Mountain guides in Austria are seeing a growing demand for their services. — Salzburger Bergsportfuhrerverband/dpa
Hiking and mountaineering in the Alps is becoming riskier due to climate change, scientists warn, as the structure of the peaks is altered by changing weather patterns.
“The danger in the mountains is growing, there is no question about that,” said Rolf Sagesser, head of training and safety summer at the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC).
People are keener than ever to embrace the great outdoors since the pandemic, but caution is required. “There’s only one thing that helps: adapting your behaviour. But the mountains offer so much space, you can avoid the danger zones,” says Sagesser, who has been guiding people round the mountains for nearly 40 years.
Given the greater risk, the need for specialist guided tours is also growing, say mountain guides in Austria.
But it can be tricky to find someone in the midst of the current high season, according to Wolfgang Russegger, president of the Salzburg Mountain Guides Association. “Some people want to see a glacier before they vanish altogether,” he says.
But glacier tours in particular are more difficult than ever because of climate change which has led to more crevasses, the very deep cracks in the thick ice, Russegger says.
Plus the danger of thunderstorms and heavy rain have also increased.
And on top of that, some paths are no longer usable. “Many people have neither the knowledge nor the time to prepare thoroughly for longer tours and to recognise the dangers,” says Russegger.
One unforgettable example of these new risks is the landslide on the Tyrolean Fluchthorn in June, when the whole summit collapsed and huge masses of rock – a total of one million cubic metres, equivalent to the load of about 120,000 lorries – came crashing down.
The rock flow is thought to have been caused by the thawing of the permafrost – the ice in the rock. “The ice is the glue of the mountains and this glue is now slowly being lost,” Tyrolean geologist Thomas Figl commented at the time.
The images are striking and shocking to many, prompting a range of people to seek the services of Austria’s 1,400 mountain guides, from families with children to ambitious mountaineers.
Many book tours lasting several days, with the daily rate for a mountain guide in Austria at around €540 (RM2,727). Among the guests are also tourists whose aim is to reach a spot popular on Instagram.
One of the most popular sites people flock to for a photo is the spectacular sky ladder on the Donnerkogel.
“Some are surprised that they have to climb a via ferrata for several hours to get there,” says Russegger. A via ferrata is a protected climbing route in the mountains that employs steel cables, rungs or ladders, fixed to the rock to which the climbers affix a harness.
Demand for mountain guides could soar in the coming years while supply is shrinking as many experienced guides are reaching retirement age. Finding newcomers is not easy, says Russegger.
“What is needed is the alpine all-rounder who can already climb and ski very well before going into the three-year training.” But many young athletes can only do one or the other.
Very few women apply for the job, but lowering the hurdles is not an option as clients need to rely on the fact that their mountain guide is highly trained.
The Swiss Mountain Guides Association (SBV) sees further changes in this area of business. “There are not really more people using mountain guides, but the requests are more varied,” said SBV managing director Pierre Mathey.
Fewer people are booking mountain guides for ascents of 3,000m or 4,000m peaks, but more want guides for the most famous peaks that are higher than 4,000m.
Overall, there are fewer mountaineers and more hikers. Meanwhile there are 1,550 mountain guides working in Switzerland, 43 of them women, Mathey says.
“There are tours that we used to do without any problems, but there are now scree slopes with boulders as big as houses,” says Sagesser, of the work of the mountaineers.
“They used to be covered with snow or glacier ice. And there are tours that practically won’t work at all anymore. Those would be death traps in high summer.”
Some alpine tours in the higher peaks can no longer be carried out in July or August, but can only go ahead in May or June, when it is colder. One is the Eiger North Face, which he climbed in 1986. “It was a fraction as dangerous then as it is now.”
Ice fields that existed in the past have almost disappeared today, Sagesser says. “Today you can practically only do the tour in the winter to spring months.”
Hikers are less exposed to the danger of rockfalls. But if a hike leads through rocky steep terrain and the temperatures are high, it may be safer to start the tour early in the day to reduce the risk of rockfalls, says Sagesser. – dpa
