How climate change is transforming the Pacific Crest Trail.
“This spring, a group of climate scientists published a paper in the trail association’s magazine outlining the changes in store for thru-hikers in a warmer future. A generation from now, they found, the average thru-hiker is likely to experience nearly three times as many 90-degree days as they climb through Northern California and Oregon, alongside dwindling snowpack (the source of most water on the trail) and more intense and sporadic rainstorms. “Hikers may have to be more wary, more selective about which year they go,” said Dan Cayan, a meteorologist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who co-authored the report.”
