Global warming has athletes losing their cool

Patrick Cote, a biathlete from Canada, loves nothing more than cross-country skiing in the snowy woods. On crisp, clear days, he glides beneath pine boughs frosted with powder and across a white carpet glinting as if encrusted with diamonds.

But at a European Cup event nine weeks ago in Sweden, Cote raced inside a concrete ski tunnel that resembles a subway tube.

Because of a confounding lack of snow, a major competition was held for the first time on the enclosed, refrigerated track, normally used for offseason training.

“It was gray, with fluorescent lighting, totally artificial, like something out of a science fiction movie,” Cote said. “What is the point of skiing indoors?”

Downhill skier Steve Nyman said last winter was so warm that dangerous potholes formed on race courses, forcing skiers going 70 mph to either dodge or clunk through them. It was mild enough in the alpine villages for him to wear shorts to dinner.

“Instead of a lot of snow there’s been a lot of mud,” Nyman said. “I ask myself, ‘Do I need to find a new career? Should I take up kiteboarding instead?’“

Winter is vanishing. Flake by precious flake, the season is fading, like a snowman melting in the sun. As global warming pushes temperatures upward, glaciers retreat, mountains go naked, white Christmases become rare and spring comes early.

The perplexing trend has the world’s best skiers and snowboarders in a cold sweat. If their cherished winter wonderland turns to slush, so does their livelihood as athletes. Like the polar bear, the future of winter sports is threatened. If the rate of global warming continues unchecked, skiing could cease to exist by the 22nd century.

Eleven of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 12, and 2006 was the warmest ever. Greenland is shrinking and Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than scientists expected. Warming has accelerated over the past 30 years, with temperatures rising a third of a degree per decade worldwide, but up 4 degrees in New England and 3 degrees in Colorado.

A study commissioned by the resort city of Aspen, Colo., found that the area, which has seen winter shortened by 28 days in the past 50 years, could be 14 degrees warmer by 2100, transforming its climate into that of Amarillo, Texas. A report on climate change in the Northeast region of the U.S. predicts that only western Maine will retain a consistent ski season. Things are worse in the lower elevations of Europe, where the European Environmental Agency projects that 75 percent of the Swiss Alps’ glaciers will be gone by 2050.

While global warming is an indisputable phenomenon, there are yearly variations. Last winter was a lamb but this one blew in like a lion, dumping tons of snow, especially in the American West, where ski resorts such as Crested Butte boast of being “JanuBURIED!” under 25 feet so far. Snow has also made a comeback in Canada, New England and Europe, but for how long? Temperatures have shot up into the high 50s in recent weeks.

"The signs of change are undeniable,” said Brian Soden, a global climate scientist at the University of Miami’s Rosentiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who says the burning of fossil fuels is the main cause.

“The freezing line is moving up the mountain. Snowpacks are ebbing. A warming planet means heavier precipitation, so you could get a huge snowfall at higher, colder elevations, but you’ve also shortened the season and confined it to a smaller area. If I was a resort owner, I’d be worried.”

For skiers and snowboarders, snow is gold, but they’ve had to hunt harder and wider for it, enduring dramatic weather fluctuations, whether they are in the Rockies, the Alps, the Andes or New Jersey, where the Mountain Creek snowboarding Grand Prix was canceled last season and discontinued this year.

“We went from Mountain Creek to Switzerland, where it rained for a solid week,” halfpipe snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler said. “So we sat around and watched An Inconvenient Truth, which is the perfect thing to do on a wet afternoon.”

Lindsey Jacobellis, Olympic snowboardcross silver medalist and World Cup champion, said only three of eight European events were staged last season, and this season has been squished into six weeks of a frantic scramble for decent snow.

“The people building halfpipe or snowboardcross courses get sick of fighting Mother Nature and they have to cancel,” she said. “Last month during a race in Austria, it poured rain and we were soaked. There weren’t many fans except those watching from inside the lodge, so we lost that whole vibe.

“Snowboarding is supposed to be fun. It wasn’t. It was a bummer.”

The beloved Hahnenkamm downhill in Kitzbuhel, Austria — the Super Bowl of ski racing — was scrubbed last year, as 100,000 fans commiserated with their grounded heroes. World Cup events in Chamonix and St. Moritz were also canceled.

Snowmaking machines have been working overtime. Or nervous organizers go shopping for snow. A biathlon in Oberhof, Germany, was salvaged only after crushed ice from a fish-packing plant in Hamburg was shoveled onto the course.

Trucks and helicopters delivered snow from glaciers to other desperate events.

Cross-country skiers and biathletes describe some trails as ribbons of white winding through grass, dirt and leaves.

“We skied on man-made snow the whole winter,” U.S. biathlete Tim Burke said. “We’re adapting to wetter snow, on skis with grooves down the middle that move the water quickly. It’s slower, mushier skiing.”

