People move to the Pacific Northwest to be near incredible natural beauty. But each year, wildfires and rising temperatures are making it harder to go outside.
that the changes we have begun to see in recent years — drought, wildfires, and reduced snowpack — are only projected to get worse. Climate scientists expect warming temperatures to change winter precipitation patterns, which can impact snow sports and revenue that ski resorts bring in.
Warmer days in the alpine could mean rain where there used to be snow and could thus lead to an increased avalanche risk. Although avalanches do happen year-round in the Northwest, rain can make the snowpack unstable. Sometimes guides won’t travel those routes if they deem the hike unsafe, or they take other routes that can be more grueling or circuitous.
Even so, the resort doesn’t see snowmaking as a permanent fix for climate change. “It’s a Band-Aid,” says Erica Kutz, the brand marketing coordinator at Crystal Mountain. The machines work best when it’s cold and dry — which means wetter winters might limit the long-term effectiveness of that approach.
Dustin Basalla, owner of the rafting company Alpine Adventures in Gold Bar, Washington, says that because the snow melts faster every year, the seasons for whitewater rafting are shorter. “We can only raft as long as there’s snow,” he said, since whitewater rafting can only be done on free-flowing and not dammed rivers. The 2015 drought caused one of the worst years for whitewater rafting, as the season for whitewater ended June 20 — shaving nearly two months off a typical season.
I don’t feel like I’ve been brought here on a false promise. The Pacific Northwest is still maddeningly charming. From my apartment atop a hill, I can walk five minutes east and get a sweeping view of the Cascades, or stop at the closest intersection and glance at the Olympic Mountains. On a clear day, I get a breathtaking view of Mount Rainier when I bike to my climbing gym.I frequently think about a term coined by fisheries biologist Daniel Pauly — “shifting baselines syndrome.
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