Panorama

Every year 120 million tourists travel to the Alps to get into one of the many types of mountain sports, to kick back and relax and to discover a unique expanse of unspoilt nature with its huge biological diversity. According to the WWF-Germany this makes the Alps "the most popular mountains in the world" – this means that the Deutscher Alpenverein/DAV (German Alpine Club) really has its work cut out.

Back in 1729 Albrecht von Heller used 409 alexandrines of verse in his poem "Die Alpen" (The Alps) to describe his impressions of his "great Alpine journey", but he is quoted as saying, "This is the most difficult poem I have ever written." A century and a half later in May 1869 the Deutscher Alpenverein/DAV (German Alpine Club) was founded as a kind of "mountaineering club for the educated classes." Although the club cannot help anybody to put the fascination emanating from the Alps into words, it really has been able to open up the scenic beauty of the mountains to both families with children and not just to those brave souls who want to push themselves to the giddy limit up there amongst the clouds.

Safe trails leading to cosy huts and lodges

This mountain sports club, now the largest of its kind in the world, takes care of the infrastructure necessary, if people are to explore the mountains safely and without doing any damage to the environment. Along with its Austrian counterpart, the OeAV (Austrian Alpine Club), the DAV has set up a network of trails in the eastern Alps with a total length of 40,000 km. – trails through Alpine pastures, access paths to summits and huts or lodges, fixed-rope routes, high-alpine pass trails. " Mountain trails have to be constantly maintained, because at some point they start to crumble or because ropes and other climbing aids were swept away by avalanches", reports Thomas Urban, the general manager at DAV. The care and repair of the trails which is mostly done by volunteers is often costly and time-consuming – particularly as construction materials often have to be flown to the top of the mountain by helicopter.

The sign-posted trails help mountaineering enthusiasts to find their way to the cross on the lofty summit safely or to the nearest hut or lodge for a break. Throughout the Alps, from Rätikon to the Niedere Tauern range and from the Bavarian Alps to the Dolomites, the DAV runs 332 huts and lodges with 20,000 beds. Last year about 800,000 guests stayed overnight in them and about three million stopped at one for a break and have some of that wholesome mountain food. The huts and lodges, in which the DAV invests over ten million euros a year, are open to all alpine enthusiasts; club members however are entitled to a preferential price.

Membership is on the up and up due to the new in-sport – climbing

It might surprise you to find out that the over 700,000 members of the club are not necessarily to be found in the vicinity of the Alps. Although the largest regional branch of the DAV is in southern Bavaria, there are 355 other branches located all over Germany. The people of Dresden and Frankfurt feel equally as drawn to the Alps as the people of Flensburg and the Hanseatic cities in the far north. The sport of mountaineering has not been this trendy since the 1980’s– in the northern regions of Germany as well.

"More and more young people seem to be joining the club", says Helmuth Rüpke, Chairman of the Hamburg branch. This can most probably be put down to the boom in climbing. In the meantime the DAV operates 190 indoor rock-climbing centres and has thus been able to tackle the huge demand for steep rock faces. In Germany there are now about 200,000 active climbers using these artificial rock faces regularly to train their stamina, muscular strength and their sense of balance.

The club is not just active in the field of popular alpine sports, but also in the field of professional sports. In its official capacity as the Fachverband für Alpinistik (Association for Alpinism) within the DSB (German Sports Federation) it sees to the needs of such disciplines as expedition climbing, ski touring and climbing. By the way the international climbing elite will be meeting twice in Germany in the summer of 2005: first at the World Climbing Championships in Munich (1^st – 5^th July) and then at the World Games in the Ruhr region (23^rd – 24^th July).

Sustained action for the future of the Alps

"Zukunft schützen" (protect the future) – this is the slogan in German on the green Edelweiss logo of the DAV. The DAV is one of Germany’s largest nature conservation societies and lobbies for the preservation of the natural and cultural beauty of the Alps. In its policy statement (1994) the club pledged itself to the principle of sustainability. It quite emphatically desists from opening up and developing any new huts, lodges, trails and climbing routes. All those people who are critical of Alpine tourism however think it is high time this happened for they suspect the DAV in its role as tour operator of having paved the way for mass tourism.

A European hiking route for more interaction

The Alps lie at the heart of Europe, linking France, Italy, Monaco, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. Now there is a hiking trail network linking these countries - the Via Alpina. This is a European hiking route project that has also been backed by the DAV. There are more than 50,000 km of hiking route with a total of 338 trails that lead to sites of significant natural and cultural value – the aim is to promote the interaction of people and cultures.

In the meantime the DAV has also become a kind of meeting place for all kinds of fans of the Alps – and it is only very few of these who fit in with the stereotyped cliché of the mountain hiker in his knickerbockers and red-and-white check shirt . If the mountain-bikers and climbers were to try to describe what fascinates them most about the mountains, they would probably have to use as many words as Albrecht von Haller – or maybe they would be content with this little poem by Robert Gernhardt ("Vergebliches Vorhaben" – futile intentions):

"Das alles schrieb' ich gerne hin,
Doch muß ich's leider lassen.
In Worten gäb' das keinen Sinn;
Wie sagt man doch im Engadin
S'ischt vérbal nicht zu fassen."

("I’d like to have it got down in writing,
But I’m afraid I’ll have to leave it.
In words it wouldn’t mean a thing;
What is it they say in Engadin -
In words you’d never believe it.")