II Image copyright: perisher.au
Today, most people know and don’t think twice about the artificial snow at some of the world’s largest ski resorts. One can have amazing wintry fun with a few hundred thousand gallons of water. Every day regardless of the weather, skiers, snow boarders, and snow tubers from all over can enjoy racing down majestic mountains, breathing in the crisp snowy air. Yet even this comes at a cost.
Snowmaking happens when tons of fine water mist is blasted into the air by massive machines, the water is instantly frozen by the cold temperatures and lands as “snow”. Now this “snow” is actually extremely fine ice particles that are so compact that they appear as snow. This “snow” doesn’t contain nature’s beautiful artistry in every flake, on the contrary it is just endless clumps of compact ice, one of the reasons why it doesn’t spray up when racing down a slope.
Even so, some of the most famous ski areas in the world have turned to this option. In the Alps, at the French ski resort Les Arcs, 600 snow cannons are prepared to fire on command (Source: Business Insider). At Bretton Woods in New Hampshire fake snow is a reliable resource when it comes to less snowy winters here in New England. And those are just a few examples of the many places globally that use fake snow. Yet apart from all the reliability and fun that fake snow provides it is another pressure on the world’s already dwindling water supply.
Hundreds of thousands of gallons of freshwater need to be used every day to keep a ski slope snowy, and only freshwater can be used for this purpose, as the ski resort Arizona Snowbowl discovered. Arizona Snowbowl attempted to use complete wastewater to generate their snow. But according to regulations the water must be “clean” enough to drink, grade A or A+. This immediately kills the effect, barely any wastewater can be used, and in 2022 freshwater has a dire need. As you read this article 2.6 billion people all over the world are experiencing a shortage of water. Unfortunately, even innocuous solutions to problems may pose unforeseen challenges. Snowmaking is a counter option to climate change, yet will slowly drain our waterways and slopes will have to yet find another alternative. One alternative is plastic mats which the Italian company Neveplast has developed, but even that has its negative impact. The use of plastic is not environmentally sustainable.
In conclusion ski slopes all over the world have turned to the unsustainable option of snowmaking and in today’s world this has devastating effects on the worlds already dwindling water supply. Unfortunately, with global warming decreeing natural snow unreliable, ski slopes may be on their last legs.