Friday, 23 October 2026
International edition · English
Americas
News, routes, wildlife, plants and mountain and nature guides in United States.
8 articles
The equatorial Pacific is much warmer than normal and forecast centres point to a very strong, perhaps historic, El Niño. We explain what it is, what is expected and what it could mean for the snow season.
Not all dangerous mountains are dangerous for the same reason. Some kill with avalanches, others with altitude, unpredictable weather or because they look easier than they are. Fifteen summits and their reasons.
Some forests look like film sets: trunks a hundred metres tall, bamboo corridors, carpets of blue flowers or pines that grow bent without anyone quite knowing why. Ten places to see at least once.
You do not need to be a mountaineer to walk beside glaciers, peer into a fjord or circle the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. Ten routes any hiker with reasonable fitness and common sense can do.
Some rise on a glacier in Tibet, others at a lost spring in the Andes whose title two mountains dispute. Ten rivers that are still wild, told from their source.
Most bear encounters end with the animal walking away. But knowing what to do —and what not to do— makes all the difference. We explain it for the European brown bear and for North American species.
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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