Abondance closed down two years ago due to lack of snow and financial troubles

Thanks to an American investor, the small French Alps resort of Abondance has managed to escape being one of the many small European ski resorts who have closed in the last couple years.

Two seasons ago, in the middle of one of Europe’s worst ski seasons for snowfall, the small French resort of Abondance announced it would not be running its lifts. News of the resort’s troubles appeared in newspapers all around the world as evidence that skiing in the Alps was coming to its end, a victim of climate change.

Abondance’s decision was not simply related to climate change, but also economics. An inability to compete with larger resorts is a problem faced by thousands of small ski areas around the world. Their lifts, often built in the 1960s or 70s, are getting elderly. Their costs for staffing, power, insurance are all escalating, and the trend is for skiers and boarders to head to the big glossy resorts favored by tour operators and newspaper reviewers.

Hundreds of small ski areas had already decided to call it a day, and this season, as every season, dozens more will decide not to open.

Abondance has escaped that fate, for the moment, thanks to its purchase by an unnamed American investor who reportedly already works in the ski lift industry. The investor reportedly wanted to get a toe in to the European market and saw Abondance as a worthwhile investment.

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