Finals are just 2 weeks away and Valais’s finest Alpine cows show their stuff in Mollens arena
Tete-a-tete, Swiss fighting cows
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – You know spring is here when Swiss cows begin to fight (tourism office schedule) and the crowds stream in from all corners of the country to watch them.
Cool weather at 900 metres in Mollens, canton Valais and 30 titles to be won Sunday 22 April brought out 4,000 spectators for a tradition that is as popular as it is unusual in the animal world.
Spring comes slowly to the alps, the splendid pastures high above the Rhone River where lucky Swiss cows get to spend their summers, but the girls don’t take the wait lying down.
This is the season when many of the cows get pregnant, and as hormones kick in, snow melts and the air starts to smell of fresh grass, the herds look for their leaders.
These are the cows that are smarter, tougher and like a good challenge. The short legs on the Val d’Herens breed of small (relatively) black cows are particularly good for maneuvering steep Alpine slopes.
The cows don’t need encouragement from humans: left alone, they fight in the fields to determine the hierarchy of the troop.
Wander through canton Valais during the next six weeks and you’re likely to see a black cow start pawing the dirt and eying her buddies to see which one is up for a good tussle, then the cowbells suddenly clang like mad while they leap into action.
Yes, these are cows. No, they are not bulls!
700+ kilo of pure cow pushing, head to head, Swiss fighting cows
The crowds love it. A cow that walks away from a fight is promptly eliminated. It might happen in a first round, when her mettle isn’t up, or after three rounds, when she’s had enough and wants to go back and graze peacefully.
These are not mean or vicious cows and they tend to have particularly warm ties to people, so they get a loving nose rub at the end of the match and the crowd cheers its appreciation.
The cows all have names. The dirt is raised as they leap and push, but you’ll hear someone cheering on a young cow called Gazelle.
By mid-June she’ll be heading up from her winter home on the plains to pastures at anywhere from 1,200 to 2,200 metres, sometimes higher.
She will eat fresh grass and flowers and provide the milk that makes Switzerland’s famous Raclette cheeses. These vary in taste depending on the pasture, much as wines vary depending on their terroir.
The cows fight in different weight categories and, as in sports, they are led off for drug control tests the day of the fights.
Down to the finish!
The big winner in every sense in Mollens Sunday is one of the canton’s heavyweights, Furibonde from Nax, age 8, who weighed in at 769kg. The finalists: Chips, Manila, Darwin, Rite and Calin.
The finals are 5-6 May in Aproz, when the Queen of the Cows is crowned, a title worth a few thousand francs to her owner.
Short video of a quick win
And here is a view of what it’s like when they let a group into the arena, as the eliminations get started
Artist's rendering, Aminona luxury resort, now on hold
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The CHF500 million Aminona Luxury Resort project has been put on ice for now by the Swiss Federal Tribunal after a last-minute appeal from environmental groups was accepted. The canton Valais high court in August refused to accept the groups’ objections to the project.
The high court also ruled Monday against the company behind the project, which was asking for a CHF5 million deposit from the environmental groups to offset costs linked to the delay.
The project would create a large resort in Aminona, next to Crans-Montana, with a five-star hotel, 32 chalets, five towers and luxury services. The complete project would have 2,500 beds.
The tribunal accepted the arguments by three groups, WWF, Patrimoine Suisse and the Fondation suisse pour la protection et l’aménagement du paysage (Swiss Foundation for Landscape Conservation). The court notes in its decision that the site of the new resort is in a stretch of dry prairie which is provisionally on the federal list of dry prairies and pastures of national importance.
The court ruled that starting construction could cause “irreparable damage” to the dry prairies, and they must benefit from “provisional preventive protection”.
ATS (TSR, Fre) reports that the court is unlikely to rule before January on the basic right of the project to go ahead.
The project has faced hurdles from the start. It calls for three construction phases, and one of the arguments of the environmental groups is that this division of the project into smaller parts has allowed the backers to avoid presenting a coherent overall plan to competent authorities.
The first phase, to build 10 towers on the eastern side of the project, prompted a temporary ban on construction to allow time to review the impact of such dense construction. The ban was lifted by the cantonal council in the summer of 2010, then confirmed by the cantonal court in August 2011. Phases 2 and 3, to build 45 chalets and a number of towers, lag behind in the approval process.
The environmental groups also argue that the scale of the project is out of tune with the times and that with 70,000 “cold beds” or unused hotel, apartments and chalets, it makes little sense to build such a large number of new places.
History of the Village Royal Aminona Luxury Resort project, GenevaLunch:
Aminona resort takes on green tint, September 2010
Aminona Russian Alpine resort faces WWF opposition, December 2009
Snow conditions, Spring skiing deals, this season’s improvements, Aminona resort, upcoming events
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Winter is officially behind us, clocks spring forward this weekend, and the snow is gone from the lower slopes, so this will be GenevaLunch’s final weekend snow and winter sports report for 2010-2011 season.
There is still time to ski and even sled, so snow fans have little to worry about, but you’ll need to check first to see where the snow is. Be sure to take along the sun cream!
