Mitigating The Meltdown

How outdoor sports stakeholders can manage the effects of warmer winters.

By Wendy Helfenbaum

EACH YEAR, the Canadian snowsports industry generates $9.1 billion in economic impact, according to Protect Our Winters Canada (POW), which advocates for policy solutions that address climate change. However, rising temperatures, decreasing amounts of snowfall and unreliable outdoor ice are threatening local businesses, communities and sporting competitions across the country, POW notes. Here’s how sport organizations, event planners and venues are anticipating and navigating the uncertainty and future-proofing their events against climate change.

Developing Strategies and Finding Solutions

Professional skier and POW co-founder, Mike Douglas, became an accidental activist while training on the Horstman Glacier at Blackcomb Mountain, BC, in the 1990s. “Year after year, that glacier changed in a major way that shocked and alarmed me—it threw climate change in my face in a very dramatic way,” recalls Douglas, who lives in Whistler. Douglas recently spoke at the IMPACT Summit in Victoria about how changing climates affect winter sport events and recreational activities.

There are still lots of people with their heads in the sand on this issue, but the Whistler resort was on the front edge of the curve with climate mitigation,” he says.

Douglas was part of a group of business leaders and visionaries that got together in 2002 to look at the future of the resort and identified the number one threat to Whistler: climate change. The idea for Whistler-Blackcomb’s iconic Peak 2 Peak Gondola was developed after Douglas’ group realized that reliable snow to the valley in Whistler was diminishing.

“We asked: How do we keep people enjoying the top parts of the mountains without having to make the trek to the valley or download and re-upload on lifts? Hugh Smythe looked at the idea of spanning the two mountains with the gondola—a span nobody had ever attempted and a world-record setter once it was built,” recalls Douglas.

“It has completely revolutionized the business here because we attract people year-round from all over the world to ride it.”

Hosting the 2010 Olympics meant an influx of infrastructure funds to install the most advanced snowmaking systems in the world on the lower mountain.

“If we didn’t have snowmaking right now, we’d be struggling to open the lower part of the mountain this year,” he adds.

Planning and Pivoting are Key

Venues and event organizers have been relying extensively on artificial snowmaking as an insurance policy against warmer winters, notes Adam Clark, who was director of capital projects and venues for the 2023 Canada Winter Games across Prince Edward Island. Early risk analysis is crucial—Clark’s team began about five years before the event, focusing on the four main outdoor venues for alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, long-track speed skating and a satellite ski area.

“Those were the ones that gave me the most heartache and late nights, wondering what the weather was going to do to us,” recalls Clark.

“We focused on incorporating major upgrades to our snowmaking systems and picking the right venue for the long-track speed skating to be sure we’d have ice.”

One major challenge involved building courses for big air and aerial events, which required an enormous amount of snow much earlier than the area normally received, explains Clark.

“We knew if we wanted to host these events, we needed to invest in upgrades to the snowmaking capabilities of the provincial ski hill—it was almost a complete replacement to their snowmaking system—from the piping running up and down the hill to new snowmaking equipment to a new water supply,” he says.

“It would’ve been impossible had we relied on natural snow to fall, but we were still at the whim of the temperature to even make snow. Thirty days out from the Games, we hadn’t had any snow in Charlottetown which was 25 minutes from our ski venue, so there was a bit of a panic in the air. We went through a lot of days that were borderline trying to produce manmade snow.”

Although organizers hoped to stage the long track speed skating event on Prince Edward Island with natural ice, it had to be moved to Halifax. In fact, Clark’s team had contingency plans for all the outdoor events.

“We had alternate venues in the more northern areas of the Maritimes on the back burner had we needed to shift at the last minute,” he says. “Of course, you never want to do that because there’s a whole ripple effect with lodging, feeding, transportation. We ended up getting just enough snow at some of our venues, and things went well. But had we not put in those snowmaking upgrades into our capital projects, I’m not sure how the Games may have proceeded.”

Expect the Worst, Deliver the Best

Hosting Ottawa’s Winterlude Triathlon—the world’s oldest winter edition—with 200 athletes from across North America and around the world, means constantly worrying about the weather, says race director Adam Kourakis, owner of Somersault Events.

“The race changes all the time. Some years, the Rideau Canal Skateway doesn’t open at all or is only open in one section. Some years, there’s excellent ice but no snow or vice versa—we haven’t used the Rideau Canal since 2019,” says Kourakis.

