More heat, less Aiguille du Midi...

Mountain erosion is not something new, but it seems to be happening much more frequently as the planet heats up and the permafrost that used to hold together high altitude peaks in the Alps and elsewhere in the world is no longer able to hold massive rock formations together. 

On Wednesday, August 12, 2026, a major rockfall occurred on the north face of the Aiguille du Midi in the Mont Blanc massif above Chamonix, France. Over 500,000 cubic feet of rock broke away at an altitude above 11,800 feet (3,600 meters) in the Mallory area, sending a massive plume of dust and debris down the mountain. 

This summer’s extreme heat waves destabilized high-altitude permafrost and rock walls, triggered safety checks by the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc and followed the closure of the peak's famous ice tunnel due to melting. Other iconic peaks are failing structurally too. 

On the Matterhorn, intense summer heat waves have triggered frequent, erratic rock falls. Mountain guide associations in Switzerland and Italy have repeatedly been forced to suspend guided tours on major routes (like the Hörnligrat ridge) as the traditional frost holding the pathways together is simply liquefying. 

Also, right now, scientists and residents are anxiously monitoring the Spitze Stei rock formation looming over the village of Kandersteg, Switzerland. Through decaying permafrost, the mountainside has been actively losing height and parts of it have been shifting by up to 70 centimeters (2.3 feet) per day during peak summer melt. Geologists estimate that if the unstable formation collapses all at once, it could unleash 500 to 700 million cubic feet of rock, creating a landslide that could dwarf the Blatten disaster of May 2025. 

I guess that in the end, what goes up must always go down! 

Altitude and temperature

Being both a mountain dweller and a skier, I’ve always thought that the rule for temperature change in relation to altitude was 3° Fahrenheit per 1,000 feet (or 6°C per 1,000 meters), but I wasn’t too sure and decided to dig a little deeper into a subject that’s becoming more important as we get into full global warming. 

Here’s what I’ve found, starting with what causes that change. Temperatures drop as we gain elevation simply simply because atmospheric pressure decreases and the air expands and cools. Now, let’s talk numbers for what’s called the Standard Lapse Rate.

In Fahrenheit, temperature drops approximately 3.5°F per 1,000 feet of elevation gain (or roughly 5°F per 1,000 meters). In Celsius, temperature drops approximately 6.5°C per 1,000 meters of elevation gain (or roughly 2°C per 1,000 feet). For example, if we climb a mountain 2,000 feet higher up, we can generally expect the temperature to be around 7°F cooler at the top than at the base.) Of course, while 3.5°F per 1,000 feet is the standard average, real-world conditions frequently break this rule. 

Let’s start with humidity and moisture. If the air is dry, it cools faster as it rises, at a rate that’s about 5.4°F per 1,000 feet (9.8°C per 1,000 meters). If, on the other hand, the air cools to its dew point and moisture condenses into clouds or fog, latent heat is released into the surrounding air. This slows the cooling rate down to roughly 3.0°F per 1,000 feet (5°C per 1,000 meters). 

Then we’ve got the temperature inversions, in which if temperature always decreases with height, during an inversion, the opposite happens as warmer air sits over a pool of cold air. This is very common in mountain valleys (Salt Lake City) during winter or clear, windless nights, where cold heavy air sinks into the valley floor while Park City’s higher elevation stays significantly warmer. 

Finally the terrain topography and wind also influence the system. Dark rock faces and exposed alpine terrain can heat up significantly under direct sunlight, creating warm microclimates high up that defy the surrounding free-air lapse rate. Conversely, strong alpine winds can pull down cold air masses (these are called katabatic winds) or enhance wind chill, making it feel far colder than the ambient lapse rate suggests. 

Now you know all the details about the whole altitude and temperature relationship!

Weather predictions for next winter…

The latest outlook from the NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center just came out and covers pretty much the upcoming snow season including January, February and March 2027. 

It shows a recognizable El Niño pattern beginning to emerge with wetter conditions across much of the southern United States, drier weather across portions of the northern Rockies and increased odds of above-normal temperatures across large sections of the country.

These maps do not predict exact snowfall totals or individual winter storms. However, they provide what should be a good early indication of where the storm track may favor wetter, drier, warmer or cooler conditions during the 2026–2027 winter. 

As far as Park City is concerned you can see it for yourself: Temperatures trending higher and precipitation the same as normal. We’ll see, as always time will tell, and come early April, we’ll compare predictions against realities to see if any came close to what NOAA predicted….

A simple passive solar detail

Ever since I came to live in Park City, I’ve placed enormous importance on choosing a home site with true southern exposure. 

