Tobias Marti and Sven Zaugg text, Thomas Meier and Stefan Bohrer photos
This woman does not come alone. She pulls five, ten, twenty people behind her in a caravan.
The group from Freiburg, which is approaching the Gantrisch nature park in Bern and Freiburg in single file, reveals a major trend: winter sports enthusiasts are increasingly looking for their way away from the lifts. The pandemic has increased the desire to exercise in nature – but not in crowds.
Snowshoe hikes and touring skis are on the rise
Like Simone (49) and Andreas (53) from Bern, who are just switching to snowshoes after skiing in Grindelwald BE: “Our first own.” Lucky to find any at all. In many places they are sold out.
Touring skis have also been going well for years. Many amateur athletes go on real expeditions: they equip themselves with GPS, download touring apps, and dress in expensive functional clothing. These include avalanche transceivers, probes, shovels and airbags. The audience has purchasing power.
In the branches of the outdoor retailer Transa you can feel “a trend, especially with snowshoes since the beginning of the pandemic”. Fritschi, the Kandertal manufacturer of touring bindings, had to “prepare for the current season with large pre-orders”. And the Lausanne-based company Movement Skis predicts “double-digit growth figures” for the touring boom in the future.
The number of SAC members has increased almost tenfold in the last 3 years
Alpine clubs, mountaineers and sports schools offer countless courses where you can practice how to move around in the terrain or track down missing people with the search device. “The pandemic has triggered a real mountain hype,” says Daniel Marbacher, Managing Director of the Swiss Alpine Club. In the last three years, the number of SAC members has grown by 20,000 to over 170,000. If you want to be on the safe side, book a mountain guide. “There are days when we’re almost overrun,” says Simone Oberhänsli from the Höhenfieber ski tour operator in Root, Lucerne. The Swiss Mountain Guide Association (SBV) is also seeing significantly more requests for guided snow tours, especially from beginners.
According to the SAC, around 300,000 Swiss people strap on touring skis several times a year. Tour days have increased from 700,000 a year (1999) to well over 2.2 million.
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Recreational fun with dangers
However, the desire to have fun off the beaten track and off the beaten track also harbors dangers. And quite a few amateur athletes underestimate the risk. Dangerous snow conditions in the Alps have claimed numerous lives in recent weeks. Since the beginning of February, six people have died in avalanches here.
Among them was a 17-year-old snowboarder who was rescued dead from the masses of snow on Tuesday afternoon in the Darlux ski area in Bergün GR off the slopes. Warning level 3 currently applies: significant.
In the last two weeks, the Zermatt mountain rescue service had to go out four times to rescue people who had been buried, “although everyone must have been aware that the snow cover is very, very brittle this winter,” says rescue chief Anjan Truffer. “As soon as it snows, they just drive headlong into it.”
The number of fatalities has been falling for years
He sees less of a problem with the tourers, who are on average well prepared and more risk-aware. “Headless” in the field are mainly freeriders, whose number has exploded in the last 20 years, according to Truffer: “We then pull them out of avalanches and crevasses.”
Urs Egli (45) from the Titlis mountain railways speaks of the month of danger, the “Danger December”. When at the beginning of the season the anticipation of some turned into an exaggerated willingness to take risks, most fatal accidents occurred in the central Swiss ski area.
According to figures from the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF), an average of 33 people lose their lives off the slopes in Switzerland every year, almost two thirds in avalanches.
In relation to the number of tour days, however, the number of fatalities has been falling for years. According to the Zermatt rescue chief Truffer, the reason for this is also the fact that the mountain rescue service is on site faster today: “It’s clear that there will be fewer deaths then,” he says.
The avalanche bulletin saves lives
Alpinism is no longer a niche sport. This is also observed by the Prättigau mountain guide Andres Bardill: “The more people are out and about, the greater the likelihood that something can happen.” However, it can hardly be determined exactly whether people underestimate the danger or are just careless, according to the managing director of Alpine Rescue Switzerland (ARS).
Someone who knows the white danger very well is avalanche warner Christine Pielmeier (58). The Heidenheimer (D) has been working in Davos at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research for more than 20 years. Together with glaciologists, geographers, environmental scientists, engineers and physicists, she provides the most important source of information for ski tourers and freeriders – the avalanche bulletin.
SonntagsBlick accompanied the avalanche warner on a ski tour in the Flüela Valley in Graubünden. There she puts it to the test: she uncovers a block of snow with the avalanche shovel, taps the sheet with her hand, the old snow cover breaks, and the block begins to slide. “You see,” says Pielmeier, “a lot of new and windblown snow on a weak old snow cover can lead to huge avalanches!”
A “pronounced old snow problem”, as Pielmeier describes this constellation, increases the accident risk by half – in addition to the danger level reported in each case. A risk that tourers and freeriders must not underestimate in the coming weeks, as the avalanche specialist emphasizes.
Tourers cause more traffic on the slopes
Especially inexperienced tourers prefer to stay within the ski areas because of such deadly dangers in the terrain. At the edge of the slopes you can see them walking up the mountain in single file. “In recent years, the number of ski tourers at the edge of the slopes has doubled,” observes Stefan Kern from the Andermatt-Sedrun ski arena. On the valley run, which skiers and tobogganists need for their final descent, the new phenomenon leads to additional traffic, and the mix is a challenge. In order to avoid dangerous oncoming traffic, many tourers only start in the evening. When the lifts are up and the piste inspection is complete, they mount their headlamps.
However, snow groomers prepare the terrain at night. The caterpillar vehicles are secured with cable winches on the steep slope. Steel cables, which can deflect several meters, are stretched up to a kilometer long. In the dark they mean an invisible danger for touring riders. Serious accidents happen all the time. In Andermatt-Sedrun, the instructions are clear. “When the after-work tourers come, we lock it up,” says Stefan Kern.
If you don’t stay on track, you’ll get a fine
Meanwhile, the next snowshoe convoy arrives in the Gantrisch Nature Park and disappears between the fir trees. There – invisible to visitors – black grouse crouch under the blanket of snow, chamois and deer hide in the woods. Because of the onslaught, the nature park recently tightened its regime. If you don’t stay on track, you’ll get a fine.
For years, snowshoe hikers and ski tourers were considered nature lovers who respected the mountain – unlike on-piste skiers, who consumed what the Alps had to offer in the big ski resorts.
stress for wildlife
Ulrike Pröbstl-Haider, professor for nature conservation planning from Vienna, is not a fan of Alpine urbanization by profession. But she notes: “Ecologically and in terms of spatial planning, the ski slopes have the advantage that they bundle many people in a small space.” This relieves the rest of nature.
“For wild animals, the increasing number of people away from the slopes is serious.” She criticizes that if everyone is on their own individual trip and wants to make their own downhill lane, the quiet zones would be massively disturbed. Pröbstl-Haider strongly advises limiting the individual experience to certain areas.
In the Bavarian Alps, where the professor is currently staying, the authorities have put up wildlife protection signs everywhere. Nothing helped, as Pröbstl-Haider observed: unknown persons have already removed the signs.