The summer ski season is already over in Savoie. The glacier of the Grande Motte in Tignes, the only summer glacier still open in the Pays de Savoie, closed its doors this Friday at midday. An early closure, because initially the Tignes glacier (which opened on June 18) was to remain open for 6 weeks until July 31. But the conditions are no longer met, the state of the glacier has deteriorated more rapidly than in past years.
“We had snow cover this winter which was quite limited and relatively mild conditions with good weather, so this summer this translates into a limitation of operations, we only opened two weeks instead of six to allow French teams to have a good quality of training as long as the security conditions were reasonable”, Explain Frederic Bonnevie is the director of the Tignes piste management.
It’s really atypical, we see that the climate transition is indeed in place
“The melting is increasing, we have seen it throughout this winter, we have had half as much snow as usual, the parts of ice are visible today, generally these are conditions that we find three or four weeks later in the season, we have about a month ahead in terms of melting, and in terms of nature in general, the floral species that appeared at the end of July, we saw them from the end of June” .
“It’s really atypical, we see that the climate transition is well and truly in place, we have to adapt, no relentlessness, we did that as long as it was feasible, but there, there are storms every night, the degradation of the glacier is done little by little, that’s why we made this decision, it’s totally assumed”.
The only nearest summer glacier still open in the region is Les Deux Alpes in Isère (the Pisaillas glacier in Val d’Isère did not open this year). For walkers in Tignes, access by the funicular at 3,000 m altitude remains open until the end of August (the cable car that leads to the summit at 3,450 m altitude was under maintenance, it should reopen in the coming days) .