Swiss snow cannon pioneer Leo Jeker dead at 82

Jeker worked with the Savognin mountain railway company for five decades. Keystone-SDA

The Swiss snow cannon pioneer and former politician Leo Jeker died last Sunday after a long illness at the age of 82.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Decades ago, Jeker became known beyond canton Graubünden in eastern Switzerland as a pioneer of artificial snowmaking on ski slopes, which as a visionary he promoted in the ski resort of Savognin.

“Tracks in the snow are fleeting, but his pioneering work in snowmaking will leave an eternal mark on us,” said the Graubünden Mountain Railways Association in an obituary published in the newspaper Südostschweiz on Thursday.

Jeker first came into contact with the mountain railways in Savognin in 1962 as a commercial apprentice at a law firm in Landquart. Shortly afterwards, he joined the mountain railway company and worked his way up to director and shareholder. He remained loyal to the mountain railways for five decades.

Europe’s largest snowmaking system

The 1978 construction of the largest snowmaking system in Europe at the time was a striking innovation. Environmentalists were up in arms, and Jeker was ridiculed by other Swiss mountain railway bosses. However, the snow cannons aroused interest abroad. They became known as far away as Japan. Today, artificial snowmaking is considered indispensable in ski resorts.

+ Artificial snow can slow but not stop glacier melt, says study

Jeker ensured that Savognin was always ahead of the game, as the first ski resort in Switzerland with automatic ticket control, for example, and as the first cashless resort in the country. His self-made slogan “My destination – Savognin” was emblazoned as a sticker on what felt like every other car in Switzerland in the 1970s.

The snow cannon pioneer, who was also a well-known politician and parliamentarian in Graubünden, later sold his life’s work. New Austrian owners promised to invest more in the mountain railways than they were able to do on their own.

Translated from German with DeepL/gw

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail].