Tignes Could Lose Summer Skiing on the Grande Motte Glacier Within a Decade

Tignes says summer skiing on the Grande Motte Glacier may not last another decade

For decades, Tignes was one of the rare European resorts where skiers could ride lifts in the middle of summer, thanks to the Grande Motte Glacier sitting more than 3,450 metres up in the French Alps. Now, following another unusually warm start to summer across Europe, resort officials are openly preparing for a future without it. "We know that its melting will cause long-term difficulties for skiing," Clement Colin, chairman of Altta, the public company running Tignes' lift system, told AFP.

A shrinking season and a thinning glacier

Early this month, temperatures on the glacier at 3,456 metres reached 5 degrees Celsius by 9am, with overnight lows staying above freezing and preventing the surface from refreezing before the next day's sun. Visitors have noticed the change on the ground - one skier told AFP the landscape looked "very different," while another said it was "a bit sad to see the glacier like this." Scientists monitoring Grande Motte estimate it's losing 2 to 4 metres of thickness a year, a rate Colin says could leave the glacier "almost completely melted" within a decade. Tignes now runs its summer season for just a month, from 20 June to 19 July, skiing mostly on leftover winter snow rather than the glacier ice itself - the season ends as soon as ice appears at the surface. Fewer than 8,000 lift tickets have sold since opening this year.

The trend fits a wider pattern - research published in the journal Nature found Alpine glaciers lost an estimated 39 percent of their total ice mass between 2000 and 2023, among the fastest rates of glacier loss anywhere in the world. Europe had roughly 40 summer ski areas in the 1980s, accounting for close to 80 percent of the world's glacier ski resorts; only around a dozen remain today, and most run for just a few weeks a year.

Tignes is planning for what comes after

In 2021, Tignes covered sections of the glacier in white geotextile blankets to slow melting and protect the cable car station's foundations, but the approach has become increasingly contested - environmental groups argue the blankets create waste, shield only small areas, and don't address the underlying causes of glacier retreat. Rather than investing further in engineering fixes, Tignes is shifting toward pedestrian summit access and its Altitude Experiences program, leaning into hiking, sightseeing, and mountain tourism instead. "We are preparing for the end of skiing on the Grande Motte glacier," Colin said, later clarifying that skiing isn't ending immediately, though its long-term future remains uncertain.

Other Alpine glacier resorts are facing similar pressure. Val d'Isere still runs summer skiing on the Pisaillas Glacier but has discussed shifting operations earlier into spring, Austria's Hintertux Glacier has periodically suspended operations for poor snow, Switzerland's Zermatt has had temporary summer closures, and Austria's Dachstein Glacier removed its glacier lifts entirely in 2023. Rather than expanding summer operations, many Alpine resorts are now treating glacier skiing as an extension of spring rather than a summer fixture in its own right.