THE LAST SKI LIFT

Over this past weekend, a story appeared in my Google feed that stopped me in my tracks. Not because it was dramatic. Not because it described a distant catastrophe unfolding on the far side of the world. But because, sadly, it felt equally normal and inevitable.

Braunwald, a small Swiss ski resort, perched high above the Linth Valley in the Canton of Glarus, has announced that it will be ending its traditional alpine skiing season.

For generations, people have travelled there to do what mountain communities across the Alps have done for more than a century; await winter, celebrate the first snowfall, and build a way of life around it. Today, winter no longer arrives as it once did.

The resort rises from 1,256 metres to 1,900 metres and, not long ago, these elevations would have seemed comfortably secure. Today they are not. After too many consecutive winters with too little snow, the economics no longer support the winter skiing model.

The mountain remains. The village remains. The lifts remain. Yet the certainty of winter does not. And Braunwald is not closing. It is adapting. The funicular and gondolas will continue to operate, though hiking, sledding, mountain biking and summer activities increasingly defining its future.

There is something deeply symbolic about a ski resort acknowledging that skiing itself may no longer sit at the heart of its identity. Not because Braunwald is unique. But because it is becoming increasingly representative. An obvious reminder of a far larger transformation already underway across the Alps.

Last summer offered additional cues.

Across Switzerland and much of the Alpine region, glaciers continued their relentless retreat. Ancient rivers of ice, formed over centuries and millennia, disappeared at rates that would once have seemed unimaginable. Some glaciers lost metres of thickness in a single season, quite literally vanishing before our eyes.

At the same time, the mountains themselves continued to change. Permafrost, the frozen ground that has held Alpine rock faces together for thousands of years, continued to thaw. Rockfalls increased. Mountainsides became increasingly unstable. Communities that have existed for generations found themselves confronting a reality few had ever contemplated: that the landscape beneath them is no longer as permanent as they once believed, raising the possibility that some settlements may eventually become uninhabitable.

These events may appear disconnected. Yet they are chapters of the same story, unfolding quietly but unmistakably before us; a story about change, adaptation and the gradual reshaping of landscapes we once assumed would endure.

For years, climate change has often been discussed as though it were a future event. Something approaching. Something debated by scientists and politicians through the language of forecasts, projections and scenarios. At times, it has even been denied.

Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that climate change is no longer approaching. It is altering business models. Changing landscapes. Reshaping communities. Redefining economies. Challenging assumptions that have endured for generations. And, in the process, changing the lives of millions.

The reality is that nature does not negotiate. The mountains do not care whether we believe in climate change. Snowfall does not respond to political ideology. Physics remains wonderfully indifferent to opinion. Reality, ultimately, always prevails. The question is only how long it takes us to accept it.

For me, this story carries a particular sorrow, as over the years I have fallen deeply in love with the mountains. Not only as places of recreation, but as places of reflection. Places where perspective comes more easily. Places where I have found calm amidst noise, clarity amidst uncertainty, and renewed energy when I needed it most. The mountains have a remarkable way of reminding us how small we are, whilst somehow making us feel more connected to something far greater than ourselves. There is something extraordinary about standing high on a mountain after fresh snowfall. The world feels softer. Simpler. More honest.

Whether snowboarding across a vast white landscape, snowshoeing through a silent forest after a storm, or simply watching the light shift across a valley, I have come to treasure winter not merely as a season, but as a feeling. Which is perhaps why this story lingered with me.

Because Braunwald is simply one of the first places where the future has arrived. And if it can happen there, it will happen elsewhere. How many more ski lifts will become hiking lifts? How many more winter economies will need to reinvent themselves? How many more communities built around snow will discover that they are now being shaped by its absence?

None of this suggests surrender. Quite the opposite. Adaptation has always been one of humanity’s greatest strengths. But adaptation begins with honesty It begins with the willingness to see the world as it is, rather than deny what it is becoming, and to recognise that the future is arriving far sooner than many of us expected..

Braunwald is not a warning of what may come. It is evidence of what is already here. One more chapter in a story that glaciers, rivers, forests and oceans have been trying to tell us for years.

The mountains are changing. Winter is changing. Communities are changing.

The question is no longer whether we can stop every change that lies ahead.

The question is whether we act soon enough to preserve what remains.