Group items tagged

Around mid-June the Pitztal Glacier in Austria goes on summer vacation. That is to say, it begins to melt, racing down Tyrolean mountainsides in frigid streams that eventually lose themselves, like Europeans in August, at a beach somewhere. But if you are the owner of a ski resort on a glacier, four months of melting is a major cause for concern.

They ordered a supply of what are basically huge white blankets and spread them across 15 acres (0.1 square kilometers) of the glacier to keep it cold through the summer. It seems to be working: The melting has slowed. So now ski areas in Germany and Switzerland are also wrapping at least part of their glaciers. The glaciers may not feel better, but the resort owners certainly do.

That is an illusion. Arrayed across the heart of Europe, the Alps have been intensely used for centuries, and even today only 17 percent of their 74,000 square miles (191,660 square kilometers) are protected as parks. Their usable space is so limited that the average Alpine valley is an orgy of multitasking: factories, train tracks, hotels, houses, churches, ski lifts, farms, parking lots, lumberyards, stores, restaurants, and boutiques, all bundled together by swooping concrete parabolas of roads. And while the Alps may look empty on television, nearly 14 million people live there, two-thirds of them in urban areas and some in areas with a greater population density than the Netherlands.