Weather forecast
Snowpark at Corvatsch, St Moritz, 25 February 2011
Highs on the plain and at low altitudes, including Geneva, of 18-20C Saturday, with sunshine, but clouds building in the afternoon. Expect mountain highs of 16C Sunday and snow Sunday afternoon down to 1,700-1,900 metres.
Resorts closing, but special offers in some that stay open
This is the final weekend of skiing for most resorts at lower altitudes. This includes the Jura, where there is still, happily, enough snow for a few final downhill runs. Shirley Curran reports:
“Our Jura ski season closes Sunday, 27 March, but it is still possible to ski at Crozet and Lelex. Indeed, in the middle of the week, the run right down to Lelex was still in operation, though the cover down there is thin. Eight lifts will be running on Saturday and Sunday but it is a good idea to get up there early as the snow becomes very soft in the afternoon. You will need suncream too. The season is already over at the Col de la Faucille.”
MySwitzerland, the national tourism office, has a list of resorts that remain open in April, with special spring skiing deals as well as a list of the glacier resorts, some of which offer summer skiing later on.
GenevaLunch’s series, Swiss dream ski week, will be completed Sunday 27 March with the final article, on Zermatt, the slopes and the town. The report on Davos published 25 March points out that great skiing and snowboarding is available there until the end of April.
Avalanche alerts, for those going off-piste or doing back country skiing: moderate / level 2 on the northern flank of the Alps, but high / level 3 on the southern side, from lower Valais to the Goms. Details in the national daily avalanche bulletin, in English.
Looking back, changes during the 2010-2011 ski season
Snow machines are everywhere
New guidelines work with existing laws such as Lex Koller rules limiting foreign ownership
Aminona's existing towers likely to see 15 more as part of new luxury resort project
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Tighter control over second homes in resorts must be part of sustainable development for tourist areas in order to retain their attractiveness, the federal government said Tuesday 6 July.
Bern has issued new guidelines for cantons, suggesting that these should serve as the basis for cantons’ own, revised guidelines.
The guidelines call for:
- limiting the number of second homes
- encouraging the hotel industry
- ensuring that first homes are available at reasonable prices
- improve the rate of occupation for “cold bed” homes, which outnumber regularly occupied ones for second homes.
The guidelines work alongside existing laws, but Parliament is considering a tougher law, to counteract a citizens’ initiative that calls for a vote on banning new second homes. Projects that are already underway, such as the new Aminona luxury complex to be built by Russian developer Mirax, will be not affected by the new guidelines, Martin Vinzens of the Swiss Office for Territorial Development told GenevaLunch.
The CHF500 million Aminona project in the commune of Mollens, canton Valais, of which CHF25m has been invested by the company to date, calls for three phases. The first, to build 10 towers, was opposed by four environmental groups, WWF, d’Helvetia Nostra (Franz Weber), Patrimoine Suisse and the Fondation suisse pour la protection du paysage. The ban prompted by their opposition has been lifted by the cantonal council. Phases 2 and 3, to build 45 chalets and then another 5 towers, lag behind in the approval process.
Links to other sites (Fre): Le Nouvelliste, Mollens commune, Sixieme Dimension, Swiss Federal Justice Office regulations on Swiss property purchase by foreigners
The new Aminona resort would be built next to the three existing white towers
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The WWF Switzerland and the Swiss Fund for the Protection of Nature (FP) said Tuesday 8 December they have filed an appeal against the Aminona resort project near Crans-Montana in canton Valais, saying they “fear a fiasco for nature and the surrounding countryside, as well as for the region itself.”
The CHF350 million-plus plan, proposed by Aminona Luxury Resort and Village (ALRV)/Mirax, with support from the commune of Mollens, calls for 15 buildings to be constructed. Mollens has given a green light to the first phase of the project moving ahead, but environmental groups say neither the Russian developer Mirax nor the commune have given adequate assurances to a series of questions raised: the additional pressure on surrounding undeveloped areas, transport management, water supplies in this dryest part of Switzerland, energy management. For transport, WWF and the FP say the commune has provided only contradictory information, saying on the one hand public transport will be provided, and on the other, that the plans call for more than 500 parking spaces with no coordinated public transport.
Three towers now but new Aminona resort would build more
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Russian company scheduled to build a large luxury resort in Aminona, near Crans-Montana in Valais, has assured the local Swiss mayor the project will go ahead as planned, Swiss radio RSR reports. Stéphane Pont, the town manager of Mollens, Valais, the administrative commune in which Aminona is located, has reportedly received a letter from the CEO of Mirax giving assurances that it has the financial means to develop the area, following a rescheduling of its debt with a Russian bank.
Pont wrote to Mirax CEO Sergey Polonski earlier in September asking for clarification of the situation, following reports in the Russian media that Mirax was in financial trouble and that it had not obtained credits for its projects for several months. Mirax announced 21 September that “Alfa Bank bought the rights to Mirax Group loans from Credit Suisse in July 2009 and became the company’s largest creditor.”
