Sundays on Climate Change

I wanted to spend a Sunday in Sappada to breath fresh air and enjoying the snowy peaks.

Sappada, a town nestled in the Belluno Dolomites, is a beautiful tourist resort, very popular both in summer and winter. In winter, however, the city is transformed into an important ski resort that offers numerous ski slopes with different levels of difficulty, always well covered and maintained.

During the summer you can be inebriated by the many shades of green meadows and woods in contrast with the intense blue of the sky and the dazzling color of the rocky walls. In Sappada, the Dolomites can be experienced intensely in all their many aspects: nature, adventure, sport, relaxation, well-being.

Sappada was in the Veneto region, but they asked to join the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region instead because they considered they would get more attention since in the Veneto Region there is Cortina d’Ampezzo that takes the lion’s share. Cortina is a jet-set location famous since the 70s when pictured in the first Pink Panther movie (The Pink Panther a 1963 American comedy film directed by Blake Edwards at the exclusive ski resort in Cortina d’Ampezzo), and later a Bond movie with Roger Moore.

I think Sappada is as pretty as Cortina. It was many years since I last went to Sappada in winter and I must say that the climate change emergency shocked me. I never-ever saw so little snow in February. I didn’t need gloves in the afternoon, nor the cap/hat. The temperatures were quite pleasant, and the snow melting.

Yes, it is true that the ski slopes were well covered and maintained, but…, it looks a little strange not to see ALL WHITE all around. Plus the devastating effects of the wind of 120 km / h on the trees of the Dolomites last November (2018), were still painfully visible. “Strips of the forest, up to 200 meters wide, completely razed to the ground.” A true disaster as I mentioned at the time in Stradivari Forests are Gone