The international bobsleigh and toboggan sport and the German performance center in Berchtesgaden will have to do without the bobsleigh track at Königssee for two more winters. But by the 2025/26 season, the ice track, which was partially destroyed in a storm in 2021, should be rebuilt and renewed. The Berchtesgadener Land district council finally approved the plans for this with a large majority on Tuesday morning.
The fact that the facility on the slopes of the Grünstein, which was built in 1960 as the world’s first artificial ice rink, should be reconstructed has already been politically clear in principle since Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder and the then Federal Finance Minister and current Chancellor Olaf Scholz rushed to Königssee the day after the storm and promised help. The federal government is providing 53.5 million euros for this. The money comes from an aid pot set up after the flood disaster in July 2021. At that time, more than 130 people were killed and countless houses were destroyed in the Ahr Valley in Rhineland-Palatinate alone. In Schönau am Königssee, after the heavy rain that night, large amounts of mud, rubble and driftwood damaged several houses and filled the top part of the bobsleigh track, partially taking it away.
The plans to rebuild the railway that have now been finally decided also include interventions to protect the railway from new landslides and rock falls. As the owner of the facility, the district can spend a further six million euros from other funding sources. However, the promised funds are not sufficient for the conversion into a purely mathematically climate-neutral sports facility, which is currently being considered.
Conservationists in Berchtesgadener Land are therefore critical of the plans and not only point out the high energy consumption caused by the artificial cooling of the ice channel. They continue to recognize a high risk that the railway will be damaged again by a storm. The planners also want to limit this risk by ensuring that the railway will no longer cross the Klingerbach, which flows down from Grünstein, in the future.