Аннотация:Substantiates the new scientific direction - periglacial geography as a science of contemporary periglacial environments. A huge number of fundamental publications and issues have devoted to global reviews of glacial regions of the globe. However, the adjacent periglacial extraglacial woodless space fell out of regarding reviews in a complex planetary context. The snowline and cold limits of forest represent limits of the periglacial environment. Essentially, it is a single periglaciosphere extending from high-latitudinal planes and low mountains to high mountains of low latitudes. The life beyond the cold limits of forest loses its vertical stratification; however, it acquires instead the exceptional horizontal variability and level of contrast of micro-environments created by symmetric forms of the cryogenic micro-relief. Nowhere in the world are there such contrasts of habitats and ecological niches as in subtropical and tropical mountains. If water emerges in a hot desert, life develops the same multi-tier formations in the oases as in the corresponding forests. In periglacial environments, life cannot achieve such abundance and diversity, even where heat is no longer a limiting factor, as near the hot springs of Iceland or Chukotka. Specifically there the convergence and interaction of such contrastive layers as the biosphere and the glaciosphere occur. These young landscapes are saturated with many relict and archaic elements not stable under modern conditions. Among them are surviving from ancient times and adapting to extreme conditions ethnoses. Now we can see how the most archaic models of habitation patterns and the ancient population are preserved in difficult-to-access mountains and the Arctic. In these most severe environments where humans can still function, tourism is becoming the main factor of human presence in the perioglacioshere, changing the paradigm of development from the categories of overcoming and risk to adaptation and beauty.