Snowmaking works

Modern technology helps ski resorts with the climate crisis

Artificial snow makes it easier to plan.

(Bild: Melanie Hutter)

Freezing cold winters have become a rarity in our latitudes. Small ski resorts at lower altitudes are struggling with a lack of snow and are therefore fighting for their existence. Elsewhere, modern technology is even making it easier to plan fun on the slopes.

The ski world could not be more different. "We already had 3800 visitors in Hinterstoder on the first weekend. And we have up to 70 centimetres of fresh snow on the Frauenkar" - Helmut Holzinger, CEO of Hinterstoder-Wurzeralm Bergbahnen, is "very happy" about the good start to the season. Things look very different in Weyregg am Attersee: After 61 years, the Wachtberg lifts are no longer open this year.

Lift had to close
The previous operator Wolfgang Spießberger has retired and says: "No one was willing to take over." One of the reasons for this was that the small ski resort was struggling with less and less snow. Will this fate soon befall even more lift operators in Upper Austria due to the climate crisis?

"Wasn't possible in the past"
"You can still ski for a long time," says climate researcher Roland Koch from Geosphere Austria. The altitude and location of a ski resort are decisive for the snow - and the snowmaking. Today, technology even ensures more predictable and better slope conditions, says Holzinger: "We can make snow within a few days so that the entire infrastructure works. That wasn't possible in the past."

„Krone“-Kommentar

Ein Idyll als Illusion

At least with machine snow it still works, the once much-vaunted magic of the slopes: skiing really is the "most fun you can imagine". But only if you fit blinkers to the left and right of your snow goggles. Because then you can't see how you're whizzing down a painstakingly groomed white slope through what is actually a green landscape.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV, Alexander Schwarzl, Markus Wenzel)

Winter as it used to be no longer exists. The winter of today is a strain on the ability to suffer and the wallets of ski enthusiasts. The most beautiful sport in the world is increasingly becoming an idyll that only exists as an illusion.