Cash-strapped Alpine farmers are raking in a fortune harvesting snow and selling it to desperate ski slopes.
Despite a freezing winter, snowfall levels at lower altitudes are down and Austrian resorts have had to buy in trailerloads of the stuff from higher up the mountains.
Across the country, thousands of tonnes of snow have been dug up from high Alpine ski fields and shipped to keep ski pistes open. In Austria, the biggest "snow harvesters" are the owners of the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrassen AG (GroAG), a 65-kilometre stretch of road 2,500 metres above sea level that is Europe's highest Alpine crossing.
GroAG spokesman Dietmar Schondorfer said, "Even if it doesn't snow, every day we have tonnes of snow dumped on the road by the wind, all we have to do is drive back and forward to scoop it up."
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