100 Places To Remember: Kitzbühel The Alps, Austria
Geschreven op 27-5-2010 - Erik van Erne. Geplaatst in Natuur
A European Winter Playground. Every winter, from December to April, tens of millions of tourists make the pilgrimage to the Alps, the largest mountain range in Europe, to ski, snowboard, breathe clean mountain air and enjoy the spectacular sight of snow-covered Alpine summits.
Any Austrian who lacks skiing ambitions is not considered to be a true Austrian. Two-thirds of the country consists of mountains and, with 22,000-km pistes, 16,000 km of cross-country skiing tracks and a countless supply of cottages, skiing is an essential part of Austrian culture. Innsbruck, the venue for the Olympic Winter Games in 1964 and 1976, is known as the snowboarding capital of Europe.
Skiing tourism dates back 140 years and has become an important part of the Austrian economy, accounting for 4% of GNP.
Due to the low altitudinal range of its skiing regions, Austria is extremely vulnerable to any rise in temperature. The Alpine glaciers have been retreating for the past century but lately the melting has escalated dramatically, with glaciers losing 20% of their size since the 1980s. The four warmest recorded years of the last 500 years were 1994, 2000, 2002 and 2003.
Less snow, if any, is falling on low-lying slopes, and higher up in the mountains the permafrost is melting. Warm weather is destabilising what used to be reliable skiing areas, causing avalanches and rock falls that endanger roads, traffic, settlements and people.
To prevent the ice from melting and to protect the tourism industry, ski resorts across the Alps now cover glaciers with enormous white blankets during the summer. Blankets are a short-term solution, however, and cannot halt global warming in the long term. If temperatures rise 3°C by the end of the century, the Alpine glaciers will shrink by 80%, leaving ski resorts abandoned.
