Ski maps are still stacked at Céüze 2000—but nobody's coming to use them. The small resort in France's southern Alps, a fixture for 85 years, is now part of a growing archipelago of "ghost" ski areas across the mountains. As winters warm and the reliable snow line climbs higher, 186 French resorts have already shut for good, the Guardian reports. Many left behind a tangle of idle lifts, pylons, and decaying machinery and questions about what to do with it all. Dealing with the situation can be emotional. A villager who helped pay for the first lift at a resort in the northern French Alps called it heartbreaking to watch the lifts be destroyed.
At Céüze, the math broke first. Snowfall became erratic in the 1990s; by the final season in 2018, the slopes were open for six weeks, far short of the three months needed to break even. The local authority was spending a half-million dollars a year to stay open, and President Michel Ricou-Charles said artificial snow would have "only delayed the inevitable." The resort closed, and for seven years the infrastructure sat in place. That makes Céüze typical: Across France, at least 113 ski lifts totaling about 39 miles lie abandoned, most in protected areas, along with thousands of other leftover structures from tourism, military, and industrial projects. Old cables, pylons, asbestos, and oils are slowly leaching into some of Europe's most biodiverse terrain.
Céüze is one of the rare sites being cleaned up, per the Guardian. In 2025, helicopters began lifting out the steel towers. Environmental group Mountain Wilderness, which pushed for the dismantling, frames it as a reminder that infrastructure isn't permanent. "Don't think that you are making eternal things; they will end up becoming obsolete," said campaigner Nicolas Masson, who wants space given back to nature. Early signs of recovery are visible: Dog rose berries now dot former pistes, feeding birds such as the rare red-billed chough, while orchids and gentians return in summer. Nearby hills are part of the European Union's Natura 2000 network, home to some of the continent's rarest wildlife.
The debate isn't just ecological. Some neighbors see these places as cultural landmarks and want them preserved or kept alive with artificial snow—though in some places, it's not cold long enough for that to be the answer, either. Others say the future lies in lighter use: hiking, snowshoeing, sledding, and events in repurposed hotels rather than chairlifts and snow cannons. In the Telegraph, Abigail Butcher wrote in October about what it's like to dismantle a lift at Notre-Dame-du-Pre—cutting cables and bolts, then rocking the structure until it crashes onto the ground. Marcel Fraissard, 85, has been there since the beginning in the 1970s. "The whole village would ski every Sunday," he said. "In those years, you couldn't see your neighbor's house because there was so much snow in the village."
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