Haut-Folin
Once billed as the closest ski station to Paris, a 901-metre hill in the Morvan that ran a rope tow from 1953, installed possibly the first snow cannons in France in 1964, and gave up alpine skiing when the snow stopped coming in the late 1980s.
- Region
- Burgundy
- Country
- France
- Status
- abandoned
- Year opened
- 1953
- Year closed
- late 1980s
- Reason for closure
- Warming winters at 901 m. The manager of the day put it bluntly: the turning point of climate change was felt brutally at the end of the 1980s, and it no longer snowed the same way. Alpine skiing stopped and the lift was taken down.
History
The Haut-Folin is the highest point of the Morvan at 901 m, in the Saône-et-Loire, and its ski station traded for decades on being the nearest lift-served skiing to Paris. A basic rope tow went up in the summer of 1953, with a second phase of work in 1954 clearing the piste and adding a chalet and parking. The oddest chapter came in January 1964, when snow cannons were installed - possibly the first in France - only for them never to run, because nobody on site was qualified to operate them; the equipment was taken away again within months. The original rope tow was destroyed when a tractor caught the cable, and was replaced by a more modern drag lift set diagonally across the slope. What finished it was the weather. Alpine skiing ended in the late 1980s, remembered locally as the moment the climate turned, and the lift came down; the chalet restaurant burned in the 1990s. Cross-country skiing, which had reached 40 km of trails by 1980, carries on with free access, run from the regional natural park's chalet at Préperny, and proposals in the 2000s to put a lift back were dropped. The site has largely gone back to nature. Piste names and lift manufacturers are not recorded.
Lifts
| Name | Type | Manufacturer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unnamed lift | Surface lift | A rudimentary rope tow installed in the summer of 1953, running from the chalet at the base. It was wrecked when a tractor caught the cable | |
| Unnamed lift | Surface lift | A more modern drag lift installed diagonally across the piste to replace the damaged rope tow; dismantled when alpine skiing ended in the late 1980s |
Sources and further reading
More in France
Location
46.9961, 4.0371