Great heat and hardly any precipitation: “Our glacier really burned down this summer too!” says Adi Gugganig, the long-standing and experienced manager of the Mölltal Glacier Ski Area in Carinthia. So all ski enthusiasts have to wait.
All glacier ski areas in Austria will have major problems after this summer. “In the past, when the Wurtenkees was even bigger, we only needed a 20 centimeter layer of snow in the fall and we could already start preparing the slopes. We need at least a meter of snow for that today,” explains Adi Gugganig: “We are going to start using the lifts as soon as possible! But for that we need snow, a lot of snow.”
Because there isn’t much left of the glacier
“It just looks bleak!” says Hans Kratzwald, the former army officer who is currently climbing the highest peaks of all Carinthian communities – the “Krone” reported – and who also recently climbed the 3123 meter high Schareck via Flattach. “My God! I was there for the first time in the early 1980s, when there was no skiing and the then mighty Wurten glacier stretched all the way to the ice lake. Parts of the Kees are already covered with tarpaulins, but that helps probably no longer at these temperatures.”
This is also confirmed by the manager of the Mölltal glacier: “Our snow depots have also suffered a lot this summer.”
In addition, the extremely high energy costs are a major concern for those responsible for the Mölltal glacier: “In the future we will have to work much more economically and efficiently than we have already done and no longer try to produce machine snow at any temperature. The thing about the glacier ski area is that it is located at almost 3000 meters and that there is still a lot of natural snow in the winter months.
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
