How Beijing built Olympic ski slopes ‘from scratch’ on the outskirts of a desert
YANQING, China — The slopes snake through jagged cliffs on the outskirts of a desert. Massive rock faces loom on either side. Snow rarely falls, but wind often whirls, and neither tourists nor residents ever ski here.
But Olympians now do, because when China won the right to host these Winter Games, it embarked on a three-year project to build the National Alpine Ski Center “from scratch.”
It was once uninhabited “steep mountain ridges,” as Li Changzhou, a deputy general manager with Beijing Enterprises Group, the property owner and constructor, said. Everything around it still is. Shrubby trees and barren hillside line the road that winds up Xiaohaituo Mountain. Everything outside the venue is some shade of brown.
But then there are thin ribbons of white, visible from airplanes and miles away, striking proof that the Olympics have ventured outside their natural habitat.
Beijing built them because it had no other choice. It bid for the 2022 Games without an Olympic-standard Alpine resort. So, shortly after winning an International Olympic Committee vote in 2015, it began blasting out massive chunks of its tallest mountain, near the Great Wall in this suburban district, Yanqing. It contracted dozens of foreign experts to turn rugged terrain into European-style slopes. Alpine legend Bernhard Russi designed them. American cowboy Tom Johnston manicured them.
But first, this water-scarce region had to provide him with snow.
So, local authorities began reaching far and wide for the natural resources to create it.
Most international Alpine skiing competition requires snow-making these days. Beijing’s Olympic operation, though, is especially intensive. China, working with premier artificial snow supplier TechnoAlpin, built miles-long networks of pipeline to connect reservoirs outside Yanqing to another reservoir at Xiaohaituo Mountain. That smaller reservoir stores the water being used to coat the Olympic slopes. Pumps and hundreds of snow guns then turn it into the white surface you’ll see on TV.
The skiers who’ll use it actually like it. The artificial snow, as U.S. star Mikaela Shiffrin said Friday, is “grippy” and “aggressive.”
The setting, though, looks and feels odd.
The IOC had warned that it would. A bid evaluation report explained long ago that “there could be no snow outside of the racecourse, especially in Yanqing, impacting the visual perception of the snow setting.”
Organizers seemingly sought to address these concerns. Trees were planted in rigid, uniform rows, in an attempt to lend a foresty feel to the scenery. The snow guns have tried to dress some of them in white. The Beijing Organizing Committee once released renderings that depicted the Olympic venue as a recreation of the European Alps.
The reality is much different. Small patches of leftover snow — perhaps fake, perhaps real — line some sections of mountainside. The rest of it looks dry and dead.
On the other side of these mountains is the Gobi, the sixth-large desert in the world, and the reason none of this is surprising. The climate is cold enough. But it is arid. Vegetation is parched. Forecasts suggest some snow could arrive next weekend. But nowhere near enough to change the visuals.
The most prominent element, instead, will continue to be wind. High-speed gusts postponed Sunday’s men’s downhill, one day after also cancelling a training session.
“I think it is always gonna be windy,” U.S. skier Bryce Bennett said here Sunday. “It's just how this place is.”
