It's been a difficult season for many ski resorts. Initial snow melted just as the crowds Were arriving, and though plenty fell later, the pictures of bare slopes once again focussed attention on the possibility that apart from the highest locations, skiing may one day soon disappear from the Alps.
It’s a scenario the ski industry has been responding to for decades and indeed many resorts were planned and built according to the ‘higher is better’ philosophy. In Les Arcs, for instance, that process .can be charted in the heights incorporated into the name of each resort. The original, Arc 1600, dates from 1968, with the plans for this resort and several like it being drawn up in the early 1960s when a lack of snow was causing trouble
