Walking up a winding trail in the Dobratsch nature park in Carinthia, surrounded by picturesque snowy slopes dotted with pines, we hear shrieks coming from round the corner. The path is as wide as a one-way street but Birgit Pichorner, the park ranger I’m taking a tour with, motions for me to move to the side, where we watch a couple with wide grins glide past on a wooden toboggan.
We have seen families out hiking with young children and speed walkers pacing for the summit, while on a trail above us, four skiers are zigzagging up one of the nature park’s designated ski touring routes. For residents of Villach, the southern Austrian town at the foot of Dobratsch, this is very much their Hausberg, a much-loved “locals’ mountain”, says Birgit.
Until 2002, it was a ski resort – Birgit points out the slopes where she learned and later taught her kids to ski – but after successive bad winters at the turn of the century, the town faced the same choice as many ski resorts across the Alps today, as the climate crisis brings higher temperatures and reduced snowfall. Bring in the snow guns and supplement your natural snow offering with the fake stuff? Or chart a different path?
The environmental cost of Maschinenschnee, as the Austrians call artificial snow, is high – it’s energy- and water-intensive, with many resorts pumping water up from the valleys to service their slopes. It also negatively affects these fragile ecosystems by introducing potentially pathogenic and stress-tolerant bacteria to the snow, meltwater and soils, according to the hydrologist Prof Carmen de Jong.
At Dobratsch, residents were worried about the effects the Maschinenschnee would have on the cleanliness of their drinking water, which is funnelled through the mountain’s karst limestone system. They decided it wasn’t worth the risk, so closed the ski resort and instead developed a community-focused nature park.
Along with providing affordable year-round outdoor recreation for local people and tourists – accessed by a €5 bus from Villach or by paying a slightly higher fee at one of the parking spots – the nature park designation protects the local flora and fauna. This includes mountain hares, chamois, ptarmigan and black grouse, with schoolchildren regularly taking part in educational classes on the mountain.
Visitors are encouraged to avoid specific “nature zones” and stick to the trails, which are prepared for them daily. There are three winter hiking routes, ranging from 30 minutes to two hours, depending on how hard you want to work; four ski touring routes, ranging from an-hour-and-a-half to three hours; plus a cross-country circuit and a toboggan slope.
We plan to hike a two-hour route to the summit (2,166m) via the Dobratsch Gipfelhaus, though we modify our route slightly when the fog comes in – depriving us of views of nearby Slovenia and Italy – and visit another hut near the summit instead, which used to house the old ski lift. It’s such a beautiful wintry landscape and a treat to be hiking on real snow. There isn’t enough to require snowshoes today – I’m in snowboard boots, though Birgit is fine in walking boots – but the snow still makes that lovely squeaking sound under my feet, making me feel nostalgic for winter holidays past.
Photograph: David Hall/Alamy
The problem with fake snow, aside from its environmental and financial impact (the cost of producing it has forced many ski resorts to push up their prices), is that it’s not very nice to walk on, let alone ski or snowboard on; it’s more like ice and much harder and heavier than natural snow. Before I came to Carinthia, I spent a few days in St Anton in the west of the country, where the whirr of multiple snow cannons puffing out clouds of white mist like dragon’s breath was a constant, even at night.
I had the discombobulating experience of snowboarding down ribbons of white pistes surrounded by muted-green hills, and riding through the mist feels unlike any weather I’ve ever experienced; it’s lighter and less powerful than rain but grittier than real snow. When it lands on your jacket it has none of the intricate beauty of a snowflake and disappears almost instantly.
But it’s easy to see why ski stations are resorting to snow cannons to keep the lights on. St Anton had last seen proper snow in November yet was almost fully open for the New Year holiday crowds, which is no mean feat, and many local businesses will, of course, depend on that tourist spend.
I visit the small mountain village of Mallnitz, about 50 minutes on a scenic train from Villach, for a day’s snowboard touring with Klaus Alber, a mountain guide who also runs the Hotel Alber. The hotel has been in his family for four generations, and Klaus, who greets me in lederhosen despite the temperature hovering at -10C, has noticed the dramatic effects of the changing climate on the valley first-hand.
Pointing to the hotel windows, he tells me the snow used to pile up to halfway most winters, but in recent years it’s barely covered the pavement. “Now we get long periods of cold, dry weather with no snow,” he says. The village’s small ski resort Ankogel, which doesn’t yet have snow cannons, is closed due to a lack of snow.
“Guests come because they want to ski, but we encourage them to be flexible and enjoy the nature as it is. If there’s no snow in December, we can hike to a summit, that’s still a very nice thing to do,” he says, adding that it forces him to be more creative and find new activities for guests, such as snow touring, where you hike up a mountain using adhesive “skins” for grip, then ski or snowboard down.
We set out in the Hohe Tauern national park, amid a wild, high mountain snowscape of extraordinary beauty. Klaus thinks we may find some good conditions for touring, as there was a recent dusting of snow, which has softened the snow that fell earlier in the season, and he’s right.
Climbing across a series of gentle spines, with sweeping views of a dramatic amphitheatre-like range to our left, it’s clear we have this entire glacial valley to ourselves – the polar opposite of factory farm skiing at a purpose-built ski resort. But it’s not just the setting; the true pleasure of the day comes from being in this landscape with wonderful natural snow all around. It looks so much brighter than its human-made equivalent, dazzlingly so under blue skies and sunshine.
After a couple of hours, we reach the Hagener hut at 2,446m, and Klaus points to an area of snow-covered wilderness that was nearly turned into a ski resort in the late 1960s, before the area became a national park – a resort that today would no doubt be debating the choice between snow cannons or closure.
After snacks and hot sweet tea, we begin our descent with no tracks in the snow ahead – Klaus thinks we’re the first people to do the route this winter. The snow will become bare and patchy lower down, but it feels amazing to be making swooping turns in this upper section, where it’s deep enough to spray in arcs across my face, a holy grail in snowboarding, but so rare these days if you only go to the mountains once a year.
It’s an experience you can only have with snow that’s fallen from the sky, and one that could never be approximated by a machine. The tears behind my goggles aren’t just from the cold.
This trip was provided by Visit Villach, National Park Region Hohe Tauern and Austria Tourism. A snowshoe hike at the Dobratsch nature park with a ranger costs €30 including snowshoe and pole rental, naturpark-dobratsch.at. A day’s ski or splitboard touring with Klaus Alber in the Hohe Tauern costs €240 a person (minimum two people, then €60 per extra person), tauernclimb.com
Sam Haddad writes the newsletter Climate & Board Sports