The changing landscape of the Isergebirge

Imagine, that in the middle of your exams period, you could just travel 20 minutes to a magical winter wonderland, where you could do any winter sport you can think of. For me it was always going cross-country skiing after I would be at home, studying. The breath of fresh air, the premade ski tracks, tree branches that have fallen under the snow weight, and the spectacular sight of the Isergebirge. As winters are getting warmer, and the snow doesn’t always stay like it used to, this feeling is getting rarer and rarer.

Some pictures from my travels

A lot of people call the folks who are trying to say something about global warming “alarmists”, but I personally think we are “realists”. All we need to do is to compare the pictures from my favorite place called Jizerka from previous years to today.

While the mountains I was born in are no Alpes, the geomorphological conditions create a vibrant environment ripe for tourism. I myself used to work in the tourism industry and we would get tourists from Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Belgium and more! So while it may not be that famous, the winters created a lot of seasonal jobs, that are currently very unstable. I know that from personal experience, as my father co-owns a mountain guesthouse, a ski shop/ski rental, and used to own a kiosk by the ski slope. While it may sound like a lot, in recent years, it is a tough way to make a living and because it is a job in the tourism sector, he has to work on weekends and on some holidays as well. 

He is almost 58 years old and can sometimes have conservative opinions (note that what conservative means differs from country to country), but if there is a topic about which he can be passionate about it is climate change. Ever since the velvet revolution, he would work as a person who builds roofs in the summer and when the snow would fall and he could no longer do construction, he would go into the tourism sector. He says that although some years are colder and some years are warmer, he can sense the trend and is sometimes baffled at politicians and the common populace that are oblivious to these changes. He knows that the changes are slow but he already had to close the kiosk because the dependence on the ever changing weather could bring him into a bad state of mind. It is really difficult watching the weather forecast knowing that in the next five or more days you simply cannot work. That is why I closed it for good. While he had to close the kiosk, he knows that if the trend will continue, the worst is yet to come. He says that while it is impacting him, it is us that he worries about. With retirement in sight (7 years) he thinks he will just manage. What worries him, is that it is entirely possible that the company that he built from the ground up with his best friend will be unsellable, which would mean that his lifelong “project” will not benefit us, his children, after his retirement.

While he is the person closest to me, he is in no way the only one directly impacted by the weather changes. While this is not directly what this reportage is about, the country of Tuvalu has recently decided to become the first digital nation, preserving its land, culture, and politics in the digital world, because it will be the first country to be entirely swallowed by the rising waters. While it is a noble quest to preserve its culture, some may interpret it as a dystopian consequence of climate change. Hopefully, we can slow down, and even revert the consequences of climate change, so I may once again be sure to enjoy the wintertime in my region, and hopefully, other island nations will not have to follow Tuvalu’s example.