“We’re lucky that it’s been such a mess of a race logistically because people have come to expect last-minute changes; they sign up knowing what is out of our control. We’ve always created a Plan A, B, C and D. Last year, there was no ice, but there was excellent snow, so we switched the first part of the race from skating to skiing—the race was a ski, a run, and a ski with a Le Mans start.”

Kourakis advises event organizers to be agile and communicate early and often with participants. “Usually, the Wednesday before the race, we tell athletes, ‘Here’s the final plan,’ and we always say, ‘The format is not guaranteed, but the race is.’”

Innovation Paving the Way Forward

In 2023, when the Rideau Canal Skateway stayed closed all season for the first time due to warm temperatures and heavy snow that prevented a thick ice layer from forming, it not only tanked city revenues but also raised serious questions for the National Capital Commission (NCC), which maintains the popular outdoor skating venue. To help bolster future skating seasons, the NCC commissioned researchers at Carleton University to collect data and find creative ways to encourage ice growth.

One pilot project emerging from the four-year research partnership is a snow bot that can assess the ice conditions and clear small amounts of snow in areas where conventional equipment can’t access thinner ice sections of the canal, explains Shawn Kenny, a civil environmental engineering professor at Carleton University. Kenny is working with several other Carleton professors and a group of graduate and post-doctoral students to build and fine-tune the prototype.

“We’re seeing how we can build resilience in the canal, by building the ice cover early in the season and getting conventional equipment onto the ice as early as possible,” he says. “At the beginning of the season, as the water cools, it needs a catalyst to help it transform from cold water into ice, and snow can be one of those catalysts. The idea is for snow bots to venture onto the ice cover when it’s thin.”

Eventually, the semi-autonomous snow clearing prototype might evolve into a compacting machine, or an ice flooding device.

It’s a long-term process, but ultimately, the snow bot could improve the quality of the ice.

“This year, we had cold and then some snow, followed by rain and then cold, so we know that if we remove that snow either through melting or by saturation, flooding and freezing, that would be ideal. And that’s why they were able to open the canal even with that snowfall in December,” explains Kenny.

Facing Climate Realities

Advances in snowmaking may bridge the gap left by Mother Nature, but it comes at a high price: Canadian resorts spend about $157 million each year just to stay operational, according to POW, while consuming 478 million kWh of energy and 43.4 million cubic metres of water.

That’s why it’s vital to implement other options that combat climate change, says Vancouver-based Gillian Orris, senior advisor of sustainability and impact with the Canada Games Council (CGC).

“Stakeholders should be looking at how to be a proactive part of the solution rather than mitigating the problem so that we’re creating sporting events in the most sustainable way, and not adding to the problem,” explains Orris.

As co-chair of Canadian Alliance on Sport for Climate Action, a framework developed by UN Climate Change, CGC measures, reduces and reports greenhouse gas emissions while working to reduce its carbon footprint and inspire climate action beyond the sports sector. Orris says last-minute changes due to warmer temperatures are nothing new.

“We’ve been aware of challenging weather situations for a long time in the Canada Games movement. There was an outdoor ice oval for the Canada Games 2015 in Prince George, but the team had to do a venue shift because it wasn’t viable for the competition,” says Orris.

“They had an indoor facility ready to host the event, including hotel rooms and participant transportation, and there was a substantial sponsorship attached to that. But up until about five years ago, we haven’t considered how we can be more proactive.”

Orris cites CGC’s sustainability targets across three categories—energy and climate, circularity and waste, and natural regeneration. And while a sustainable sport event tool kit was created for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, nothing’s been updated—until now.

“The CGC, with Sport Canada support, just developed an incredibly robust sustainable sport event tool kit, which we’re making public in spring,” reports Orris.

Each category offers 10 steps to success, plus checklists for pre-event planning, game-time implementation and post-event action.

“Under each category, we also have five quick wins to consider and best-in-class global examples of sporting events,” she says, adding that stakeholders can start with easy steps.

“You can encourage sustainable transportation to or from venues for participants and spectators, implement waste reduction practices and minimize how much plastic is used at the event.”

CLIMATE ADAPTATION QUICK WINS

• Use flexible scheduling to adapt to last-minute weather changes.

• Use climate forecasting tools to assess future risks and inform planning.

• Employ real-time weather tracking systems to guide operational decisions.

Source: Canada Games Council 2025 sustainable sport event tool kit

Published March 2025