Mittersill (Austria) (AFP)

A ribbon of white snow in a green and brown autumn landscape: the early launch of the ski season on a track in Kitzbühel this weekend has sparked a heated debate between climate activists and leaders of the famous Austrian station.

For ski enthusiasts, especially young competitors in the region, skiing in October is "a chance not to be missed". For conservationists, it's "just grotesque in the era of climate urgency".

The controversy swelled until the opening: while mountain temperatures flirted with 15 degrees in bright sunshine, efforts on the slopes of the Resterkogel were well underway to prepare the 700-meter-long, 60-foot track. meters wide composed of recycled snow and deposited on the grass, at 1,800 meters altitude.

There is no question of using the snow cannons, the weather is not cold enough: the resort uses the technique of "snowfarming" which consists of storing white gold from one season to another.

The snow is collected during the winter near the tracks then protected by an insulating tarpaulin until the following year where it can be reused. Many resorts in the Austrian, Swiss and French Alps are using this alternative to ensure an increasingly uncertain start to the season.

- Station worship -

"We are saving water and energy since it is snow that we do not have to produce." On 38,500 m3 stored last winter, we limited the cast iron to 13% during the summer " says Josef Burger, head of Bergbahn Kitzbühel, the station's manager.

For the fifth consecutive year, the Resterkogel track is the first in Kitzbühel to open in October. Outside the Austrian glaciers, where the season has already begun, it is also the first in the country. The demand of the skiers is strong, ensures the station, annual theater of the most mythical descent of the Alpine Skiing World Cup.

The hundred or so other descents and connections of the vast domain, straddling the regions of Tyrol and Salzburg, will open gradually until December.

Sunday, under a veil of clouds and a temperature of 12 ° C, Ina Postma, a Dutch tourist took advantage of this early launch with his son "a very good skier who wanted to be there from the first day". The latter, questioned by AFP, recognizes that the snow is "difficult because it's hot".

"This forceps ski tourism is not the one that the Tyrol needs", were irritated on the eve of the opening of the local representatives of the Green Party.

- Ecology and economy -

"These are not temperatures to ski, it is dramatic in the light of the climate debates to continue to do anything with fossil energy," AFP spokesman Josef Scheinast told AFP. Greens from the Salzburg region. In particular, it puts into question the carbon footprint of construction equipment used to prepare the runway.

Josef Burger, the head of the station, rejects a criticism "which lacks objectivity": "I can hear that a white track in the middle of the grass does not like but what we do is ecologically and economically relevant". The Snow Resterkogel has received approval from conservation authorities, he defends.

On Saturday, some 800 visitors used the ski lift. In the coming weeks, several national teams participating in the Alpine Ski World Cup will be training on the Resterkogel.

The first event of the world circuit will take place on the Sölden Glacier in Tyrol on the weekend of October 26th.

For the Austrian branch of the organization WWF, it is "all the winter tourism that is to rethink" in the country.

We must "reconnect with the origins of winter sports connected to nature and without a bad conscience," says the WWF in a statement.

The controversy could increase as the Greens of Austria recorded a surge in the legislative elections on September 29 and discussed with the conservatives of Sebastian Kurz, winner of the vote, a possible entry into the government. Deep in Austrian culture, skiing also provides 99,000 direct or indirect jobs in the alpine country, the number one destination for winter sports in Europe in terms of the number of ski passes sold.

© 2019 AFP