Welcome to Ice Mushroom

A newsletter with my climate reporting and stories from icy and mountainous places

Hey, I’m Alec, an award-winning journalist who has covered climate and the environment in places ranging from Alaska to Somalia. I’m currently an environment news reporter at New Scientist, the most popular weekly science and technology magazine.

I first went to the Arctic when I was a foreign correspondent in Russia, and for the past decade I’ve been fascinated by the world’s remote, icy and mountainous places. I started this newsletter to share the climate stories I’m covering now, plus interesting news about high altitudes and high latitudes.

I’ve reported from a town invaded by polar bears, a floating nuclear power plant and the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth. I’ve failed to summit Europe’s tallest peak in a whiteout and lost a toe to frostbite after being stranded on a mountain in Norway.

I’m interested in how places like these are changing, as well as the wild schemes to try to save them. I recently reported from a project to refreeze sea ice in Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, the first bridge over a thawing rock glacier in Denali National Park and rivers that are turning orange and acidic in northern Alaska.

At this point, you may be asking, what’s an ice mushroom? Well, it’s a bulge of rime ice on a windward face of rock, one of those weird phenomena that only occur in these remote, disappearing places. If you think’s that intriguing, subscribe to this newsletter!