#rhone-glacier

#rhone-glacier

"It feels like we skipped spring this year and dropped straight into a summer heatwave. What should have been a gradual snowmelt happened suddenly weeks ago. To me, this is another reminder that aging water systems need to be retrofitted for more volatile precipitation patterns."

Les Deux Alpes keeps unfolding lap after lap, zone after zone, until you realize you've spent the entire day chasing terrain that never really ends.

BASIN Glacial Waters to function as both architectural frame and sensory mediator, a space where the physiological effects of thermotherapy meet the raw power of protected wilderness. With an opening last September at Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, this marks the first thermal bathing facility in North America to fully integrate European sweat culture traditions with glacial-fed hydrotherapy at this scale.

Avalanches kill about 100 people in Europe each year, with vast masses of ice, snow and rock regularly crashing down on hikers and skiers who have been caught unawares. The structure of the snow, angle of the slope and variation of the weather can dictate whether a gentle disturbance like a gust of wind or the glide of a snowboard can trigger a deadly shift in the mountain.

'They save up ice like a savings account and then spend it all very quickly like a Black Friday event.'

Standing among the Alps, it's easy to believe that they will last forever. They seem too big to fail, too old to change. This illusion of permanence has long entranced travelers who have visited to experience the intoxicating feeling of being daunted and dwarfed by a landscape's authority. But even mountains move: This past May an avalanche of ice and rock tore through the Lötschental Valley, erasing the village of Blatten in less than a minute.

It was New Year's Eve and the music was still playing when the ceiling of the ground floor of the venue caught fire. People started recording with their cell phones until someone shouted, This place is on fire, we have to get out fast! Then came the screams, different from those of minutes earlier and not captured by the cameras. And chaos.

Images on social media show snowed-in cars, mountains of marshmallow powder, and landscapes buried under deep midwinter snow. In many of these areas, one would need to look back to 1999 to find thicker snow cover in February. In other words, this is an unprecedented post-2000 snow situation in most of France. However in 2018, the historic "Beast from the East" storm cycle delivered extraordinary totals to resorts in the south of France. Still, for much of northern Savoie and Haute-Savoie, February 2026 stands out as one of the most impressive snow periods in nearly three decades.

Sea levels are rising faster than at any point in human history, and for every foot that waters rise, 100 million people lose their homes. At current projections, that means about 300 million people will be forced to move in the decades to come, along with the social and political conflict as people migrate inland. Despite this looming crisis, the world still lacks specific, reliable forecasts

Every winter in the Ladakh region in northwest India, the two roads that connect the small villages in the Zanskar Valley with the rest of the country close, are overwhelmed by snow. But for centuries, locals have had a workaround: a road of ice formed by the frozen Chadar River. A week-long trek in frozen temperatures connects them to the outside world.

Last week alone, parts of western Switzerland were buried under 1 to 1.5 meters (3 to 5 feet) of snow. Another meter fell this week in some regions, pushing fresh storm totals to as much as 2.5 meters (8 feet). The new snow has helped erase what had been a snow-poor winter in the west, with snow depths in some areas now well above seasonal averages.

Snowfall in France this week has been huge, with some resorts seeing more than 2 meters (6.6 feet) in the last five days. A massive winter storm hammered the French Alps from February 10-13, unleashing monster snowfall that has buried resorts and reshaped the mountain landscape just days before Valentine's Day weekend. Across the Northern Alps - including iconic resorts in Haute-Savoie, Savoie, and Isère - weather stations reported extraordinary snow totals.

BackcountryFor most skiers, "all-inclusive" means a lift ticket and a buffet. Forrest Schmidt means something very different: a hot titanium stove in a tipi, filet mignon next to a steaming hot spring, and ancient araucaria trees holding cold smoke over a perfectly set skintrack. Schmidt, a 44-year-old "East Coast kid" from rural New York, runs APEX Andes (Andes Puro Exploraciones) out of Malalcahuello in Chile's Araucanía region. His guide service is small by design with