Offseason training in the Southern Hemisphere has been compromised. In Portillo, Chile, last summer, U.S. team members hot-footed down rocky slopes and saw an avalanche wipe out a hill right before their eyes.

“In New Zealand, we skied one day, then it rained four straight and the snow disappeared,” Nyman said. “A very expensive waste of time. We were so bored we made a movie — quite a bad movie.”

The Canadian team’s training on the Haig glacier was cut short the past two years so skiers wouldn’t fall into new crevasses.

The Torsby ski tunnel — like three in Finland and two more being built in Germany and Russia — is meant for practice during shoulder seasons. But its 1.3-kilometer loop was used to complete the course during the European Cup event in late November.

Austrian alpine skier Rainer Schoenfelder foresees more such innovations if the warming trend continues and earth turns into The Drowned World that J.G. Ballard envisioned in his futuristic novel. In Europe, some receding glaciers are being covered with football-field sized thermal blankets in a preservation experiment.

“I think there will be skiing halls, special carpets and granulates so we can save winter sports from becoming a relic of our own Ice Age,” he said.

The ski and snowboard industry is suffering. When it doesn’t snow, recreational consumers don’t buy equipment. Sales are down 15 to 30 percent (and snowmobile sales are down 50 percent). The number of days that U.S. ski resorts are in operation has declined by 16 since 1990, according to the National Ski Areas Association. Smaller resorts in New England and Europe are closing.

The financial downturn hurts pro athletes, who rely not only on prize money but to a larger extent on endorsement deals.

Jacobellis, one of the most visible stars of snowboarding, has been without a snowboard contract for almost three years, since her old company, Palmer, went out of business. Ski makers are slashing the number of contracts they write, and are less willing to sign young skiers. The state of flux is such that the big names, like Bode Miller and Benjamin Raich, can still make $3 million to $4million per year, but some established winners like Ivica Kostelic, who switched from Salomon to Fischer, are skiing without deals.

“This summer will be interesting because 80 percent of the racers’ two-year contracts are expiring,” said Austria’s Christian Huber, spokesman for the Fischer ski team. “The top ones will be OK, but the rest will have trouble because budgets are tight. People are buying bicycles instead of skis.”

Global warming and its bizarre weather patterns have spurred change at resorts, which hope to stop cannibalizing the environment as energy eaters. Ski areas are building reservoirs to supply the massive amounts of water needed for snow making. Jiminy Peak in Massachusetts built a wind turbine and produces its own electricity. Vail, Colo., and Okemo Mountain in Vermont have purchased renewable energy credits. The Aspen Skiing Co. has developed two solar power installations and one hydroelectric plant, uses biodiesel in its Snowcats, constructs green buildings, supports research such as the city’s Canary Initiative and invests in its Save Snow campaign.

"Aspen is known as a playground for the wealthy, so if we can’t help solve the biggest problem of our time, who can?” said Auden Schendler, the company’s environmental director. “The ski industry should be on the cutting edge if we want the skiing culture to survive.”

Athletes who know the world’s mountains intimately are becoming eco-activists. Bleiler, Jacobellis, Miller, Julia Mancuso, Shaun White and Ted Ligety are among those speaking out, going green and promoting websites such as stopglobalwarming.org. Nyman wants race organizers to halt the sprinkling of snow-hardening chemicals on slopes where cows graze in the summer. Cote believes that athletes, who fly around the world, drive in SUVs, and cause wear and tear on natural areas, have an obligation “to stop contradicting ourselves and start sacrificing.”

Bleiler will introduce a new apparel line by Oakley featuring recycled and recyclable jackets and pants.

“The thought of losing winter is overwhelming,” said Jacobellis, who works with sponsor Paul Mitchell on an environmental awareness campaign. “I remember the beautiful, deep winters of my childhood, when my brother and I made igloos in the woods. It’s been a long time since we’ve had that volume of snow.”

National Hockey League defenseman Andrew Ference of the Boston Bruins, who bikes to work when he isn’t taking the T or driving his Prius, convinced 500 NHL players to purchase carbon offsets that fund solar, wind and biomass energy projects.

“We bought the equivalent of an entire season’s travel to offset the 10 tons of carbon dioxide we put into the air,” said Ference, who also initiated recycling in the locker room. “It’s not the perfect way to reduce pollutants but at least we’re paying for our sins.”

As a kid in Canada, Ference grew up sledding, snowball-fighting and playing hockey on frozen ponds or backyard rinks, as did Wayne Gretzky, who learned to skate on a rink built by his father. Ference fears that future generations will have to learn about winter in history books.

“For the past several years, it’s been too warm to build those rinks,” Ference said.

“Are we missing out on the next Wayne Gretzky?”