Temperatures remain mild in Kitzbühel in October (Credit: JOE KLAMAR / AFP)
Among the autumnal greens and browns of Kitzbühel, one of Austria's most popular ski-towns, runs a bright strip of snow, artificially induced to ensure October skiing. The move has led to concern from environmentalists.
The Alps ski season usually starts from mid-November, peaking after Christmas, but in Kitzbühel a 700-meter-long track has been opened since mid-October.
Using insulating tarpaulin covering snow saved from last season, the Resterkogel slope has been attracting the region's skiing competitors jumping at the chance for early-season practice.
Skiers from across Europe have come to enjoy the slope (Credit: JOE KLAMAR / AFP)
Austria's Green Party hasn't been so enthusiastic, damning the move as "grotesque in the era of climate urgency."
"These are not the temperatures to ski in," Josef Scheinast, a spokesman for the Green Party in Salzburg told AFP.
"It's dramatic in light of the climate debate to continue doing anything using fossil fuels," he said, taking aim at the carbon effects of the construction equipment used to build the slope.
The slope will be used for training by competitors (Credit: JOE KLAMAR / AFP)
As well as insulated tarpaulin, resorts across the Alps use snow cannons, which pressurize water to create artificial snow, to ensure that conditions are adequate for the start of the season.
"We are saving water and energy since it is snow that we do not have to produce," says Josef Burger, head of the ski resort Bergbahn Kitzbühel company.
"I can understand that a white track in the middle of grass is not to everyone's liking but what we do is ecologically and economically relevant," Burger told AFP.
The Green Party of Austria has condemned the move (Credit: JOE KLAMAR / AFP)
The slope will be used as practice for several national teams participating in the upcoming Alpine Ski World Cup.
The Greens, now in governing coalition with Sebastian Kurz's conservatives, could pursue the matter further, although they would be attacking an industry and culture which runs deep in Austrian society and provides nearly 100,000 direct and indirect jobs.
The Austrian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) stated that "all winter tourism should be rethought", and that the country must "reconnect with the origins of winter sports connected to nature, without a bad conscience.”