No New Crosses on Alpine Summits

David Crossland for the Sunday Times:

The Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner has joined criticism of the plethora of Christian crosses on European summits, fuelling a cultural war with conservative politicians who claim the symbol is part of the Alpine heritage.

I always loved the crosses on summits as a marker that ‘you’ve made it to the top’. Reaching peaks here in the PNW often feels a bit of a letdown, with most of them offering no visible queue that you’ve reached the summit. There’s sort of a shared connection missing. But I do understand that the cross is a religious symbol and thus is loaded and needs to be reconsidered.