Open, even if it’s below minimums. The Pont de la Constitucion and the Immaculada is much more than the starting point for skiing. The change in fan habits, which years ago marked this first week of December on the calendar for the premiere of the season, forces the stations – to please their audience – at this early curtain rise, have more snow or less on premises. Something unthinkable decades ago, without so much snow production, when the skiing tradition – this also happened in the Alps – was to open doors after Christmas.
As the elders of the Pyrenees repeat, “the snow, the real precipitation, has always reached these mountains well into the month of December”. So, until the technology of snowmaking with snow cannons arrived, no ski entrepreneur – except in very exceptional years – thought of starting the season at the beginning of December and , much less, at the end of November.
There are dozens of Immaculada and Constitució bridges where skiing has opened with very little snow, or simply has not been able to open, as happened this year in Aragon. This was already happening when the debate on climate change was the property of a few and not a worrying and confirmed reality, as it is now. This year everything acquires, moreover, another dimension after it is questioned from an ecological point of view the start-up of cannons that produce snow with water, when 2023 will go down in history as the driest year since there are records To open the first week of December with this panorama, even if it is half-hearted, is more news than ever. Skiing has once again benefited from what is known in the sector as surgical snowfall. They are those precipitations that arrive at the right moment, when they are most needed.
That’s what happened to this bridge. The snow that has fallen in recent days, although fair, has allowed all the Catalan stations to open their doors for the bridge; comply with this wish or requirement of skiers who do not want to wait, as in the past, until after Christmas to start the season.
Between all the Catalan complexes, nearly 120 kilometers of slopes are offered. Half, in Baqueira-Beret, a resort where around 15,000 skiers passed on Thursday. Yesterday, with a dark day due to a new storm that will help increase thickness, the influx dropped to 10,000 visitors. Xavi Ubeira, commercial director of the Aranese complex, does not hide his satisfaction with these numbers at the start of the season with less snow than desired. Something that is repeated, this joy, among the hotel sector located at the foot of the slopes, where the complete sign has been hung in many establishments. In the case of the Pyrenees of Lleida and thanks to the opening of the ski resorts – even if in some complexes it is below minimum – hotel occupancy is around 90% in this second phase of the bridge. The mountain once again wins the rest of the offers for this getaway. Great news for the economy of the counties of this mountain range.
In La Cerdanya, with the Molina and Masella stations open, occupancy for this week is around 80%, a figure that increases, in the forecasts, for the Christmas holidays.
Cross-country skiing, without the support of produced snow, has not been so lucky, however. These complexes are open for mountain activities and, pending the latest rainfall, only the Tuixent-la Vansa station (Alt Urgell) was open for Nordic skiing yesterday.
This bridge has also been able to open, on the other hand, all the resorts in Andorra, with an offer of more than 100 kilometers of slopes suitable for skiing. Employment, in the neighboring country, is also very high in the accommodation located at the foot of these complexes.