A Look Into A World Without Snow

With a warming planet, and if radical action isn’t taken to combat climate change, ex-competitive freestyle skier, adventurer and travel filmmaker Wade Holland takes a look at what snowsports may look like in the future – by backpacking, hiking and skiing his way through the highest sand dune national park in North America…

- Wade Holland

Every skier lives for face shots. Face shots of that crisp, fluffy, buttery, white stuff. Face shots that send grown-ups back into their childhood selves with hoots and hollers. Face shots that transform men and women into complete animals! Hounds; local legend powder hounds! But what if, in the near future, we completely lose that? What if someday we’re living in a world where that fluffy white stuff gets replaced by SAND?! Tragically, that dystopian future might not be as far off as you think.

The facts are there: the Earth is warming at alarming rates. June 2021 was the hottest month in recorded history in North America, and just last month Sicily reported a temperature of 48 degrees Celsius, making that the warmest temperature recorded in Europe EVER. While summers seem to be getting increasingly unbearable, winters are getting shorter and more mild. The United Nations Environment Programme identified the ski industry as “one of the most vulnerable industries” to climate change worldwide. The world is changing for the warmer, and snowsports will be the first among the casualties.

THE MOGUL SKIER