Alpine Decline

All you jet-set skiers take note: Winter in the Alps has been a bust so far this year. St. Anton is closed. The slopes at Chamonix and Val d'Isère are bare. The world's best biathletes arrived in the Austrian village of Hochfilzen last week to find it unseasonably warm and dry. Snow had to be hauled in.

According to Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian Meteorological Society, the Alps are suffering their warmest winter since accurate records were first kept, two centuries ago. Some climatologists say this is the warmest winter in Europe in 1,300 years. Mercalli is not alone in predicting that, in the next 20 years, skiing below 2,000 meters will be unheard of in Europe. The UN Environment Programme has sounded a similar alarm. If true, it will mean the end of such famed slopes as Austria's Kitzbuhel and Italy's Cortina d'Ampezzo, site of the 1956 Winter Olympics.