and will become too expensive when natural snowfall decreases further".

Resort managers, as well as manufacturers of skiing equipment, are having to adapt to the change by levelling slopes and planting grass there to enable skiers to practice the sport with a thin cover of only 20 centimetres of powder, instead of the current standard requirement of 70 centimetres to one metre of snow.

The head-in-the-sand approach adopted by some resorts means those buying Alpine property could be left high and dry. George advises caution when buying in France, saying "Planning permission is a black art in France and mayors have been known to give permission to build in zones that are at risk from natural catastrophe. "From a buyers viewpoint they need to instruct their Notaire to consult the most recent documents covering avalanche, flood and fire risks. These documents are the  Plan de Zonage d'Exposition aux Avalanches: Avalanche Zoning Plan (PZEA), Cartes de localisation probable des Avalanches: Maps of likely avalanche sites  (CLPA) and Plan Evaluation des Risks: Risk Evaluation Plan (PER).
He continues, "In particular the CLPA may be more up-to-date than the PZEA as was the case at Montroc where the area hit by an avalanche was zoned as 'safe' but an update to the CLPA had shown the area to be at risk from two avalanches".

A good idea is to avoid steep terrain including valleys, especially where the mountainside above is not completely covered by vegetation or trees. George believes it may also be worth considering the underlying geology, as well as the altitude of the resort. Dr David Stephenson, head of climate research at the University of Reading, says it might not all be bad news for skiers. "There will be greater snow falls in the higher resorts. So although fewer ski resorts will have snow, those that do could well have more of it."

Snow levels in lower-lying areas will become increasingly unpredictable and unreliable over the coming decades, with between 37 per cent and 56 per cent of Swiss resorts facing such low levels that many may have acute difficulties attracting overseas tourists and winter sports enthusiasts. Not all the authorities are taking a laissez faire approach to the issue. In 2005, the Tyrol government sitting in Innsbruck, the self-titled capital of the Alpine ski industry, launched its most radical bid to call a halt to the relentless development. All projects on the quarter of Tyrol that is conservation territory were outlawed and the government issued a blanket ban on all new ski developments.

Higher and higher?
Part of the issue, undoubtedly, is the fact that ski resorts, like the tourists and investors who flock to them, are as much a part of the problem of global warming and environmental damage as they are victims of them. While exact figures for the number of Alpine tourists is hard to calculate as most mountains are freely accessible, last year 23,000 people used the railway to travel to the Rhone glacier and 562,000 more went by rail to the Aletsch glacier, the largest in the Alps, with hundreds of thousands more flying or driving in, generating millions of euros for local economies.

The network of cable cars and ski lifts on the popular Silvretta range in the Austrian Alps, for example, carries up to 20,000 skiers a day. As the developers head further up the mountain in search of snow, the next wave of tourists to the Alps could be in search of a much more macabre vista – to witness the disappearing of the Alpine landscape first hand.

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For further information:
World Wildlife Fund
Didier Richard, CEMAGREF

Read other articles about ski resort properties:
Bulgarian mountain properties catch the eye
Canada a whiz for winter holiday homes
Property purchase in European ski resorts

Article published in October 2006