Mountain Wilderness - Actions

Actions

Some of the actions led by Mountain Wilderness at the international level have been:

• Demonstration at Pointe Helbronner on 16 August 1986, against the Vallee Blanche Aerial Tramway, a gondola lift that crosses the “Vallée Blanche” from Aiguille du Midi to the col du Géant above Courmayeur, desecrating the very heart of the Mont Blanc massif, a wilderness area of foremost symbolic and cultural significance for Europe. During this demonstration, Reinhold Messner climbed atop one of the gondola towers to hang a protest banner.

Although Mountain Wilderness had yet to be formally established as an organization when this took place, it was later perceived as an inaugural event. The daring, spectacular character of this action inspired comparisons to similar actions by Greenpeace, but later demonstrations by Mountain Wilderness have generally been more modest. All have been peaceful and none of them against the law.

• “Free K2” expedition organised in 1990 on K2, the second highest mountain in the word, to remove fixed ropes and discarded gear left behind by all expeditions that had attempted the ascent.
• Campaign to protect Mount Olympus in Greece from a huge development project. A manifesto was issued at the end of 1993 and an international petition was signed by intellectuals and writers from all over the world, among which five Nobel laureates. The project was withdrawn in 1995, after this petition was delivered to the Greek government.
• Oxus, mountains for peace, an expedition organised to climb Mount Noshaq, the highest peak in Afghanistan, in the Wakhan Corridor and the Hindu Kush range, in 2003: this event was intended to promote sustainable outdoor tourism in this country and to serve as a symbol of a possible return to peace and normalcy, after the civil war and the fall of the Taliban regime, during which all manner of tourism had completely disappeared.