Marta's Monterosa Blog

I am passionate about the Alps. They are my heart's home and the place where I would like to spend the last day of my life. I have been a tourist in the village of Champoluc in the Italian Monterosa for all my life and worked as a tourist operator in this area since more than 15 years.

I believe in respect for the special environment of this place that you can find only here. We all gain by enjoying its beauty, while trying to make a minimum impact at the same time. Leave it for our children in the future!

I believe in respect for people who live here with their traditions and culture, language, and work, their genuine products and delicious wines. They open their homes for us, tourists and meet us as their guests, if we are able to open our hearts for them. I have a friend who is a hotel owner and he says that when stressed people from the city come to his place, he tells them to sit down and take a drink before they even begin to worry if they have a room. Perhaps, we can bring a little of their kindness and calmness with us on our way back to the city.

My philosophy is to give back a little of what the mountains and the people from this place have given to me and to my family through my work, to communicate my philosophy and my passion to those who follow me on the blog, and in my trips as a tour operator.

If you would like to visit Champoluc, Gressoney, Alagna or other villages in the Aosta Valley, trek or ski in the Monterosa, discover Sardinia or other places we offer, contact us.

Bonfires across the Alps to acknowledge climate change

Bonfires across the Alps to acknowledge climate change
Posted: Jul 10, 2018
Categories: Zermatt, News
Comments: 0
Author: Linnea
On 11th August 2018 the “Fire across the Alps” will be lighting up peaks mountain villages for the thirtieth time. The idea behind the manifestation is to draw attention to climate change and it’s annually, since 1988, arranged the second weekend of August.

Fires lit on the mountain tops, so called High Fires, are an ancient tradition. In the middle ages the fires served as a communication and warning method in case of forthcoming danger, especially if there were enemies entering the valleys or crossing the mountain passes. This communication system worked as a chain of lights, where the first fire was followed by a nearby second, until the lightening of hundreds of fires.

Today these fires across the Alps is a strong figurative symbol for the preservation of the natural -, historical- and cultural legacy of the Alpine regions, joining the forces of the local people living in and of the mountains, environmental movements and mountain region associations.

The first of these moderns High Fires were lit in Switzerland in 1988.Today there is a chain of light along the entire Alpine arc, from Slovenia, via Vienna, as far as Nice; on far-off mountain tops and close to main cities of the Alps.

The messages from the hundreds of the High Fires of today is to encourage us, inhabitants in and visitors to the Alps, to take the future in our hands and so to engage ourselves in sustainable development.

Climate change is global, but its effects are felt locally. Climate change is affecting the Alps in many ways, from the melting of the permafrost that has hold the rocks together for thousands of years, to the volume and quality of snow. Glaciers are retreating, ice- and snow bridges are disappearing and landslides are dragging away both villages and roads. The Alps represent a highly sensitive ecosystem particularly vulnerable to the global warming. This year's High Fires, are staged by three organisations whose common aim is to protect the Alps, Alpen-Initiative, CIPRA and Mountain Wilderness Schweiz.

Kaspar Schuler, since June 2018 Director of CIPRA International, has been a participant in “Fire across the Alps” from the very beginning. Both in his role as Alpine herdsman, environmental activist and as a visitor at the event. “The fires not only draw attention to issues such as climate change and traffic congestion, they also bring people together and create a moving experience in an almost archaic setting”. 

Read more about and join the event. 

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