Climate deniers are furiously peddling the idea that Nepal’s disaster was perfectly normal – but research and experience shows that as mountain permafrost softens due to rising temperatures, collapses become more frequent.
Researchers have been documenting these changes for at least 20 years.
Journal of Geophysical Research June 2007:
Permafrost in steep bedrock is abundant in many cold-mountain areas, and its degradation can cause slope instability that is unexpected and unprecedented in location, magnitude, frequency, and timing. These phenomena bear consequences for the understanding of landscape evolution, natural hazards, and the safe and sustainable operation of high-mountain infrastructure. Permafrost in steep bedrock is an emerging field of research. Knowledge of rock temperatures, ice content, mechanisms of degradation, and the processes that link warming and destabilization is often fragmental.
In this article we provide a review and discussion of existing literature and pinpoint important questions. Ice-filled joints are common in bedrock permafrost and possibly actively widened by ice segregation. Broad evidence of destabilization by warming permafrost exists despite problems of attributing individual events to this phenomenon with certainty. Convex topography such as ridges, spurs, and peaks is often subject to faster and deeper thaw than other areas. Permafrost degradation in steep bedrock can be strongly affected by percolating water in fractures.
This degradation by advection is difficult to predict and can lead to quick and deep development of thaw corridors along fractures in permafrost and potentially destabilize much greater volumes of rock than conduction would. Although most research on steep bedrock permafrost originates from the Alps, it will likely gain importance in other geographic regions with mountain permafrost.
An intense early-summer heatwave gripping Western Europe is rapidly changing conditions across the Alps, forcing mountain guides to suspend some of the continent’s most iconic mountaineering routes as thawing permafrost, melting glaciers, and frequent rockfall create increasingly dangerous conditions. On Italy’s side of Mont Blanc, professional guides in Courmayeur have stopped guiding clients on the mountain’s classic Italian normal route via the Miage Glacier, while Swiss guides have effectively abandoned the famous Hörnli Ridge on the Matterhorn until conditions improve.
The unprecedented decisions come as temperatures above 4,000 meters (13,120 feet) remain well above freezing, accelerating glacier melt and destabilizing mountain faces once held together by permanently frozen ground. “With the heat we had in June, conditions deteriorated quickly. It’s no longer safe enough to take clients up there,” Alex Campedelli, president of the Courmayeur Guides Society, told AFP. “The glacier is full of crevasses and it’s hard to find the right route. We decided last week we won’t sell that ascent to clients anymore.”
Old friend and multiple Iditarod vet Bruce Lee sends me this from Denali.
Quotes/wake-up call from Nepal’s p.m. . .
“Experts have said that the flood in the Bhotekoshi River in Rasuwa was triggered by a massive rockslide in the Himalayan region,” Shah said. “The incident is a serious indication that the risks we face in the Himalayan region are increasing.”
https://kathmandupost.com/national/2026/09/02/pm-warns-of-growing-climate-risks-as-scientists-flag-more-glacial-disasters