In France, skiing is an uphill sport
Ski lifts remain closed during pandemic
CHAMONIX, France — On the morning of Dec. 19, dozens of skiers dotted the slopes above the Alpine hamlet of Le Tour. The cloud-snarled peak of Mont Blanc loomed above the Chamonix valley. The snow conditions were mediocre. The sky was blue. There was only one thing that made the early-season scene atypical: All of the visitors, every last one of them, were skiing up the mountain, not just down. France’s prime minister, Jean Castex, announced in late November that the government was easing the country’s second national lockdown. Travel, for example, would be permitted in time for the winter holidays, he said, and he encouraged citizens to visit the country’s famed ski resorts “to enjoy the pure air of our beautiful mountains” and visit the shops.
There was one major caveat, though. All ski lifts, he said, would be closed to the public.
The rule has roots in a hard, painful lesson. French authorities are eager to avoid repeating the onset of
the pandemic, when the Alps became a potent breeding ground for the virus. Outbreaks around the world were later traced to places like the Austrian resort town of Ischgl, and France’s first cluster appeared in nearby Les Contamines-Montjoie.
“When you go out skiing in the cold, the first thing that happens is your nose starts to run,” said Miles Bright, an English mountain guide based in Chamonix. “And what do you do? You wipe your nose. So your gloves are covered in snot; you join in the lift queue; you touch things.
“I just can’t see how it can be hygienic, getting in and out of the ski lifts,” he added. “But for the nation’s health, I think it’s absolutely essential.”
Bright, like the rest of skiers on the mountain, was ski touring — ascending the mountain using skins attached to his skis, then detaching them to descend normally. He estimated it would take him four times as long to go up than to ski down.
It’s not for everybody. “When you say the ski lifts are shut, it’s a way of saying there’s no more freedom, no more joy,” said Jasmin Taylor, a British World Cup skier who trains each winter in the Chamonix Valley. As a result of the closure, Taylor, 27, like many other skiers, said that she has been scheduling more time in Switzerland, where ski lifts remain open.
French authorities have warned tourists who circumvent restrictions to ski outside the country that they could be forced to quarantine upon returning to France, but even without that cross-border competition, places like Chamonix are reporting a steep drop in visitors. Bright said the financial consequences already had produced “a local economic disaster.” Bookings for accommodations in Chamonix were under 30 percent of capacity for the two weeks around Christmas this year; last year, capacity figures approached 80 percent. Several large hotels remain closed.
“People are really going to struggle,” Bright said.
In the lee of a shuttered restaurant last weekend, just above the spot where people typically disembark from the Charamillon Gondola, a couple from France’s Alsace region was taking a break from their ascent to have a picnic of sausage, cheese and cakes.
Asked if he had considered changing his plans to make the 186-mile drive from Mulhouse when he heard the lifts would be closed, one half of the couple, Daniel Kippelen, replied, “No, on the contrary.”
The same rules that had kept others away were actually an attraction, he said. “We knew that Christmas would be closed, so we knew there would be a lot fewer people; we knew that it would be peaceful.”