Snow of tomorrow | Does Bavaria need Hubsi's snow cannons?

There's a photo of me standing on the Rettenbachferner in Ötztal in shorts, laughing. It must have been sometime in the early 2000s. We were skiing on the glacier in summer. The dialectic of the moment was the attraction for me. From ski pants to shorts, then off to the lake after skiing. Today I would dismiss this as the hedonism of the early 2000s. Today, it would probably no longer be possible to strap on skis in summer. After all, we had a hard enough time finding enough snow for a few turns at Christmas this winter!

On January 2, the thermometer on Hohenpeißenberg in Bavaria showed 18 degrees. A few weeks earlier, the Bavarian radio program "Jetzt red i" (Now I'm talking) sparked a debate about whether it still makes sense to use state subsidies to make snow in low-lying ski resorts, such as most of those in Bavaria, in light of the climate and energy crisis. Hubert Aiwanger, Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs for the Free Voters, spoke out clearly in favor of subsidies on the show. His argument: "We can't tell people: 'Stay at home with your children. Turn your skis into firewood and go into the cellar to cry." He probably means: "People want to ski anyway and if it is not possible in Bavaria, then those who want to ski will go to the (snow-covered) areas in Austria or Switzerland. As a representative of the state, he does not want to prevent them from having fun. Aiwanger is therefore afraid that the skiers' money will be spent elsewhere and Bavarian tourism will not benefit. You can see it that way from the economics minister's point of view.

The crises are now reaching out to each other and two of them, which primarily affect ski tourism, are making common cause this winter: the climate and energy crises. Energy is more expensive than ever and temperatures around Christmas seem to be higher than ever before. The result is switched-off seat heaters in the chairlifts and white but narrower ribbons of slopes across green meadows. Can or should the current situation be viewed as one-dimensionally as Hubert Aiwanger does?

Perhaps now is even more the time to go back to the origins of skiing and remind ourselves why we do it all. Because it's simply fun to glide down the slopes! Preferably on natural snow! After all, nothing is more magical than when the snow covers the landscape in a thick blanket of white. Isn't skiing the most fun when the air smells of winter? Perhaps snow crystals glistening on your pants? You can carelessly step off the groomed slope without fear of skiing straight onto grass?

What if we don't get to experience this so often in the future? Then that's a great pity. But not accepting it won't help either. We can do our best to ensure that the days when winter no longer feels like winter don't become too many. By campaigning for climate protection and trying to live more sustainably. And we can set an example for others and only go skiing when the weather permits. Ski season is when there is snow.

No one is forbidding us from enjoying the mountains anyway. Perhaps by bike or in hiking boots. Let's turn a skiing vacation into a winter vacation and, depending on the weather, get out the sports equipment that makes the most objective sense. As a skier, this makes me melancholy and makes me nostalgically rummage through my ski photo box. But this nostalgia must not turn into a flight from the present. Because now is now. And in the present and especially in the future, there are still great opportunities to explore our mountains. With or without skis.