“Now to Breuil-Cervinia e Zermatt fingers crossed for the women’s races, the first timed race on Wednesday”, is the refrain repeated by sports websites and newspapers after the cancellation of the men’s ski races on the glacier in front of the Matterhorn. As far as the World Cup competition is concerned, we are at three out of three cancellations, and the real ‘opening’ of the season, at this point, should be lo slalom on Saturday 18 November in Gurgl, Tyrol, in the Ötztal Alps.
They gutted pieces of thousand-year-old glaciers, to prepare for the first skipped races, between Val d’Aosta and Switzerland, for a crazy free descent with the start on Gobba di Rollin, well above 3 thousand metres. They filled and emptied gigantic ones ‘snow deposits’, which no longer have any mythological biblical aura (Job 38), but almost everywhere in the Alpine range they are flanked by artificial snow systems, given that these can only work at low temperatures. The illusion that the highest tourist resorts can make skiing resist climate change is shattered every year by reality.
But it didn’t end like this: the teams of snowboard, for example, in recent days they have been at Amnéville Led Thermes, 200 meters above sea level, in France, in the Moselle department, to prepare indoors for the new large covered facilities. And if the bobsleigh track it seems only the most exotic madness of Milan-Cortina 2026, the 2029 Asian Winter Games will even be held in the Tabuk desert, in Saudi Arabiawhere they are building a real futuristic city, Neom, with all the ‘snowhalls’ of the case.
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“They ruined my life by canceling my business”: he had to dismantle his park for the bobsled track that will never be built
We should start thinking seriously how to reconvert a large part of the mountain areas which with global warming will no longer be able to be exploited for skiing, and perhaps let them be conquered by that Third Landscape of returning ‘wild’ nature theorized by Gilles Clement and already applied in some ruined industrial areas.
Instead, as if nothing had happened, despite the protests and in some cases even judicial interventions, a sort of great political-business alliance that extends across the entire Alpine arc, continues in the unbridled race to build cable cars and concrete boxes to deposit snow or ski indoors, even real amusement park facilities, which only translate into a further ruthless destruction of the collective natural heritage to encourage the private entertainment of the few who are at the top of the socio-economic pyramids.
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“The usual run-up to luxury tourism: it’s the assault on the Alps”
The experts at marketing they calculate that the potential of the European population for so-called winter sports is now below 2 percent. But the goal of chasing luxury tourism it knows no stops or seasons. For the new cable car crossing from Zermatt to Testa Grigia, in the heart of the Monterosa group, inaugurated this summer, the official price list indicated 185 francs per ticketand it certainly drops a little in the height of the winter season, to 135 francs.
When Cervino Spa presented with great pride the appointment with the Speed Opening of the ’23 World Cup, for example, the project for a new connection with the facilities of the Monterosa Skiwhich should be built in the Cime Bianche hill area, despite protests from environmentalists and mountain enthusiasts.
And, just to please, we also talked about an ‘alpine coaster’ toboggan (i.e. roller coasters in a mountain environment) which will be installed between Lake Lod and the town of Chamois, a jewel location that can only be reached by cable car. To get an idea of the madness, just go and see the model plant of this one new amusement park deal of alpine-porn entertainment (a definition launched by Michil Costa for some mega-hotels in the Dolomites) which is located right in Imsto In the meantimeas the Austrians say, at the feet of the group of Lechtal.
