When Céüze 2000 ski resort closed at the end of the season in 2018, the workers assumed they would be back the following winter. Maps of the pistes were left stacked beside a stapler; the staff rota pinned to the wall.
Six years on, a yellowing newspaper dated 8 March 2018 sits folded on its side, as if someone has just flicked through it during a quiet spell. A half-drunk bottle of water remains on the table.
The Céüze resort in the southern French Alps had been open for 85 years and was one of the oldest in the country. Today, it is one of scores of ski resorts abandoned across France – part of a new landscape of “ghost stations”.
More than 186 have been permanently closed already, raising questions about how we leave mountains – among the last wild spaces in Europe – once the lifts stop running.
Ironically those hoorays that jet there a few times a year and embrace that massively wasteful lifestyle are partially responsible as well.
PS Only tried skiing once, in Bavaria when in Army. Not for me.