La Dame Blanche belts out a siren song, luring top skiers and avid hikers in all seasons. Near Chamonix, France, ten were crushed to their deaths today buried beneath snow and boulders of ice in another massive summer avalanche ,while 8 others survived with two still missing and buried. Since 1 July, a climbing toll of twenty died in a summer season rife with peril on Mont Blanc. The Alps are suffering from declining snowfalls and mushier snowpacks setting up perfect conditions for a raging wind to push massive amounts of snow and glacial ice off the mountaintops. Ravages of global warming and climate change enhance the risks of tangling with Mont Blanc. Ski tourists follow the best powder. Mont Blanc with the highest elevation in western Europe, almost 16,000 feet or 4,811 meters, remains an irresistible challenge whether its summer or winter.

They were among a party of climbers who were hit by a wall of snow 200m
(600ft) long and about 45m wide while roped together on Mont-Blanc du
Tacul.

The avalanche is believed to have happened at about 0300 (0100 GMT)
after a large block of glacier ice broke off higher up the mountain.
The group of climbers had been bivouaced on the slope below.

Avalanches are majestic to watch. In the Alps, summer is a season for deadly avalanches. Seasoned people arm themselves with all types of devices like EPIRB or Personal Locating Beacons with GPS to get located quickly by dogs or authorities. But so many times they are merely there to locate the remains when avalanches make areas impassable or threaten further slides, endangering rescuers. On the European table 2 or small avalanches lists death as one of the range of outcomes in an unstable area.

A climb to Mont Blanc du Tacul, part of the Mont Blanc massif, is done in well equipped stages. Both the Italians and the French have well traveled, for a glacier mountain, historic routes to follow across the mountain range. Passes are described as snow in the upper elevations or bridle path and road at the more modest or lower stages. There is always a veritable danger of avalanches as wind conditions shift and temperatures change. Reaching the summit where the Janssen Observatory once stood, is considered a pinnacle of the trip. Proposed as a World Heritage Site because its deemed where mountaineering originated with the official ascent of Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel Paccard in 1786 would require Italy, France and Switzerland to make a joint application for the protection the listing would offer. Conserving the mountain range has more of a sense of urgency as glacier melts and increased tourist visits to the area are altering its ecosystem and the mountains features.

Nature and nations are wreaking havoc in a sloshing Arctic with overzealous map-making from concerned countries versus the faster loss of great slabs of ice before they reach the famed Shiretoko Peninsula. Hokkaidō, scene of this year's July G8 summit, is Japan's second largest island where tourists enjoy photographing and sometimes catching a quick ride on drifting blocks of ice. Within the past five years, drift ice is melting as it arrives in the Sea of Okhotsk. The sea between Russia and Japan freezes each winter into ice lily pads that ride the current to an isle, the World Heritage Site of Shiretoko. The lack of staying power for this ice deprives the area's ecosystem of necessary nutrients, temporary homes or safe havens for flocks of rare birds and imperils a vibrant tourism industry economic base for the area. In prior seasons, the frozen ice masses could last up to four months.(photo Tony McNicol)

The pursuit of those resources will be underscored this week as the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy sails north from Barrow, Alaska, on Thursday to map the sea floor of the Chukchi Cap, an area at the northern edge of the Beaufort Sea. The maps could bolster U.S. claims to the area as part of its extended outer continental shelf.

The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed last month what the oil industry had long suspected when the agency released an estimate that the area north of the Arctic Circle may hold as much as 90 billion barrels of
oil and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or roughly 13 percent of the world's total undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas.

The dash to stake out territory across the Arctic has accelerated since Russia sent one of its submarines last August to plant the country's flag on the sea floor beneath the North Pole, provoking an outcry by other nations that viewed it as an unauthorized land grab.

Earlier this month, Canadian officials at a geology conference in Norway detailed their territorial claims to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underseas mountain range that runs beneath the North Pole. Canada argues that the ridge is part of the North American continent, not part of Siberia, as Russia has asserted.

The Northwest Passage is on its way to becoming open for shipping, more marine life, and international strife as the phony debate over drilling accelerates the years old diplomatic debate over the "true" Arctic owners (Russia, Canada, USA) of the natural resources presumably beneath the Arctic Ocean's floor. The USGS confirms collaboration between Canada and the USA on making a shared map while Russia disputes Canada's calim because their coastline borders more of the ocean.

Melting ice is causing trauma to the polar bear community as fishing becomes precarious, with sharks and killer whales following their prime blubber meal tickets, seals. One endangered polar bear suffered the indignity of being eaten by a Greenland shark off of Svalbard, home of the Noah's Ark of Seeds. Scientific arguments range from no way from the shark experts (except, the bone found in the shark's gullet proved it) to the Norwegian Polar Institute owning up to shock and theorizing that, maybe, the bear was already dead. The same slower shark species have also shown a taste for caribou in the past. Killer whales are expanding their northern Arctic territory in the colder waters while more sharks prefer warmer waters.

Jeffrey Gallant, the  co-director of a Canadian-based shark research group, said: "There's no possibility a Greenland shark could predate a live adult white bear, unless it was injured or seriously ill."

He said the Greenland shark would not be able to afford the risk of injury, or the expenditure of energy needed to kill such a large and dangerous animal.

"There is far easier prey to be found," said Mr Gallant.

Redistribution of the drift ice and the loss of long standing hunting grounds portend more unsettling surprises as humankind and marine life adapt to climate changing events pushing economies and behaviors of all involved into the unknown.