Shortage of Snow Leaves Alps Buried In Debate

But last Wednesday, what the village got was rain increasing from a drizzle to a downpour and moist clouds and fog hanging overhead. All but a few die-hard skiers shunned the slopes. At the Dany Magnin ski shop, 20 pairs of skis had been rented in three days, about one-tenth the norm. Ski school director Bernard Feige, 44, said he had not booked a single lesson Wednesday for his 380 instructors. "We are waiting for the snow -- it's very stressful," he said. "In France, our instructors are independent, and when they work less, they earn less."

"I have friends in all the French resorts, and they are all telling me it's a disaster in the ski areas," said Alaine Dresco, 52, manager of the Au Vieux Moulin hotel.

Megeve's high-end shopping, quaint village ambiance and famous restaurants have long attracted many non-skiing tourists, helping to insulate the town from skiing downturns, local officials say. The resort has 483 snow cannons capable of producing 5,300 cubic feet of snow an hour, tourism director Duvillard said, but if temperatures remain above freezing, the cannons are useless.

"We were raking autumn leaves from our lawn today -- 10 to 15 bags of them -- saying, 'What are we doing? We're meant to be up skiing!' " said Phillip Hamilton, 64, a recent retiree from Britain who has owned a house in Megeve for 20 years.

Megeve had to cancel a women's World Cup slalom race in December and a women's downhill race earlier this month. Nearby, last week's men's World Cup downhill had to be moved from Chamonix to Val d'Isere, 35 miles to the south and 3,000 feet higher, after the International Ski Federation ruled that the thin snow cover on the Chamonix course made conditions too dangerous.

In the Alps these days, people tend to fall into two camps: those who see the weather problems as evidence of global warming and those who think it's part of an unavoidable natural cycle.

"We can't do anything if countries like the United States don't sign the Kyoto accords," the 1997 pact on global warming, said Bertrand Bibollet, 25, who works at a local ski rental shop. "Resorts below 1,000 meters [3,281 feet] are doomed to close in the next 20 years."

But others pointed out that Megeve had its best ski season in decades last year, with cold weather allowing skiing from Dec. 15 to April 15. They also noted that the resort had suffered bad years before -- particularly the 1989-90 season, when the first snow did not arrive until Jan. 27. "I don't believe in global warming -- I think it's a cyclical, natural phenomenon," said Dominique Socquet, 40, head of the ski school at Combloux, a small resort connected to Megeve by a system of lifts and trails.

Whatever the cause, only three of Combloux's 62 ski runs were open Friday, and many employees were being forced to take extra days off to avoid wholesale layoffs. Despite the slowdown, Combloux's mayor, Raymond Turri, vowed the resort would not close, because of the damage that could do to its reputation.

Meanwhile, this week the resort will hold its second annual conference on global warming, to highlight the problem and the danger posed to the ski industry. "We are worried," said Laurent Ancenay, tourism director for Combloux. "We are low, at 1,200 meters [about 3,937 feet], and when they tell us we are not going to have snow in a few years, we want to know if it's true."