Giant Vultures Circle Slopes in ‘Truly Depressing’ Ski Season

(Bloomberg) -- Skiers dodged rocks, patches of grass and muddy slush as they descended the slopes of Chile’s El Colorado ski resort on Sunday. And those were the good trails.

A decade-long mega drought intensified this year in the Andes mountains above Santiago, limiting snowfall to just a few days and dealing a blow to an industry that attracted 1.4 million visitors last year.

This was near peak season and the restaurants at El Colorado, one of five resorts in central Chile, were largely empty. Of the few people there, many had booked their tickets early in the season and stood to lose their money if they didn’t go now. Snow cannons parked along the sides of the few slopes still open were evidence of El Colorado’s efforts to keep the season alive, while Andean condors added a morbid touch by circling over the near-empty trails.

“It has been truly depressing,” said Natalia Contreras, a ski instructor who recently gave up on the Valle Nevado resort and headed to the south of the country. “It snowed only twice, just a little bit, and it melted quickly because of the high temperatures.”

The lack of snow was a disappointment to the tens of thousands of Brazilians who fly south every year for skiing, not to mention the wealthy Chileans for whom skiing is an integral part of their winter.

Bigger Picture

Chile’s worst season in years is part of a bigger problem. Ski resorts from the Alps in Europe to Sierra Nevada in California have been hit by similar weather conditions in recent years as global temperatures rise and traditional rain and snowfall patterns change. The industry is adapting with imaginative solutions, from so-called snow farming in France to building new resorts at higher altitude in the U.S. and Canada.

Resorts in Chile invested a combined $24 million this year in new infrastructure, including snow cannons. That might not be enough. The Atacama desert, the world’s driest, is expanding south as rainfall declines, drying up the rivers and parching the rich fruit growing fields around Santiago.

The authorities have already declared a drought emergency in four regions in central Chile, home to over two thirds of the country’s population.

Rainfall in the capital Santiago is about a quarter of the average of the last century, according to the meteorological office. In fact, the city hasn’t had the average amount of rain for more than a decade. No rain is forecast in central Chile for the next few days and only a quarter of lifts and 13% of ski slopes were open at El Colorado resort on Friday.

The ski resorts in the Andes mountains less than a two-hour drive from the city have registered about 180 centimeters (71 inches) of snowfall, according to the industry group Aceski. Much of that quickly melted, leaving just one or two centimeters of snow in most slopes, the resorts’ websites show.

Frustrating Experience

This season is expected to be 90 to 95 days long, compared to 101 last year, and will attract about 900,000 skiers, according to Aceski general manager Francisco Sotomayor. Many of them will be disappointed.

“It’s frustrating because the skiable area has been reduced to a bare minimum,” said Paul Oliger, a 53-year-old skier who has owned a house at one of the resorts for almost three decades. “Even us, ski fanatics, are not motivated to go up there under these conditions.”

The days when winter storms left cars and roads buried under the snow are long gone, says Contreras, the ski instructor. She has a decade of experience working in the area and, with no snow forecast for the next few days, she is packing her bags and moving to the southern town of Pucon, where she will train for a higher ski instructor degree.

“In this line of work, if you don’t have the weather you don’t have a job,” she said. “The south is more unstable, has fewer people and worse infrastructure, but it’s packed with snow.”

--With assistance from Javiera Baeza.

To contact the reporters on this story: Laura Millan Lombrana in Santiago at lmillan4@bloomberg.net;Sebastian Boyd in Santiago at sboyd9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Luzi Ann Javier at ljavier@bloomberg.net, Philip Sanders, Brendan Walsh

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.