![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Deep1.jpg\" "\\"Deep\\"")
<\/a>I was introduced to skiing 50 years ago on a glacial snowfield in Germany, and I\u2019ve often wondered if that snowfield is still there year-round. I got a hint several weeks ago that things may have changed some.<\/p>\nWe were on a train climbing over Switzerland\u2019s Bernina Pass, headed down toward Italy, and it was clear that despite the calendar \u2013 it was June 1 \u2013 winter had only recently departed. The lakes were still frozen, snow still covered everything, and a few backcountry skiers were still out, even with the lifts closed.<\/p>\n
But there with all that snow, with a branch of the Inn River dribbling out of a nearby snowfield, sat something I never expected to see that high up in the Alps. It was a bank of snowmaking machines quite similar to those you\u2019ll find at any eastern U.S. ski slope.<\/p>\n
The sight of those snow machines made more of an impression on me than almost anything in Porter Fox\u2019s book, which rode in my backpack all around Switzerland. But the point was the same.<\/p>\n
Since 1850, Fox reports, European glaciers have lost fully half their volume, 26 percent since the 1970s alone. In the summer of 2012, he says, the famed Matterhorn was snow and ice-free for the first time in recorded history. And with alpine temperatures rising three times faster than the global average, it\u2019s possible to see skiing there as being in a crisis.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a problem for a nation as tourism-dependent as Switzerland, as two geographers from Zurich University noted in a recent report, \u201cClimate Change as a Threat to Tourism in the Alps.\u201d They warned of both significant costs and probable job losses if things don\u2019t change.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not only skiing that has a problem, and it\u2019s not just Switzerland, Fox hastens to add, for those who might consider fewer downhill runs something less than a global crisis. \u201cAs people in the Western U.S. have already seen,\u201d he says, \u201cdeclining snow depth is the first domino in a long line that can set off a downward spiral of environmental catastrophes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skiers are, if you will, something like canaries in the coalmine where climate change is concerned. Perhaps that\u2019s why some skiers and snowboarders are belatedly beginning to talk strongly about climate change.<\/p>\n
Fox, the editor of Powder<\/em> magazine, published this book late last year, and it\u2019s had a lot of notice, both good and bad. There was a full-page feature story in the Sunday New York Times<\/em> a few months ago, basically an excerpt of the book. Jeremy Jones, pro snowboarder and founder of the movement Protect Our Winters, calls the book \u201cthe most important book on snow ever written.\u201d<\/p>\n But John Fry complained in Skiing History<\/em> magazine this spring that most ski areas are not struggling, as Fox insisted. Fry said Fox, in places, \u201cstruggled with facts.\u201d And then there are the usual legions of climate-change deniers, who also struggle with facts. Yes, that\u2019s an editorial comment.<\/p>\n Fox grew up skiing the hardpack of Maine, but after he was introduced to western skiing, he shifted allegiances and became what we in the sport would refer to as a \u201cpowder hound.\u201d Since going to work for Powder<\/em> magazine, he\u2019s skied all over the world and has been able to take a good look at what\u2019s happening to winter.<\/p>\n This book opens with the story of a giant snowfall and subsequent catastrophic avalanche in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state during the winter of 2012. That accident was also the subject of a 17,000-word story in The New York Times<\/em>, for which writer John Branch won a 2013 Pulitzer Prize.<\/p>\n The avalanche killed three well-known American skiers, and it was soon clear that some mistakes had been made: too many people skiing an unpatrolled slope and skiing too soon after a huge snowfall, among others. Fox doesn\u2019t deny any of that. \u201cThey died in an accident,\u201d he says. \u201cNothing more.\u201d<\/p>\n But he says the conditions that led to the accident may become more familiar. They were similar to what weather forecasters are warning about, he says \u2013 winter rain, longer periods between snowstorms and extreme snowfall. \u201cThe avalanche,\u201d he says, \u201cserves as a wake-up call that as the atmosphere changes, the mountains are changing too.\u201d<\/p>\n I had read the Times<\/em>\u2019 original report, and it was riveting. So is Fox\u2019s account of the storm. But the meat of this book, at least for me, is really in the second half. That\u2019s where Fox takes off for Europe, attempting to find out what\u2019s happening with the weather \u2013 and with snow \u2013 elsewhere.<\/p>\n He visits some famed resorts, talks with people in the know and takes some great runs. And he includes a report on the famed Swiss Federal Commission for Snow and Avalanche Research, which has been around since 1931. Go there, and you\u2019ll see what the country has done to manage its prodigious wintertime snow load. The Swiss are pioneers.<\/p>\n Some of Fox\u2019s organization is a little clunky, but his book is readable, and I found it a valuable asset to my own tour of Switzerland. I didn\u2019t get to visit that old snowfield where I learned to ski, but I\u2019m still going to. Thanks to Fox \u2013 and those snow machines on the Bernina Pass — I have a little better idea what to expect.<\/p>\n