Winter travel firms are adapting to climate change by adding summer activities

With winters arriving late or not at all in recent years, outdoor companies..are starting to find ways to adapt to unpredictable weather…Examples include ski resorts beefing up their snowmaking capability while simultaneously investing in zip lines and mountain bike trails…national retailers are trimming pre-season orders for winter goods, pushing back deliveries of heavier weight apparel, and shifting inventory dollars away from snow sports equipment toward other faster growing sports such as cycling, running and yoga.

The most obvious examples…come from ski resorts…include investing more heavily in artificial snowmaking equipment, developing higher terrain, altering the design of their slopes and investing in more summer amenities like mountain bike trails.

A few publicly traded companies have reduced their exposure to winter hardgoods. In 2008, for instance, Quiksilver divested Rossignol. Zumiez began decreasing its commitment to snowboarding equipment in 2012 after the warmest winter of the century.