Wagrain-Kleinarl, Austria, March 20, 2018. With the inaugural 2018 CEV Snow Volleyball European Championship in Wagrain-Kleinarl and Flachau just around the corner, a beautiful centre court bearing the name Snow Space Salzburg Arena is starting to take shape in the snowy Austrian Alps. This will be the first time in history a snow volleyball event takes place at a stadium of such a high standard.
A crew of four people from the German company Schneestern is elegantly carving out the venue in the snow. They have been working hard since Friday and are hoping to bring their project to completion on Tuesday and be ready well in time for the start of #EuroSnowVolley next Friday, March 23.
They are using a snow cat, a snow excavator, a snow blower and various other tools to move as many as 1,500 cubic meters of snow with all the precision needed not only to meet the requirements of Austria’s legal framework, but also to aesthetically please the thousands of people (players, officials and spectators alike) expected to attend this historic European Championship.
Schneestern are experts in building sports arenas for skiing and snowboarding events. Most recently, they engineered the Olympic slopestyle course at PyeongChang 2018. Normally, they use metal scaffolding to construct the spectator stands, but this time the stands with a seating capacity for about 600 people are made of snow, giving Snow Space Salzburg Arena a modern, yet fairy-tale look.
“I think it is a good idea,” says Schneestern’s mountain engineer Michael Mueller. “It looks really nice and brings you closer to the mountain lifestyle.”
“It is a hard job, especially when we have to work in this real winter weather we are experiencing these days, but the cold is good for the firmness of the snow we are working with,” Mueller explains. “For us it is great to be part of such a big and important event. We are also getting a good support from the people working here at this winter resort. The main thing is that the players and the visitors have fun this weekend.”
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