After spending a quarter century in a shaded location, back in the Alps, where my parents’ home received only a few hours of winter sun, I learned firsthand how profoundly mountain sunlight affects both comfort and morale. Of course, site orientation is only half the equation — architecture must do the rest. 

At 7,000 feet, our sun is stronger, our winters are colder, and our skies are clearer, which makes solar geometry one of the most powerful and overlooked design tools. I’ve always been surprised by how little attention many local architects give to passive‑solar principles. 

When we built our home in 2013, I insisted on deep south‑facing eaves — in our case, 7 feet — to block the high summer sun while welcoming the low winter sun. At this latitude, the sun’s altitude swings nearly 47° between seasons, so a well‑designed overhang can dramatically reduce summer heat gain while providing free warmth in winter. 

The photo below was taken on July 7, shortly after the summer solstice at 11 a.m. MDST, and it shows exactly how the eaves perform: full shade in summer, full sun in winter.

Passive solar isn’t complicated — it’s simply good mountain architecture.

Second homes in mountain resorts

Like seaside and other vacation resorts, mountain towns hold a huge share of second homes. 

As my origins are from one of those locales and my current residence is also found in that particular setting, it’s a situation that I know quite well. 

This is of course very tempting to compare and draw comments between these mountain communities. 

To set up that comparison, we’ll look at four locations, two in the departement of Haute-Savoie, in the French Alps, Chamonix and Morzine (the town I grew up in) as well as Vail in Colorado and Park City in Utah (my current residence). 

What we can see when we look at the table, is that in all these resorts, the percentage of second home represents around 68 to 84% of the total housing available, with new condos commanding a definite price advantage over old ones and single family homes are no longer priced for “normal” people with workers salaries. 

In all cases and on both continents, finding affordable housing is all but impossible for “essential workers”. Will this change and if so, when? I don’t see any practical solution floating on the horizon except for a severe economic and/or climatic collapse...

The risks of mountain living

Having been raised at the bottom of a steep mountain valley in France, I’ve always been conscious of what hangs up above my head and quite cognizant of the saying “What goes up must go down...” After what happened recently in Blatten, Switzerland or last year at La Bérarde in France, one logical question is whether there are more alpine villages, or for that matter, mountain villages the world over, running a very high risk of meeting the same fate? 

These communities are naturally vulnerable to disasters due to their locations in deep valleys below steep, unstable terrain and the increasing results of climate change. For one thing melting glaciers destabilize mountain slopes, leading to landslides and rockfalls, like what happened in Italy when the Marmolada glacier collapsed in 2022. 

Permafrost thawing not only caused the Blatten slide as it weakened the rock faces, increasing the risk of massive collapses but it’s close to what also happened in that same country during the 2017 Piz Cengalo landslide. Other Swiss communities like Gondo, Randa, and Saas-Balen are also at risk due to historic landslides. On the French side, towns in the Écrins Massif (like La Bérarde) and the entire Chamonix Valley face glacier and rockfall threats. 

On the Italian side of Mt. Blanc, a town like Courmayeur and further away, Valfurva near Passo Stelvio, are also significantly exposed to glacier instability. In Austria, Galtür is threatened by avalanche and Heiligenblut by glacial floods. Up in Norway, Longyearbyen (in Svalbard) faces landslides due to permafrost melt. In North America there’s the Alaska’s Barry Arm landslide threat and in Canmore (Alberta) the town is at risk of rockslides. In the Himalayas, many villages in Nepal, India (Uttarakhand), and in Bhutan also face glacial lake outbursts.

Natural catastrophes have happened in the mountain for centuries. It’s called erosion. In my hometown of Montriond, its pristine lake was formed by a massive collapse of the “Rocher de l’ Échelle” a limestone cliff standing 2,500 feet higher that obstructed the local brook (Dranse de Montriond), creating a natural dam 600 feet high that formed a mile long lake, 100 feet deep. 

 

This incident dates back approximately 500 to 550 years. Over time, the lake has experienced significant fluctuations in level between spring and autumn. To stabilize its water level, sealing work was carried out in 1990.  

In the majority of cases, all these villages or places are visited by tourists and rely on skiing, hiking, and mountaineering for survival. Once a catastrophe hits, like it just did in Blatten, relocating the entire villages elsewhere isn’t always feasible. When it is, it often proves to be costly and logistically difficult. As temperatures rise, glaciers retreat faster, and as jet-streams tend to get stuck in place for a much longer time, extreme rain or snow falls increase leading to more intense landslides, floods, and avalanches. 

