Climate change is a global concern, but people are increasingly becoming aware of its effects on a local level. This is particularly true for those who enjoy the outdoors. Canoeists, cross-country skiers, ice climbers, paddlers, and hikers have noticed recent oddities in the Northeast’s weather and the natural world. Whether an early bloom or a particularly violent storm can be linked to the established trend of global warming is plenty contentious. But the mounting anecdotal evidence is helping to sound alarm bells on every hill. Here’s what four New Englanders have observed in their backyards—and what they are doing about it.
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Maury McKinney
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Maury McKinney Ice Climbing Guide, International Mountain Climbing School North Conway, N.H. To take a break from getting his master’s degree in physiology in 1986, Maury McKinney decided to hike the 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. He fell in love with the mountains of New Hampshire and never ended up finishing the trail—or obtaining his degree. Twenty-one years later, McKinney’s love for ice, snow, and big mountains has taken him to the Himalayas, Andes, and the Canadian Rockies, yet he still calls the White Mountains home. Based in North Conway, McKinney is the president of the International Mountain Climbing School and serves on the boards of the American Mountain Guides Association and Mountain Rescue Service, an all-volunteer search and rescue crew in the White Mountains. As a veteran mountaineer and ice-climbing guide, McKinney thinks about the weather and the conditions of the frozen waterfalls he and his clients climb every day in the winter—and he has been noticing some trends.
“Back in the mid-’80s, it just seemed like there were longer periods of sustained cold weather and more snow,” he says. What makes waterfalls freeze into good, solid, blue ice is still the subject of debate in the climbing world. However, most agree that a good snowpack insulates the ground and acts as a “time-release vitamin pill,” letting water trickle out by day to freeze overnight, says McKinney. Over the last few years, McKinney has observed that in addition to shorter cold spells, the snowpack seems less consistent. Indeed, the 2006 Northeast Climate Impact Assessment cited declining snowpack as an indication of climate change. According to a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, snowpack could diminish by 50 percent by the end of the century.
“It seems like we’re running into more extremes,” McKinney says. “I don’t know how many times in the last few winters we’ve said, ‘It feels like spring today’ or even ‘It feels like summer today.’ It seems like the climbs don’t stay as big as long. You don’t get stupendously beautiful blue climbs, and they tend to be a little bit thinner.” In response, McKinney and his clients are adapting. Twenty years ago, manufacturers of ice climbing equipment didn’t make ice screws in different sizes. Now, they make several versions, and climbers are consistently using the smaller screws to anchor to thinner ice. It is harder, however, for the business to adapt to the extremes in weather. Warm spells are detrimental to ice formation, and extreme cold spells keep many potential clients indoors.
McKinney still worries New Hampshire will resemble North Carolina in climate 75 years from now. According to recent climate models, it just might. He does what he can to reduce his carbon footprint and that of his business by educating his clients, encouraging carpooling among guides, using less electricity, driving less, and recycling, but hopes that our government will institute more financial incentives for businesses to make bigger changes.
Brian Fairbank
President, Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort
Hancock, Mass.
Brian Fairbank first arrived in Hancock in 1969 at age 23 to manage Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, which has since grown from four year-round employees to some 150. Fairbank, now the company’s president, still retains his ski-bum sensibilities and heads to the slopes at least two or three days a week during the winter. Perhaps it’s because of his long-lasting love for snow and skiing that he is particularly concerned about global warming.
“We’ve studied it inside out, and over 30 years we have seen a one-degree temperature change on average over the winter,” says Fairbank. The observed change, however, hasn’t had a consistent impact. In 2001, Jiminy opened with only one trail on December 9, the latest opening ever. The next year, the resort opened a full month earlier with six trails and two lifts. These inconsistencies have caught the attention of many ski areas across the East, particularly last winter, when only a few areas were open in mid-January. Indeed, a 2003 United Nations Environment Program report predicted ski areas with elevations below 5,000 feet—including all of those in the Northeast—might receive too little snow by the end of the century to open at all. And a 2006 study sponsored by the Carbon Coalition and Clean Air-Cool Planet found that during low-snow years between 1984 and 2006, the state of New Hampshire alone lost almost $12 million in alpine-ski ticket sales. Ears have undoubtedly pricked up.
Feeling the Heat. Photo: iStock.
