Two of Chamonix’s best restaurants are setting themselves challenges in the cuisine they supply. For the Café de l’Arve the objective is to only serve food mood from ingredients sourced locally, while the Restaurant L’Impossible, now under new ownership, is attempting to become the first fully organic restaurant in Chamonix.

French resort Vaujany has launched a competition to think of new ideas to, make the resort more environmentally friendly.

Vaujany, which shares the giant ski area of Alpe d’Huez above, is largely powered by a giant hydro-electric power plant, income from which has been spent on lifts and other ski infrastructure at the traditional ski centre.

When the Chacaltaya glacier vanished six years sooner than scientists predicted, a victim of global warming, so, too, did the world’s highest ski run. The loss of the 18,000-year-old glacier this year that loomed above Bolivia’s Altiplano threatens to diminish water supplies to 2 million people clustered around La Paz, according to the World Bank.

A proposed new ski resort on the Sea-to-Sky Highway, just north of Squamish, is running into criticism because of its potential environmental impact to grizzly bear, salmon and mountain goat habitat. But the Garibaldi At Squamish resort (G@S), which would see nearly 6,000 condominium, hotel and housing units, 25 lifts and two golf courses built on a mountain looking down on Howe Sound, might be the best option for British Columbia.

Ski area operators and experts on the environment get together this week in New Hampshire to talk about making the region’s ski areas greener. The 3rd annual Green Slopes Workshop is Thursday at Ragged Mountain Resort in Danbury. It has two themes — keeping fuel and other hazardous liquids safely in tanks, and setting up so-called “green teams” at ski areas.

A backhoe growls as it carves the dirt where a second ski lodge will be built at the White Pass ski area. Not far away, a bulldozer groans as it pulls a stump from the hillside, clearing the way for a ski run. After two decades of litigation, work to nearly double the size of White Pass to almost 1,600 acres is finally under way.

It would be wise to start stockpiling nordic ski wax for low-snow conditions, if such a product exists. An El Nino, warmer than normal water in the Pacific Ocean near the equater, has been forecast for this winter and that would mean less snow than normal for Milwaukee, Madison and the rest of the Midwest, based on historical patterns.