This means that many alpine and mountain villages worldwide are at risk, particularly those near glaciers, steep cliffs, or unstable slopes. While mitigation efforts (like early warning systems) help, some communities may eventually need to relocate—or face tragic consequences.

Demolition Derby?

In my little town of Park City, there are lots of homes in good to excellent condition that are purchased to be torn-down and replaced by a brand-new, huge residence. When I picture the destruction in Gaza or in Ukraine, it makes me cringe and see the practice as wasteful and immoral. 

Recently, a young household purchased a home 200 yards from us in great condition (if was just restored and would have been worth $3 to 3.5 million today). The house was plenty big for them and their two young kids, but wasn’t meeting their wishes or not cool enough, so it just got teared down leaving a pile of rubble in its place. 

In ski towns like Park City, a small quarter of an acre lot is worth at least $2 million and it will take at least as much the same to rebuild it into a place with modern amenities (open floor plans, smart homes, exercise room etc.) that older homes lack. 

Now, for the bad news: Tearing down a functional home sends tons of debris to landfills (concrete, lumber, fixtures, etc). The US environmental agency estimates that annually, 600,000 tons of demolition waste come from residential tear-downs like that one. 

Not only that, but older homes already have "carbon savings" from decades of use, while new construction emits CO₂ from manufacturing materials (concrete, steel) and transportation, conflicting with sustainability goals. There’s also the fact that losing older homes often strip neighborhoods of their historic charm and character. 

Replacing modest homes with monster mansions, makes housing less affordable and displaces locals. There should be a push for deconstruction ordinances (like Portland’s in Oregon, that requires salvaging materials from old homes), encouraging renovating and expanding existing homes, building smaller, well thought-out living space as an affordable alternative to mega-mansions. 

While tear-downs are often legal and driven by market forces, they raise serious environmental, social, and moral questions and most of us living in ski towns share in the blame for that.

A very old down jacket!

My old Moncler down jacket is more than 50 years old (52 to be exact) and this week, my daughter wore it, as she needed something warm to ward off winter’s return. The origins of that garment and its name is worth mentioning. 

Moncler is in fact the abbreviation of Monestier-de-Clermont, a mountain village near Grenoble. Here in 1952, René Ramillon and André Vincent founded the company that created the now iconic down jacket that offered then high resistance and protection against the harshest climates and was tested in a variety of mountain expeditions. 

In 1954, Moncler’s down jackets were chosen to equip the Italian expedition to K2, in which Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli summited the world’s second highest summit. 

Successful through the 1980s, the brand began to lose ground and was acquired in 2003 by the Italian Remo Ruffini who turned the jacket into a luxury garment that sells today in the US for around $1,500. 

I purchased this one when I was a ski instructor in Avoriaz in fall of 1973 for significantly less, and it’s still almost like new. Talk about quality, then!

Alpine agriculture in steep terrain

I recently ran into an old photograph taken in the 1950s by my schoolmaster, near my home village of Montriond, next to Morzine, in the northern French Alps. I still have that picture framed somewhere in my home. It shows a couple of elder peasants holding and walking a wooden container filled with dirt up the slope. 

This was done to compensate for soil erosion mostly due to gravity. In other mountainous and most advanced parts of the world like Eastern Asia or South America, where terracing was used, that is where parts of a sloped plane were cut into a series of successively receding flat steps, there would have been no need for that. 

This terracing practice however was totally unknown in Alpine agriculture, so local people would fight erosion-caused gravity by carrying back uphill the soil that inevitably rolled down the hill, in the spring, before planting. 

I still remember helping my brother with that very same chore in the early 60s. A chore it was, especially over steep fields where the wooden box inevitably ended up overloaded and far too hard to carry uphill! 

Thank God, that era is over and still, I had almost forgotten I once was part of it...

Sundance’s growing pains

Sundance Resort had, until now, always been a favorite of ours, so this Sunday afternoon, as temperatures were up and we had nothing better to do, we decided to drive over and see what was up with this pristine mountain spot. The 35 miles scenic drive only takes 45 minutes from our Park City home, so we did just that, passed two reservoirs filled with weekend crowds enjoying the sunny day and finally got to our destination. 

I must say that, before we even got there, I was fearing that parking might be a challenge, but that was without counting on “Take 2” a major construction project that will house a sixty-five-room inn, developed with help for funding from Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA). Suffice to say that I was right and that we had to park, up the hill, ½ mile away. 

Since we didn’t see any sign for shuttle transportation we walked down to the resort, and realized after the fact that there was in fact a shuttle service available. Just no good signage. Why in the world weren’t there any decent indications of that shuttle service? 

