Backcountry travelers are increasingly finding themselves on the dangerous edge of a changing climate. Some hikers have dramatically changed the way they travel.
Andrew Schrock woke around midnight smelling smoke on a backpacking trip late last month in California’s far north.Using a satellite-based device from the Klamath National Forest near the Oregon border, he texted family and friends back home to find out what was happening – but “no one was up.”
Ask anyone who hikes in California’s mountains about wildfires and you’ll likely get an earful about canceled trips, detours, lung-burning smoke and, possibly, harrowing escapes. Backcountry travelers are increasingly finding themselves on the dangerous edge of a changing climate that is driving drought, parching forests, spreading tree-killing beetles and altering weather patterns.
Dallan Clancy of Belmont, 68, finishing up a day hike 100 miles west of Sacramento at Carson Pass, said he had to cancel an overnight trip last September in the southern Sierra because the U.S. Forest Service shut access to all but one of California’s national forestswhat the agency called “fire behavior that is beyond the norm of our experience and models such as large, quick runs in the night.” Clancy said he and four friends are aiming to do the trip this year, “unless it gets really bad.
Hikers in years past “just went and did whatever you wanted to do wherever you wanted to go,” Wilkinson said. But 2020 marked a transformation, with the million-acre August Complex Fire, the Creek Fire northeast of Fresno that led to helicopter evacuations of hundreds of people including hikers on the John Muir Trail, and other massive blazes launching California into the age of mega-fires, Wilkinson said.
Some hikers have dramatically changed the way they travel. Loetitia Saint-Jacques, 50, a Tahoe City veterinary technician, was on an overnight trip this month near South Lake Tahoe. Before the mega-fires, she and her companions would take long trips into deep wilderness. “We don’t go as remote now,” Saint-Jacques said. “Now it’s shorter trips. We do overnights, instead of five to eight days.”
Risa Roseman, 58, and her daughter Zara, 20, out for a day hike near Donner Pass this month, said they’ve become more alert to the threat of fire, tracking weather, wind, fire and smoke conditions before and during a trip, and worrying about the chance of a blaze starting while they’re out. Three weeks ago, camped northwest of Lake Tahoe, they smelled wood smoke, climbed up high but couldn’t spot a source, and spent an uneasy night, said Roseman.
Zara Roseman, left, and her mom Risa Roseman, of Grass Valley, hike along the Pacific Crest Trail near Donner Summit in Nevada County, Calif., on Tuesday, August 9, 2022.
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