Skiing, Hiking, and the Mountains They Depend On: What Do These Businesses Owe the Ecosystem?

Ski resorts, hiking operators, and outdoor tourism businesses don’t just operate in mountain environments — they depend on them.

Snow reliability, stable slopes, intact trails, predictable water flow, and safe terrain are not aesthetic features. They are the operating conditions that make these businesses viable. When those conditions shift, the business model shifts with them.

That’s why the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 15 includes a specific target on conserving mountain ecosystems. Not as an abstract environmental aim, but because economic activity in these regions is structurally tied to ecological stability.

The question isn’t whether businesses affect mountain environments. It’s how they account for that dependency in the decisions they make.

Ski resorts: when nature is core infrastructure

For ski resorts, mountains are not a backdrop — they are the product.

As snow seasons shorten and become less predictable, many resorts have turned to:

• artificial snowmaking

• higher-altitude development

• expanded lift and road infrastructure

These choices can protect revenue in the short term, but they also increase pressure on:

• water availability

• energy use

• fragile alpine habitats

Some operators have started responding differently. In parts of the Alps and North America, resorts have limited expansion into sensitive zones, invested in slope restoration, or diversified into lower-impact, year-round activities rather than pushing higher and harder each season.

These aren’t moral gestures. They’re responses to rising operational risk.

Hiking and outdoor tourism: low impact until it isn’t

Hiking, guiding, and trail-based tourism are often described as “low impact”. At scale, that assumption breaks down.

Popular routes in mountain regions around the world now face:

• trail erosion

• waste management challenges

• safety risks from overcrowding

• rising maintenance costs

In response, some guiding companies and park-adjacent operators have:

• capped group sizes

• contributed directly to trail maintenance funds

• adjusted routes seasonally to allow recovery

• built conservation costs into pricing

Again, this isn’t branding. It’s recognition that without functioning trails and landscapes, there is no business to run.

When ecosystems degrade, costs don’t disappear

When mountain ecosystems break down, the consequences rarely stop at the summit.

Downstream communities face:

• flooding and landslides

• reduced water quality and supply

• loss of livelihoods tied to tourism and agriculture

If businesses extract value from mountain environments without reinvesting in their stability, those costs are absorbed elsewhere — often by local communities and public systems.

This is the tension the SDG target on mountain ecosystem conservation is trying to surface: economic activity that ignores ecological limits eventually destabilises itself.

What does “good business” look like in mountain regions?

Good business here isn’t about claiming sustainability leadership. It’s about acknowledging dependence.

It shows up when businesses:

• treat ecosystems as operating infrastructure, not externalities

• factor environmental limits into growth plans

• collaborate with local communities and land managers

• accept lower short-term returns to protect long-term viability

These decisions don’t make headlines. They do make businesses more resilient.

A conversation worth having

Skiing, hiking, and mountain tourism will continue to exist. The demand isn’t disappearing.

The real question is whether the businesses built around these activities treat mountain ecosystems as something to be consumed — or something that must be maintained for the business to survive at all.

Stories of Business explores these questions not to prescribe answers, but to surface the trade-offs businesses are already navigating, often quietly, in places where the margin for error is getting smaller.