How climate change and COVID-19 are transforming skiing

STEVENS PASS, Wash. — Skiing is an endangered sport, caught between a warming planet and a global pandemic. But there’s a boom in one corner of the ski world that’s being driven, at least in part, by a combination of climate change and COVID-19.

The unexpected upturn shows how skiers are adapting to the dual crises and how one winter sport is evolving as snow cover declines around the world.

Ski touring, or uphill skiing, a hybrid style that combines elements of cross-country and downhill, has been popular in Europe for decades. In the United States, though, it’s traditionally been a sport for mountaineers and extreme athletes, who use the special skis to trek uphill and into the backcountry in search of untouched powder.

That changed when the pandemic shut down ski resorts in 2020. Sales of touring gear in the United States spiked as recreational skiers searched for ways to get uphill without lifts. More than 1 million people in the United States used touring equipment last year, even as most ski lifts reopened, with sales of the specialized gear rising 260% between November 2019 and the same month a year later, according to the market research firm NPD Group.

“It’s not linear growth,” said Drew Hardesty, a skier and forecaster at the Utah Avalanche Center. “It’s exponential.”

Tour skiers use removable traction strips called skins on their skis and adjustable bindings with free heels that allow them to walk. To descend, they remove the skins and lock in the heels for downhill runs.

Ski touring began to trickle into the American mainstream in the mid2000s, when videos of wild backcountry descents in places like the Himalayas, the high Andes and the Arctic began to circulate on the internet. “Back then, there was barely anyone doing it,” said Ingrid Backstrom, a professional skier who has helped to popularize backcountry skiing in the United States through films of her runs on remote slopes. “The equipment was harder to find, more expensive and didn’t work as well.”

In recent years, with snow cover diminishing and untouched powder increasingly difficult to reach, skiers like Backstrom have been pushed onto groomed trails more often. That increased visibility, combined with the pandemic shutdowns, she said, has prompted more skiers to try touring gear. “That always helps to have a visible example,” she said.

Backstrom also said more skiers are opting to avoid the backcountry and ski uphill on managed slopes because it’s “more safe given extreme changes in climate and weather.”

One of the main reasons is that, as weather becomes more volatile, avalanches are becoming more difficult to predict. For instance, much of the work done by Hardesty, the forecaster, is based on his previous observations and scientists’ computer modeling of past avalanches.