ADVENTURE
2019
Climate change is transforming wilderness exploration, opening up
some places and shutting down others By ANDREW LEWIS
IN A WORLD
WITHOUT ICE
The Northwest Passage Gets Busy
It took centuries to find a navigable route
through the sea ice of the Northwest Pas-
sage, and hundreds of adventurers lost their
lives along the way. But as the Arctic has
warmed, the ice has receded. Now cargo
vessels and even cruise ships make regular
trips through the widening waterway. Next
year, adventurer Karl Kruger will become the
first to attempt to paddleboard the passage.Surfers Have More Giants to Ride
Climate change is contributing to larger,
more intense storms, particularly in the
tropics. The same systems likely to devastate
coastal communities will also create enor-
mous swells for big-wave surfers— including,
perhaps, the fabled 100-foot wave.Rivers Change Course
The Fourth National Climate Assessment, a
report produced by the U.S. Global ChangeResearch Program, reported that heavy
rains have increased in intensity and fre-
quency since 1901, though not evenly across
the world or the U.S. In the arid Southwest,
precipitation is expected to decrease, spell-
ing the end of paddling on some sections
of the Salt River and the Rio Grande. In the
Northeast, rains may increase, opening up
new whitewater in places like the Adiron-
dack watershed.The Route to the South Pole Shrinks
Antarctica’s Ross Island is home to Ernest
Shackleton’s hut, the historic launch point
for expeditions to the South Pole. Soon,
though, explorers starting out here might
need a boat. A section of the California-size
Ross Ice Shelf, a frozen mass over the sea
that adventurers ski or sled across to reach
the Antarctic continent, is losing nearly six
feet of ice each year—a number that’s only
expected to increase.Backcountry Skiing Becomes Bony
In the past 50 years, average snowpack in
the western U.S. has declined as much as 30
percent. One projection for the next cen-
tury has the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada
dropping another 60 percent from today’s
levels. Resorts are investing in snowmak-
ing technology to help offset the decline,
but backcountry skiers will have fewer and
fewer options.Deserts Are Deserted
Scientists project that entire swaths of the
Middle East and northern Africa will soon
be nearly uninhabitable for humans, due to
drought and heat waves that will spike tem-
peratures to upward of 122 degrees. Areas
like Oman’s Wadi Bani Awf region, long
known for its canyoneering adventures,
could become too hot to visit, while Mo-
rocco’s multi-day 156-mile Marathon des
Sables, already touted as the world’s tough-
est footrace, might become impossible.More Avalanches on Mount Everest
In 2018, scientists at the University of Ge-
neva found that over the past 150 years, the
number of slides in the Himalayas has in-
creased dramatically. As researchers wrote
in Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, recent warming is “the most
plausible explanation.” As snowfall remains
consistent and temperatures rise, the desta-
bilized snowpack may lead to more frequent
releases. In the past five years, 32 people have
died in avalanches on Everest.RIP Great Barrier Reef
In 2016, high water temperatures caused a
massive bleaching event in Australia’s Great
Barrier Reef that killed nearly 30 percent
of its 134,634 square miles of coral. A new
report from the Climate Council, an Aus-
tralian think tank, projected that by 2034,
similar bleaching events could occur every
two years, “effectively destroying the Great
Barrier Reef.”The Arctic is warming
twice as fast as the
rest of the planet,
rapidly melting the
previously iced-in
Northwest Passage.