With the winter ski season getting shorter each year because of climate change, the tiny Alpine village of Sankt Corona am Wechsel in Austria saw the number of visitors coming to hit their slopes dwindle.
Between 1994 – 2014 Sankt Corona’s annual visitor numbers dropped from 70,000 to 25,000.
“The area was 100 per cent winter oriented and then we realised that due to climate change, […] summer was becoming more and more important. And so in 2015 we started to focus on developing the summer season and this is the result,” explains former snowboard instructor, Karl Morgenbesser.
A rollercoaster-like summer toboggan run and climbing space soon opened after the decision to diversify. But the 400-resident village’s fortunes truly turned when it devised a network of mountain biking trails.
The resort, which is about an hour’s drive from Vienna, now offers miles of landscaped jumps and curved forest trails and areas suitable for bikers as young as three. While most mountain biking destinations boast steep slopes, Sankt Corona’s undulating trails suit professionals as well as children relying on training wheels, and now draw about 130,000 visitors per season.
Perhaps the most innovative part of the new adventure park is the bike lift. In 2020, a new T-bar lift – which pulls bikers up the slope – replaced a shuttle bus service taking riders to the top which could no longer keep up with demand.
“I think we were the first in the world to build a T-bar for the summer. […] We had to develop it ourselves as there was no other system like it already available,” says Morgenbesser, who now runs the park.
Hannah Brown www.euronews.com
