A few scattered snowdrifts let themselves go along the edge of the last asphalt bends winding towards the Mont Serein ski resort, located on the north face of Ventoux. We are at an altitude of 1,400 meters and, in the shade, the thermometer reads 5.5 degrees in mid-February. It is not far from noon. Sitting on a dry stone wall, Romain, his partner and their two young children eat an ice cream cone in the sun. “We try to come once a year, for the little ones”, explains this couple from Alleins, a small town in the neighboring Bouches-du-Rhône. The snow? “It’s sad,” they concede. The snow cover reaches 3 to 5 centimeters at best. “Finally, for the luge, it’s fine. We manage to have fun”. Like Romain and his family, about 200 of them came to this atypical resort for this second day of school holidays in zone C.
Hen snow with golden eggs with icing on the cake
In this winter of 2022/2023, the toboggan run was the only one to open, helped by the station’s only snow cannon fed by a 300 cubic meter tank. Its twelve kilometers of slopes and seven ski lifts allowing access to the foot of the summit culminating at 1912 meters have not yet seen the tip of a ski pole. Last winter, the ski area was partially open for nine days; in 2019, it was twenty days, all round. “It’s an understatement to say that we are on a downward spiral,” agrees the last ski rental company in the resort. In sixty years spent at Mont Serein, the man knows what he is talking about. Now he only rents sleds. Its hundred skis, snowboards and other shoes gather dust on the racks. His last colleague threw in the towel last year.
Here, “the evidence of global warming” is obvious to him, as to those of everyone. And with it, it’s a whole economic reasoning that needs to be rethought and reshaped. “We have to reverse the model”, introduces Christophe Quierard, the new director of the resort who arrived from Tignes in September 2022. From a hen with golden eggs, the snow has become “icing on the cake”, illustrates Céline, assistant director, at the station for eighteen years. “To sum up, the activities deployed from May to September should allow us to free up enough resources to maintain the industrial tool”, continues the new director. By “industrial tool”, he means the seven ski lifts on the north face, the two on the south face, two snow groomers, a snowmobile and its five permanent employees.
Because when there is snow, income is there and you have to be ready to welcome up to 1,500 skiers from neighboring departments. “If we manage to open the entire ski area for ten days in high season, we generate as much revenue as on all off-snow activities for the rest of the year”, he explains. In November 2019, the three days of opening, early enough in the season for ski enthusiasts in the region to come and stretch their edges, had produced 14,000 euros in revenue. The ten days of Christmas 2021 brought in 24,000 euros. So many little woolen socks – the last significant one dates back to 2015 when the resort had accumulated around fifty days of snow cover – which should allow them to hold out for the time to definitively turn the tide.
With some ideas already launched to develop activities from May to September. Two accrobranches created two years ago have completed the summer toboggan run, inaugurated in 2018. Attractions which are added to the downhill karting that has existed for almost twenty years and to the “bike park” designed on the south face . Both use the resort’s ski lifts to lift karts and bicycles, hence the need to preserve them. Added to this are new projects: educational hiking trails and stellariums, Mont Ventoux being an ideal place for stargazing.
“Our objective is to generate 30% additional turnover over the summer season and to achieve a balanced budget for 2024”, aims Christophe Quierard. Because for the time being the station foresees this year around 60,000 euros in operating losses. A hole filled year after year by a modest “war chest” left in the coffers by the mixed syndicate and subsidies from the local authority (the Ventoux Comtat Venaissin urban community) which created an SPL last year ( local public company) after taking over the management of the site. For a time envisaged, the equipment of the station with snow cannons fed by a water retention basin, will not take place. “Would it be ecologically reasonable? asks the director.
Global warming from gravedigger to savior?
Thus, the Mont Serein resort is preparing to turn a century of history. The beginnings of skiing developed there on this side of the Ventoux in the 1920s. The first ski lifts date from 1930. Development continued at the dawn of the 1960s in this resort which has around a hundred beds for accommodation. Cheap and family-friendly, it takes full advantage of its geographical location. Nestled in the heart of Provence, halfway between Marseille and Montpellier, it drains a large pool of people who can come there for the day. The surrounding municipalities send their respective ski clubs there to train on the two slopes approved by the French Ski Federation for slalom and downhill. Schoolchildren in the region discover the joys of winter sports in snow classes which have now become obsolete, between the strengthening of standards for collective accommodation and the budgetary difficulties of town halls.
The end of the abundant snow completed the whole thing at the turn of the 2010s. “The temperatures have changed so much”, breathes Mireille, a regular from Gordes, a good hour’s drive away. “In eighteen years, I have seen the climate change, says Céline, an employee of the resort. There are trees higher and higher. In summer, we also have cicadas, which we didn’t have before, ”she noted. Because this mid-mountain resort has the particularity of being under the influence of a Mediterranean climate that is severely exposed to disruption, between warming and falling precipitation.
However, the general rise in temperatures could turn into a lifeline. Resort management relies on people seeking fresh air when the dodger knocks out the plain and the nearby seaside. “When it’s too hot down there in the summer, people come to eat here,” observes the owner of one of the resort’s three restaurants. For the time being and in this season, it still offers all the classic mountain menus, with raclette, tartiflette and other reblochonade à la carte. But for dessert, that day, ice cream was popular with customers on the terrace. From it are visible the Southern Alps and their peaks topped with short white caps of snow which sound, seen from here, like an echo of the past. For how much longer ?