A ski raid around transitions in the Queyras mountains

From January 31 to February 6, 2022, the Alpine Lines association and Labex ITTEM are organizing a ski tour of the Hautes-Alpes. For seven days, participants will explore the Queyras to meet local stakeholders and reflect on the transition of mountain tourism.

The initiative, which combines ski touring, meetings with local players and reflection on the transition, was the brainchild of Yann Borgnet. A doctoral student at Grenoble Alpes University’s Pacte laboratory and a mountain guide, Queyras is one of his research areas. He recently published an article in the Revue de géographie alpine on the creation of an association of accommodation providers that has been promoting touring activities in the massif for fifteen years. The first edition of this ski raid will focus on the role of agriculture in the transition to mountain tourism.

“Agriculture is essential for maintaining the landscape. But to reduce it to this utilitarian purpose would be to impoverish its role of ‘territorialization’. This big word coined by geographers refers to the long, never-ending process of building a territory, defined by the relationships between humans and non-humans. As we travel through the Queyras on this itinerary, the idea is to write a history of the territory, starting with its main economic activities, which allow it to remain inhabited today,” explains Yann Borgnet.

Renewing the dialogue between science, research and society

This ski raid is yet another opportunity for Labex ITTEM to strengthen the interfaces between science and society in mountain areas. ” By combining recreational itinerancy and scientific mediation in the mountains, the aim is to enable everyone to understand and take part in the world around them, based on the sharing and confrontation of knowledge derived from the human and social sciences, as close as possible to the territory and those who bring it to life”, explains Mikaël Chambru, researcher at Gresec and member of Labex ITTEM. He will be present throughout the raid alongside Yann Borgnet. In recent years, Mikaël Chambru has taken part in several research programs in the Queyras, including the Maestro project supported by Labex ITTEM on the challenges of scientific tourism in the mountains.

To find out more about this ski raid, see theinterview with Yann Borgnet in Montagnes magazine.