Construction work will start after this season: In the future, two new gondola lifts will take you to the summit of the Ochsenkopf in the Fichtelgebirge. As the Bayreuth district office announced, the start of construction for the new northern runway is planned for March. It is scheduled to go into operation at the start of the 2023/24 winter season. The new southern runway will be built from spring 2024 – and should then be ready in the following winter.
According to the district office, the project will cost a total of 37 million euros. At the beginning of the previous year, the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs had promised 10.5 million euros in funding. The gondola lifts are to replace the aging chairlifts that currently lead to the summit at an altitude of 1024 meters. The lifts are already in operation in summer and winter, and the new lifts should also be in use all year round.
Bayreuth District Administrator Florian Wiedemann (free voters) recently described the renewal of the Ochsenkopf cable car as a “flagship project”. The Bund Naturschutz (BN) is more skeptical about the project – especially with regard to the use of snow cannons to artificially produce snow for skiing. Against the background of the climate crisis and a “crisis in the supply of electricity and heat”, it is “scientifically and socially no longer acceptable that artificial conditions for winter sports are created with high energy consumption using snow cannons,” said BN expert Johannes Lüers.
Bischofsgrün and Fichtelberg have not been winter sports resorts for a long time, according to a study of weather data. From 1960 to 2020, the number of snow days on which cross-country or alpine skiing was possible without artificial snow fell sharply. For cross-country skiing and a snow depth of at least 15 centimeters, the number of suitable days has decreased from 80 to 35 days. For alpine skiing and a snow depth of at least 30 centimeters from 50 to 15 days. “The trend continues unabated,” wrote Lüers. In a few years there will only be “rare, sporadic individual events” with snow depths of more than 15 or 30 centimeters at altitudes below 1000 meters. “This decline is dramatic for tourism in the Fichtelgebirge.”