Friday, 23 October 2026
International edition · English
Editorial desk
Collective byline of the Altavia news desk. We select and explain mountain, nature and environment news from around the world using primary sources: scientific bodies, official services and peer-reviewed publications. Every story links to its sources and is updated when the data changes.
14 articles
That pleasant smell of the first drops after dry days has had a scientific name since 1964. Behind it are plant oils, soil bacteria and a surprisingly sensitive human nose.
A snowflake is made of ice, and ice is transparent. So why is snow white and glaciers blue? The answer lies in how light bounces and is absorbed.
Mountains seem eternal, but they move. India keeps pushing against Asia and the Himalaya gains a few millimetres every year, while ice, water and earthquakes shape it in the opposite direction.
A journey on foot following a wolf, the life of a black bear, Alaska offline and the most spectacular bivouac huts in the Alps. Banff's book competition, one of the most prestigious in mountain literature, has its category winners.
Measurement campaigns by the Swiss glacier monitoring network document the biggest losses since records began. We explain what the numbers mean and why they matter beyond Switzerland.
In May 2025 a huge flow of ice, rock and mud almost completely destroyed the village of Blatten, in the Lötschental. A preventive evacuation avoided a far greater tragedy. We look at what happened and why it is a warning for the whole of the Alps.
The permit for the south side rose from 11,000 to 15,000 dollars, climbers must carry down their own waste and experience requirements are being discussed. We review the measures trying to bring order to the world's most famous mountain.
After eight centuries of calm, the Reykjanes peninsula has been erupting since 2021 and, above all, since December 2023 near Grindavík. We explain the phenomenon and how to travel safely.
Europe has lowered the wolf's level of protection after years of debate between farmers and conservationists. Does that mean it can be hunted? What happens in Spain? The answers, without slogans.
The Sierra Nevada de Mérida once had at least six glaciers. By 2024 the last one —Humboldt— had shrunk into a small ice field. Venezuela thus became the first country in modern times to lose all its glaciers.
When a border follows the watershed across a glacier, melting can move it. That is what has happened around the Matterhorn, where Switzerland and Italy have had to adjust their shared boundary.
Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, but if you measure from the centre of the Earth, an Ecuadorian volcano wins. The reason: our planet is not a perfect sphere.
Some of nature's shows look like special effects, but they really happen and you can see them without scientific equipment. Ten phenomena, explained, with the best times and places to watch them.
More than a third of humanity cannot see the Milky Way from home. These are the places where the sky is still as it was centuries ago, and how to make the most of them even without a telescope.
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