Mountain cable car a threat to Canary Islands volcano

Press, 21 June 1985, Page 25

Mountain cable car a threat to Canary Islands volcano

NZPA-Reuter Teide, Tenerife When Canary Islanders began whisking tourists to the top of Spain’s highest mountain, they thought they had devised a brilliant money-spinner. They built a cable car to offer visitors an unparalleled armchair view of the Canary Islands from the top of the snow-capped peak that rises a dizzying 3718 metres above the Atlantic. Some 14 years later, conservationists argue that the scheme has turned into a disaster They say the 280,000 visitors carried aloft each year on the cable car are ruining the volcanic mountain. The visitors, many gasping for breath, scramble up the steep slopes of the coneshaped summit and walk about freely inside the crater, inflicting constant damage on the soft and fragile rock. They even carry away huge chunks of the mountain. The director of the Teide National Park, which surrounds the mountain, says the planners made a big mistake. “The cable car was thought of as a way of attracting tourists to the island. It is only now with hindsight that we realise it

was a wrong decision. In the long run, it will have to be closed,” Jose Miguel Gonzalez told Reuters. The cable car soars from its base at 2356 metres to a platform at 3555 metres where passengers get off 163 metres short of the summit. From there, roughly half the visitors puff and groan their way to the top. Before the route was opened in 1971, the summit of Teide was accessible only by a hard climb on foot from a mountain road some 1000 metres below. Agustin Gonzalez, warden of the Altavista refuge halfway up the conventional route, said only the adventurous and purists bothered to climb Teide today. "Since the cable car was installed, the number of people passing through here has fallen to a trickle,” he said. Most climbers who make their own way to the top, use the refuge to stay overnight but the climb from the base at Montana Blanca can be accomplished comfortably in one day. Toward the summit the steep path winds its way through a chaos of boulders and lava — reminders of past eruptions on the volcano, winch has been dor-

mant for several centuries. Hot steam seeps from the crater mouth giving off a pungent stench of sulphur. In winter the mountain is coated in snow. The climbing route eventually merges at the foot of the cone summit with the paths taken by the tourists who have been carried up on the cable car. The tourists, clinging to rocks and sometimes completely exhausted because of the high altitude, make a strange contrast to the hardened climbers. The sudden change in altitude can take its toll on those ill-prepared. Several tourists have died from cardiac arrest and many suffer from momentary sickness. Notices at the base of the cable car warn visitors of the dangers. Another notice forbids visitors from removing stones but officials said it was virtually impossible to enforce the rule. Gonzalez said plans were

being drawn up to control visitors more strictly. He said the crater would be closed off and visitors would no longer be able to wander round the top without a guide. , Conservationists are clamoring to have the entire cable car dismantled. Sol Tejada of the Canary Islands’ Tourist Authority acknowledged that more control was needed but said closing the privately run cable car would seriously damage tourism on the island. “It would mean a huge loss of tourism,” she said. In spite of its evident attractions, the cable car has in fact never made much money for its owners. Only in recent years has it turned a modest profit from its customers, who pay SUS2,2B ($5.13) to take the eight-minute ride to the top. The idea of building the car dates back to 1929, but construction began only in 1965.

“At the time it seemed like a patriotic act, something that would bring a great boom to the islands,” Gonzalez said. Conservationists say its pylons have irreparably scarred the mountain. Known to generations of mariners as a landmark on routes to Africa and later to the Americas, Teide’s snowcapped summit towers above the clouds that often cling over Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands. The Canaries lie close to Africa’s Atlantic coast 1150 km south of the Spanish mainland. The usually clear skies at the summit provide a perfect working site for astronomers who have used Teide as an observation base since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Teide is considerably taller than the highest peak on mainland Spain, the 3482 m Mulhacen in the Sierra Nevada range near Granada.