The PocketRocket Deluxe was one of our favorite camp stoves of 2019. “This update to one of MSR’s best backpacking stoves is still plenty light at 2.9 ounces, but it’s easier to use than its predecessor,” our Gear Guy wrote. We especially liked the push-start igniter which made for fast and easy cooking.
More than 75 years ago, ancient remains of hundreds of people were found in a Himalayan lake. Scientists recently revealed more clues about where the people came from and how they could have died.
Two years ago, a massive river of mud and granite swept over thousands of feet of alpine terrain, killing eight hikers before swamping the alpine village of Bondo, Switzerland. This type of disaster is often fueled by climate change, and it will happen again.
It was an idyllic late-summer morning in the Alps—August 23, 2017, a Wednesday—and Anna Giacometti, mayor of the Swiss village of Bondo, had just opened her office windows so she could enjoy the mountain air. She was sitting at her desk, chatting with a constituent, when suddenly, a noise—deep, loud, and rumbling—made her turn in her chair.
Giacometti walked a few steps to her window and looked toward the sound. It seemed to echo down the dark, narrow Bondasca Valley, which opens onto the small plain where Bondo sits. She knew that at the top of this valley, just a few miles away, the summit of Piz Cengalo loomed 8,000 feet above her village. She also knew, because geologists had warned her, that an entire flank of that craggy, steep-sided mountain was on the brink of collapse.
On a geologic timescale, mountains are always moving. The rolling Appalachians used to stand as high and jagged as the Andes, while the Himalayas continue to grow by about half an inch every year. But dramatic shifts in the earth’s climate are forcing very rapid and intense changes in today’s mountain landscapes, environments that are keenly sensitive to any fluctuation in heat or rainfall. Since the start of the 20th century, the average temperature in the Alps has risen by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit—more than twice the global rate. Exposed to such heat, prehistoric ice is melting and ancient glaciers are pulling away from the steep mountain flanks they’ve buttressed for millennia. The earthly chaos that results from these changes represents a genuine threat to anyone who spends time in alpine regions. And the risks, scientists say, are growing.
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