The place was mobbed, but we hoped to get an ice cream for moral comfort. Even though the temperature was close to 90 degrees there, the cafe served everything but ice-cream. After investigating, we were told to try the Owl bar in case they had ice-cream. We were told “Yes we do but you must wait till 5 pm, when the restaurant starts serving!” It was just 2:30 pm. Of course, there were no other businesses open but this cafe and that bar. 

The place is woefully under-equipped to cater to small crowds and need to beef-up its food and beverage offering. Profoundly disappointed, we sat for a while, watch a crowd of despondent folks ambling around (just like us) probably looking for… ice-cream! 

We drove back home, I posted this commentary on Google, then we had a delicious gelato on our deck looking at Jupiter Peak. Nothing beats Park City!

Morzine, the overdeveloped…

Morzine is a small French mountain town with a huge growth problem. 

For someone who’s been totally out of this place for more than four years, it’s obvious that growth has been unbridled by allowing to build on every available square foot that a big real estate bubble is not just growing wild, but had the case always it, getting very close to bursting! 

Will this really happen like it might in my own Park City hometown? I think so. Already, locals in Morzine are clamoring about traffic, parking and soaring real estate prices, plus also the bad taste a British invasion that’s already seeping into that postcard-perfect mountain community. Right now, the pressure’s still building, but how high can it go?

 American ski towns are fortunate to have much more space to play with so the feeling of overcrowding and over-something is far less pervading, but Morzine breathing room is now very close to be suffocating and quite impossible to undo at that point of extreme development. 

Will that chase future visitors away? Probably not because all other French ski resorts are for the most part in the same predicament, but it will make everybody, visitor and locals alike, profoundly bitter, constantly unhappy and terribly unfulfilled!

As always, a long road trip

I love to drive and I’m bad at planning short trips. I never miss a chance to fit more stops and places to visit into an already bulging time line regardless of my passenger tolerance for extra hours spent inside an automobile. 

This morning was spend in large part driving to the Alps, mostly on the lightly traveled French super-highway, that aren’t cheap but, like the rest of the highway we traveled on, are very well designed and maintained. 

We went to visit our cousins, not far from the shores of Geneva Lake and had a wonderful time. Our get together actually went so overboard time-wise that it messed up our next appointment with a former schoolmate eager to meet us in Sallanches at the bottom of Mont-Blanc (the town where Dynastar skis are made!)

The mountain was still standing there in its imposing, formidable mass, albeit much grayer than usual. The place we stayed was in Saint-Roch accessible through a narrow, steep, winding road. This was the last day of good weather we had enjoyed so far. Tomorrow rain would be in the forecast.

Fall color festival…

Park City and its region definitely lack the majesty or sheer beauty of places like Chamonix, Banff or even Jackson Hole. 

Yet, at times, our outdoors can be stunningly beautiful. Not so much when they’re snow covered; many places and mountain settings look very similar under new snow, but if there is a time of the year when our surroundings become an irresistible attraction for the eyes, it just now when leaves change color. 

Early this week we took a road trip around our mountain passes closer to home and were stunned by the beauty and richness we discovered at each corner of the road. 

It is frequent that we miss this spectacular show because late September or early October is the generally the time when we travel to Europe or at least out of town, and miss these precious and fleeting moments when our mountains let their natural beauty explode to our heart content!

Inspiring books about mountaineering exploits

Recently, I’ve been reading a series of high altitude climbing-mountaineering books relating exploits and mishaps taking place in Asia, between the Karakorum and the Himalayas, and must say that not only this adventure reading keeps me on the edge of your seat, but is for me, also highly addictive. 

If I were not in my early 70s, I would get involved at once in that wonderful endeavor! No wonder then, that many climbing vocations have been ignited by the revelations contained in a regular dose of this kind of reading. 

I can vividly remember that, as an 8 to 10 year old child, I spent time in the summer in my Alpine pasture with a city-kid my age, from nearby Thonon, on Geneva Lake’s south shore, who had been totally raptured by reading the work from Roger Frison-Roche, that French prolific mountain writer who gain celebrity through “Premier de cordée” (First on the rope) in1944. 

That reading triggered his life-long passion for climbing and for trying to getting me bouldering on local cliffs. At home we had no such books, let alone nothing to read but the newspaper! Fortunately or unfortunately, I had no access to such books, and I obviously missed getting sucked into hard-core mountain climbing. 

If that had been the case, I might not be alive today to tell that story...

The dangers of snow removal

It’s not uncommon that snow removal issues provoke conflicts between people. That happened to me several years ago with my next-door neighbor, and has been a recurring issue ever since. 

