Snow of Tomorrow | The mountains are political - Part I

No-Fall Zone

I’m standing waist-deep in snow, my breath heavy, step by step forcing my way upward through wind-loaded powder. I’ve already dug my third snow profile. My friend Leon is behind me. We take turns breaking trail, because that’s when you warm up again. On both sides of us, steep rock walls rise into the sky, decorated with turquoise ice, glowing like it’s lit from within. It’s a stunning place: wild, rough, cold. The Gamskogel North Couloir is probably one of the most beautiful lines in Styria. Honestly, it’s almost unreal that gems like this even exist over here so far East in the Alps. I’ve always been obsessed with couloirs like this.

Up here I feel strangely alive: small, exposed, deeply connected to nature’s beauty - and challenged by it at the same time. The snow profile shows it again: a weak layer, similar to the ones we found earlier. Not necessarily unstable - but because the couloir is wind-loaded, that weak layer sits at a different depth every time, shifting with the terrain. So… not a clear red flag. But sketchy. We’re close to the top now. We look at each other, unsure. Technically it’s only avalanche danger level 1.

There’s barely any snow in Styria anyway. We spent hours fighting our way bushwrecking through almost-green bushes and forest, until we finally found windloaded snow at the base of the couloir, desperately searching for a handful of turns in winters that are melting away, in a world that keeps heating up. Turning around feels hard. But the risk is too high. The consequences are too big. We ski down, enjoy the turns, and feel at peace with the decision. We survived. We had a beautiful day outside. Isn’t that what counts?

So why do we treat our collective survival so differently? Why don’t we take the safe way out as a society? We have manoeuvred ourselves - as a fossil-fuelled society - into a situation where we’re standing in avalanche danger level 5, in the no-fall zone of a 50-degree slope. The first cracks are shooting through the snow. Sluff is pouring down the walls to our right. Deafening whumpf sounds. Icicles are falling past us on the left. Small slabs are already ripping loose, dragging parts of our group down, and we act as if we don’t see or hear anything. We just keep going.

The emptiness fills with sadness. - Sadness about the lost winter. People say: “Forget it, this year there won’t be any snow anymore.” My mother, who taught me ski touring on our local mountain fifteen years ago, and who always categorically refused to do uphill laps on ski resort slopes - this is not “real” touring - is now climbing thin, artificial white strips of snow through a green landscape.

Next year again, they say. This wasn’t our last winter. Really?

What if it was? What if this was our last winter. What if this sport is only possible from now on if you chase high alpine glaciated tours, scratch around on artificial snow, or drive hundreds of kilometres to the Western Alps - or even Norway. And even there, the ski days are shrinking rapidly. And yes, it kills my motivation too.

When you’re desperately chasing the last snowflakes - please, please, just one more turn - avalanche danger starts to feel like a footnote. It becomes so easy to get blinded by the snow that is melting at terrifying speed.

There is nothing in my life where I feel the climate crisis more directly than in the mountains in winter. It’s impossible to ignore. I love ski touring more than anything. As a kid, I spent almost every afternoon skiing on the Kampenwand, my local mountain, together with friends from school. When I was thirteen, I went on my first real ski tour, up Grossglockner, and that was it. From then on, winter was all I could think about.

Back then, people said that in ten years you wouldn’t be able to ski the Kampenwand anymore. Five years later, it was already true. Today, the Kampenwand is basically snow-free for most of the winter. Yes, we knew this would happen. Of course, we didn’t think it would happen this fast. And still, we’re standing here now, completely stunned. But what does that mean for everything else that is coming? Will we be just as shocked and unprepared when food shortages, water stress, economic collapse, and massive waves of climate displacement hit? And when it happens, how are we going to deal with it?

