Kick the Vik – Eco Freeride Tour
When we think about freeriding competitions, the first thing that comes to our mind is helicopters flying everywhere, either to bring the competitors to the top, or to film the whole event, creating a big hazard on the environment.
Kick the Vik Eco Freeride Tour show us that it’s possible to create a group of freeride stops being completely eco-friendly, using man powered tools like a splitboard to access the mountains.
The main idea behind the Eco Freeride Tour was to develop a completely sustainable group of competitions in the Alps region. Markus Boss, organizer of the event, decided that it was possible to create a different kind of freeride competition than what we are used to. Based on a freeride event on 2008 at the Maighels hut, the result was a small tour of different stops but with the same purpose, show that freeriding can be environmental friendly too.
In order to achieve that a few things needed to be considered to reduce the impact as much as possible during the competition days, those things are for example:
- -No use of helicopters for people or equipment, neither for filming the contest and no other motorized transport for people or equipment on the mountain.
- -Recommendation of public transportation for the participants to get to the different venues, and assessing in the organization of carpooling
- -Encourage basic ecology principles to the participants.
- -No avalanche bombing
- -Using solar energy to charge the devices, with rechargeable batteries aswell.
Overall, the idea is to leave the lowest footprint possible while doing the Eco Freeride Tour and also raise awareness and responsability in environmental issues to everyone who attends to any of the venues.
The 2013 edition of the Eco Freeride Tour had three stops: Bergün (SUI), Val Senales (ITA) and Sedrun (SUI), but the idea is to keep growing in order to reach a bigger amount of people and spread the word about environmental awareness in the freeride world.
