She expects the opportunistic skipper will spread its range further,
going over the mountain pass to the west side of the Cascades and into
Seattle as temperatures continue to rise faster than they have in 10,000
years—a predicted 2°F by 2020 or 4.5° by 2050, according to climate
models at the University of Washington. “They’ll be in Seattle eventu-
ally,” Crozier says. “It just needs to get a little warmer.”
LOSING THESNOWPACK, LOSINGWATERWarmth is good for the skipper, but it spells trouble for the region’s
“white gold,” as the mountain snowpack has been called, and for any-
one dependent on the cool, clear water that rushes down glacier-fed
streams in hot July and August. Global climate change threatens to
eliminate half the Northwest’s snowpack, according to one estimate.
Glaciers are “frozen freshwater reservoirs which release water during
the drier summer months,” Richard S. Williams, Jr., of the U.S.
Geological Survey wrote in a report.
Glaciers also are important for tourism. Hartley Brown speaks
loudly into his headset so tourists can hear him over the whoopa-
whoopa-whoopa sound of his helicopter. He swoops the chopper down
into canyons and over a green blanket of coastal rainforest and deftly
rises upward to high snowline for the highlight of the 40-minute trip:
a view of the Comox glacier on British Columbia’s eastern Vancouver
Island. More than two hundred times, the pilot for Timberland
Helicopters has flown over the popular Canadian glacier. He thinks of
it as a giant ice sheet across the mountaintop, though from down
below, far far below, people gazing upward tend to think of it as a dis-
tant snowcap and picturesque backdrop to the harbor.
Brown sees firsthand that as the glacier shrinks, it exposes rocky
patches and new lakes. It also one day could shrink his clientele. As he
flies into the high country, he jots notes about the glacier’s movements
and points out its retreat to his tourists. Before the summer of 2002,
he says, “I had never seen our glacier recede back to the point—it’s like
a little snowcap. Also, one of the lakes up high, which usually only half
thaws, completely thawed out.”
146 Sally Deneen