A Crisis Beyond the Mountains

Because honestly: it is tragic to lose the sport we love, to say goodbye to it against our will, with a heavy heart. But of course that’s also the worry of a privileged, Central European bubble. While I grieve the powder turns and winter adventures the climate crisis is taking from me, millions of people are already fighting for their lives. Hundreds of millions will lose their homes, their farmland, and their livelihoods to rising sea levels. Climate models show that with increasing warming, billions of people will soon be exposed to combinations of heat and humidity that the human body cannot survive outside. Entire Earth systems are approaching tipping points, or have already crossed them, unleashing dynamics we are only beginning to understand.

Greenland’s ice sheet has likely already passed its tipping point. If it melts, it means around seven meters of sea level rise. That in turn affects the Atlantic circulation system. The Gulf Stream could weaken significantly or even collapse, throwing Europe’s climate and weather patterns into chaos. Scientists do not believe human civilisation can simply “adapt” to changes on that scale. And yet the circulation already shows warning signs and could shift within this century, possibly even by mid-century. That means not just millions, but billions of people facing displacement, hunger, thirst, and unimaginable suffering.

It means extreme weather events escalating across the world: droughts and heatwaves, flooding rainfalls, one so-called “once-in-a-century” disaster after another, storms with a force we have never experienced before. This is scientifically known. And still, I keep coming back to the same question: when it becomes undeniable for everyone, how will we respond? But the emptiness in me is not only filled with sadness. It’s also filled with exhaustion.

When Protest Becomes a Crime

Ground down, again and again, in the judicial machine. Again and again, I explain my motivation to a judge. I talk about the urgency of the climate crisis and the necessity to act, about responsibility and about the power of non-violent disruption. And again and again, I am convicted and punished with high fines for interrupting the fossil-fuelled, blindfolded routine of everyday life for just a few minutes, simply to force the climate crisis into the public debate.

Every time I sit in a courtroom, I remember my own screams in pain. And even worse, the screams of my friends. I remember police using painful holds for no reason while dragging people away. Holds that were later declared illegal. They did it anyway. I remember the deafening silence afterwards, alone in a cell. I see friends having their homes raided, being sent to prison, or deported for their activism. At some point, it becomes too much. This breaks people. And it raises a question that should terrify all of us. What does this do to people, to society, and to democracy itself? Do we understand how serious the clampdown on activism really is? Democracies don’t only collapse in dramatic moments. Often, they are dismantled quietly. In silence. And once we realise that our right to protest has been hollowed out by repression, it will be too late.

People still ask where the climate movement has gone, why it seems to have disappeared. Look into the courtrooms. They are filled with climate activists who tried to force a public debate about the urgency of this crisis. In Germany, peaceful protesters have been investigated under laws originally designed to prosecute organised crime -  legislation meant for mafias. In Austria and Canada, activists have faced deportation for participating in nonviolent climate actions.

In the UK, people have been sentenced to years in prison for disruptive but peaceful protest. These are not isolated incidents. The state is increasingly using the law as a weapon. Such measures don’t just punish individuals; they send a signal. They intimidate, they deter, and they suffocate political engagement before it can grow. And in doing so, they normalise practices that edge dangerously close to authoritarianism. That is how democratic space erodes - not all at once, but case by case.

From Refuge to Responsibility

We can already see this logic of repression and criminalisation unfolding in the United States, where armed ICE units are plucking immigrants off the streets, crushing protests, and escalating violence. European right-wing parties are openly taking this as a model, and they are gaining momentum at an alarming pace. This should be more than a wake-up call.

And maybe that’s where the outdoor community comes back into the picture. We have a privilege: this sport and the natural world keep reminding us what matters. They help us recharge. Out there, we get to do something we love, with people we love. That connection to nature, and to our community, is not just an escape. It can be a source of strength.

But that’s also exactly the point where the mountains stop being a private refuge and become something else. A training ground. A mirror. A reminder of risk, consequence, and responsibility. Because if we can turn around in a couloir when the danger is too high, why can’t we do the same as a society?

So what does the skiing community have to do with any of this?

Honestly: pretty much everything.

In the follow-up article, Lena turns to the question of how these reflections developed into personal and political activism.