At the top of Piz Nair, more than 3,000 m above sea level, the station of St. Moritz (Switzerland) is experimenting a first in Europe: the installation of seventeen thermosiphons to artificially cool the permafrost and stabilize the mountain. An innovation inspired by the Arctic region, which questions our ways of “saving time” in the face of global warming and the sustainability of alpine infrastructure.
“We know that the permafrost is melting and the rock is fracturing, so we are going to make the permafrost cooler than it naturally is,” says Lukas Arenson, geotechnical and permafrost engineer for BGC Engineering. At an altitude of 3,056 metres, in the Swiss Alps, sits the Piz Nair. And in this mountain panorama of the oldest ski resort (St-Moritz), the rock destabilizes with the permafrost (this “glue” ensuring the stability of the mountains) that melts. The risk? That in the long term,