A few days ago, he ended up blowing his snow into my driveway. I called him up on it, and he came to fix the problem, shoveling what what his snow off my property.

It wasn’t as bad as what happened this Monday near Scranton, Pennsylvania, when a couple was shoveling their snow into their neighbor property.

The latter got mad, killed the couple and killed himself shortly after that. A pretty onerous conflict resolution for a few cubic feet of snow. 

I hope my own neighbor behaves more nicely, or better yet, stop pushing his snow into my home!

How did Park City vote?

As it does all the time for Democrats, Park City voted massively for Biden. Sure, we don’t have stats for our town alone, as those are lumped into our county. That’s right, Summit County has a total population of 42,145 people, including 27,850 who live in the western part of its territory and have a Park City mailing address. 

This means that about two-third of the county’s population lives in the greater Park City area. Park City Municipal, where we live only accounts for 8,488 inhabitants, which means that the 19,362 other “Parkites” live in the unincorporated part of the Park City School District. 

Back to the election, out of 28,785 eligible Summit County voters, 25,790 of them cast a ballot (a whopping 89.6% participation!), with 14,497 or 56.21% voting for Biden and 9,928 or 38.5% for Trump. We need to remember that, outside of Park City, the remaining third of the county is in vast majority Mormon, therefore these folks are for the most part Trump supporters. 

This would lead me to estimate that in the Greater Park City, voters picked Biden 3 to 1 over Trump! This applies to ski towns in other red states like Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. 

Our state of Utah and its 3.2 million population, which in fact is a theocracy like Iran and Israel, has supported Trump, 58% to 37.8% for Biden. 

Only two other counties, Salt Lake and Moab voted for Biden! We still have to work hard in order to make a Democratic dent in that ultra-conservative states!

Beginning thirty-six years in Park City

Yesterday marked the 35th year that we’ve been in Park City. So far, things have, for the most part, been smooth, fun and happy.

As we get into our thirty-sixth year as “Parkites” as we locals call ourselves, under the threat of Covid-19 and the specter of Emperor Trump, nothing seems so sure anymore!

Let’s hope that three dozen will develop to handsomely beat twenty-twenty!

The neighbors are invading!

When I stare at the skies, I can hardly see any commercial jets flying and, given the nasty pandemic, can also understand why people are reluctant to board an airplane. This fear of flying has led many folks to take some long drives this summer.

If I look at the licenses plates that we see all over Park City, the ones we see most often are from California, followed by Texas, Arizona, along with some Oregon and Washington state plates.

To get to Park City, these folks have been driving between 700 miles (for the closest visitors from Los Angeles) all the way to 1,500 miles (for Texans living in Houston).

In previous summers, we were used to seeing plenty of plates from Arizona, Nevada and California, that were generally from Seniors “snowbirds” escaping the desert heat for two or three month.

This year, however, they’ve been joined by regular folks made of family and kids fleeing their homes as they feel that their urban homes are significantly less secure than escaping to a nice place like Park City.

We welcome all these people and keep our fingers crossed that they will indeed be quite safe among us!

Chamois, Ibex and Mountain Goat's footwear

Climbing shoes are the result of clever R&D and modern materials, but long before La Scarpa and La Sportiva’s had developed their best and latest products, Mother Nature already endowed some mountain creatures like the Alpine Chamois, the Ibex or the American Mountain Goat, with the most advanced climbing footwear money can buy.

The sides of their toes is the same hard keratin found in the hoof of a horse. Each of the two toes wrap around toenails can grip and hold into cracks (A) or rock irregularities and is also helped by a traction pad that sticks out slightly from under the nails.

This pad is rough and malleable enough to provide all the friction needed when stepping on smooth rock and ice. In addition the two toes act like an independent suspension (B) by spreading themselves on uneven surfaces to maximize the contact area.

When descending steep slopes, the animal gets some extra contact points with its protruding dewclaw (C)that minimize the risk of slippage when the forces of gravity add up.

Now that you know why these experts climbers are so surefooted, we’ll try to determine which of the three is the best overall mountain ruminant.

Just be aware that, among the trio, the ibex stands out by climbing trees, but only the lower limbs so it can nibble some of its foliage!

Checking Thaynes out

This past weekend, we rode Crescent, one of Park City’s main lifts to go and hike to the bottom of Thaynes chairlift, that is also the site of the old Crescent mine and its huge heap of tailings.

The 3.3 mile round-trip hike is easy, almost flat and got us to the bottom of my favorite Park City run.

We saw no one around, the weather was nice and cool and it’s always hard to imagine that in about three months, I’ll be skiing up and down that hill!