03 May 2007 - “The slopes
didn’t get any snow at all until December
and when we did get some snow it rained
for days.”
My name is Andrea Fabellini. I am 35 years
old and I live in Chamonix Mont Blanc, France,
a beautiful little town at the foot of the
Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Western
Europe. I work at the Binational Police
Service of the Mont Blanc Tunnel, and in
the spare time I practice snowboarding and
film making, among other things.
Good powder in the good old days
I am originally from the central Apennines
region of Italy, and I’ve been living in
Chamonix/Courmayeur (the Italian side of
Mont Blanc) since 1996. When I arrived in
Courmayeur, on December 19, 1996, there
was a layer of 1 metre of snow, with 50cm
of powder on top of it, right in the village,
at an elevation of 1200m above sea level.
This was pretty normal in the Alps at that
time of the year.
A decline in snowfall
As the years went by, we experienced a general
decline of snowfall, at a constant rate.
Normally we would have the first snow dumps
in the village in November, and the temperatures
would fall below zero accordingly. In April
we would still have a few dumps of a certain
importance, 40-50cm, and the slopes would
shut at the end of the month, with plenty
of spring snow left, even off-piste (off
the sky trail), at an elevation of 1700m.
Ten years since I arrived in Chamonix,
the weather has changed dramatically. November
2006 was warm and sunny, and so was December.
The slopes didn’t get any snow at all, until
20 December, while the normal opening of
the winter season is the 9 December in Courmayeur.
It was sad to snowboard in a stripe of hard
artificial snow in mid December! But this
was not all. After Christmas, which was
far from normal, the poor snow quality got
even worse when it rained up to 2000m. In
early February 2007, a snow dump got things
almost back to normal, but only for a short
lived week or so. It rained for days, way
above 2000m, and the snow was all wet and
rotten. In March 2007, usually the best
month for skiing, it was very rainy and
the snowline never fell below 1800m, with
wet snow above 2000m. April 2007 has been
very hot, almost summery, and the slopes
closed down well in advance of the usual
end of the skiing season, with the worst
snow layer I ever experienced. Same development,
if not worse, in the Chamonix ski areas.
Melting permafrost and rockslides
Another unheard of phenomenon which requires
special attention, in my opinion, is the
following: On 9 March, a rock landslide
blocked the roadside of one of the hairpin
turns that lead vehicles to the Mont Blanc
Tunnel Entrance, on the French side. Picture
this: a rock cliff exposed to the north,
in early March, that collapses because of
the absence of permafrost. I always noticed
those huge greenly icicles hanging all over
that cliff, from December to March. They
were pretty typical. Not anymore. They were
never there this past winter.
Early blooms and disrupted hibernations
The damages of this climate change pattern,
which may or may not be cyclical (I wish
it would), are various and important. I
have seen trees in bloom well in advance
of the usual time, at the end of February,
and animals are waking up from their hibernation
too early in the season and risk their life,
as it gets back to ‘normal’ seasonal temperatures.
Impact on the local ski and touism industry
The ski/snowboard industry is very concerned
about this raise of the snowline, and there
are already regional directives addressing
the issue, imposing for example the disregard
for improvements to ski lifts and cable
cars below 2000m (the vast majority!), the
funding being redirected to resorts planning
to relocate those lifts to higher grounds.
Many small resorts, located at the foot
of the alpine valleys, never opened last
winter. In the summer, climbers experienced
the closing of the classic route that leads
to the Mont Blanc summit, for lack of snow
bridges over crevasses.
Climate change is a serious issue. Winter
seasons like 2000-‘01 or 1996-‘97 were similar
to the one that just ended. It doesn’t seem
to be a cycle; the temperatures are higher,
the snow falls higher and higher up in the
mountain every year and the glaciers are
melting fast, very fast.
Please act, at all levels, report, expose,
stop polluting and change the uncontrolled
exploitation of natural resources. The climate
in the Alps has changed. This is a fact.
The Snow Must go On
In December I won a video-contest organized
by National Geographic Adventure, a channel
of the FOX/SKY Italy satellite bouquet.
The prize is a round the world ticket and
a recommendation letter from FOX. The task
is to do a “videoblog” from all the places
I visit, and I choose to dedicate this once
in a life time opportunity to the climate
change issue.
The format of my round the world trip,
that will start in July 2007, is explained
in detail on www.haero.com/blog, and is
called “The Snow Must go On”, and it will
be dedicated to report, interview, filming,
recording and eventual exposure to similar
weather patterns, concerning the snow and
the mountain cultures of Southern Africa,
Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada.
In March 2008 I will produce a documentary
that will have a similar title.
