Operate a wheel loader or one of these huge lignite excavators. Or, even better, because you can get anywhere: rolling through a ski area in a snow groomer. After all, such a thing manages more than 20 kilometers per hour, downhill maybe a bit more. In addition, the vehicle rocks and slides when operated appropriately and makes a lot of noise. A man’s dream, still.
When talking about alternative winter holiday activities to alpine skiing, people always like to talk about snowshoe hiking or yoga on the slopes, wellness days and yodelling courses. In other words, about gentle ways of spending your free time. Driving a snow groomer is also a change from the daily carving. There is a supply, there is a demand. This is extra income for the ski areas.
Which they may voluntarily do without in the future. waiver? Voluntarily?? You rarely hear that in connection with alpine winter tourism. Even more kilometers of pistes, even larger gondolas, even more guest beds and snow cannons and yeast dumpling gastronomy, that is usually the credo. And anyone who comes along with the growth-calibrated ski area operators with water-storing wet meadows and rare mountain amphibians that need to be protected is considered a crackpot and gravedigger for the little hard-earned prosperity of actually starving valley communities.
But without any consideration for the environment, it just doesn’t work anymore. After all, there are not only the Pistenbully fan group among the guests. Here, too, progress is unstoppable. Although there are only prototypes, the technology is not fully developed. But it is foreseeable that the diesel engines in snow groomers will also be replaced by an electric drive or fuel cells or hybrid technology. The bulldozers will then no longer rattle and smoke, but only emit a gentle whirring sound when they rudely push the snow straight in the evening, which the skiers have dusted into a wild mess during the day. They too are in yoga mode, so to speak. And off the bucket list. The future will be tough for tough guys.