Forest fires and wildland fires are common in summer in the temperate boreal forest, rarer at high altitudes, and unheard of in an ice age at high altitudes – until now. Evidence of wildfires dating back 20,000 years was recently discovered in the Massif du Queyras, in the heart of the French Alps, 2,240 metres above sea level. The news comes in a joint Canada-France study published in New Phytologist and co-authored by Olivier Blarquez, a geography professor at Université de Montréal, and Christopher Carcaillet, a professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, in Paris, and at the Laboratoire d’écologie des hydrosystèmes naturels et anthropisés (CNRS/Université Lyon 1/ENTPE).