The first ski races of the season will take place in Sölden at the weekend. But the start of the World Cup is highly controversial in the Tyrolean town – athletes are also protesting. Because the glacier was specially worked on with excavators.
“You can’t see much of the glacier anymore. It probably won’t be there forever,” says Gerd Estermann. It stands at an altitude of almost 3,000 meters above the Rettenbachferner, one of the glaciers above Sölden in the Tyrolean Ötztal. The place has been in turmoil for weeks – since excavators arrived in September to prepare the glacier for the World Cup downhill run.
In summer temperatures, the edge of the glacier was shaved off and artificial snow from last year was applied to the scree fields below the glacier. Estermann is active in a citizens’ initiative that promotes nature conservation in Tyrol. “You’ve always had to do a lot on the glacier. But the amount of work you have to do now never existed in this form,” he says.
Ski star Shiffrin demands adaptation to nature
The landscape has only been a little snowy since Friday. Before that, the piste meandered through the brown-green scenery like a foreign body. Estermann is traveling with Clemens Matt, the general secretary of the Austrian Alpine Club. He sees the early start of the World Cup as more than just a nature conservation problem. “From the perspective of tourism: Are these really the images we want to convey? To carry out ski races in a situation with little snow.”
Matt is in favor of postponing the start of the World Cup. Such demands are now also coming from the ski circus itself. US superstar Mikaela Shiffrin, for example, called for the sport to be adapted to nature – and not the other way around. The Austrian ski racer Julian Schütter is promoting a petition that calls for more climate protection in skiing.
The Rettenbachferner has also retreated due to climate change. Slopes that were once on the glacier now lead over scree.
These are positions that the head of the organizing committee of the Sölden race, Jakob Falkner, considers to be hypocrisy. “You were a beneficiary of this system,” he says. “And I can’t turn this around overnight.” The committee will discuss the system with the ski racers. “It’s not that we’re ignorant. But what’s also clear is that nothing will happen to the glacier now because these races are taking place.”
“Measures are necessary now”
His argument is that the glacier can no longer be saved anyway. Falkner is also a “beneficiary of the system.” He is the managing director and co-owner of Bergbahnen Sölden. Falkner is also invested in other companies in the industry. He is also part of the Tiroler Adlerrunde, a business association that is close to the conservative ÖVP.
Of course the pictures aren’t pretty, says Falkner. “But what really annoys me is that everything is now suddenly tied to this ski sport, to this World Cup race.” The committee would not deny climate change. “We feel this very clearly, we are those affected ourselves,” he clarifies. “But of course we have to act to further develop our tourism, our thing, and measures are necessary now.”
View from the Rettenbachferner to the parking lot on the Gletscherstrasse. For critics, it’s a “kind of industrial landscape in the high mountains”.
Resistance to alternative plan
In the long term, the tourism expert would like to develop a glacier in the neighboring valley of the Rettenbach glacier that is still intact and not used for skiing. This is a plan that Gerd Estermann’s citizens’ initiative absolutely wants to fight against. Even if he is not fundamentally against skiing on glaciers.
“But at some point you will have to think about how to get out of this one-way street,” he criticizes. The entire infrastructure is a kind of industrial landscape in the high mountains. “And these are things that no tourist wants to see. I would be very, very careful with the remnants of nature that we still have there.”