Climate

Yosemite National Park

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In 1859 John Muir built a Sugar Pine cabin some yards from the spot above and lived in the Valley for 2 years. Sugar Pines can live 500 years, so the decades John Muir spent saving this valley are just a fraction of their long lives. Muir saved Yosemite, lost neighboring Hetch Hetchy to a dam, and influenced Teddy Roosevelt who ended up protecting 150 million acres of forests nationally. Now the park is a World Heritage Site too and my favorite for waterfalls. But in the near future, the crown jewel of John Muir’s legacy may still be lost forever.

Some species of trees still living here evolved in the Jurassic, long before the Chicxulub asteroid wiped out most dinosaurs and millions of years before humans arrived. Millenia ago, natives started fires for hunting and agriculture, and over a century ago, the timber industry clear cut forests throughout the Sierra Nevadas. But humans now present a threat bigger than any logging or dam. Now the threat is carbon pollution, which dwarfs all others, even logging. Fires burn hotter, more frequently and many times larger, because we have changed our planet’s climate dramatically—and it’s still getting worse. Species here, despite evolving 1000 times earlier than humans, are now threatened with extinction by our vehicle exhaust.

10 years ago, the 250,000+ acre Rim Fire burned over 10% of Yosemite, killing many Sugar Pines and Sequoias that had survived fires for centuries or millennia. At the time, it was the second largest fire in California history. Now it doesn’t even make the top ten. I visited the park with my family before that fire, and the park was undamaged. Now, the park is still beautiful, but it is still scarred badly, with many areas still closed.

Yosemite Falls should not be so glorious in the photo above taken in July. The snow should still be on the mountain tops, melting slowly over many months. Instead, every decade is warmer than the last and the rate of temperature rise in increasing. The Lyell Glacier that Muir saw in Yosemite has lost over 95% of its mass, no longer moves and will be gone in a few years. Man has messed up the climate, and many of the species, including the largest trees, can no longer live here safely. And it’s not the fault of Smoky Bear telling people to put out their campfires, it’s the fault of people who continue to drive gas powered vehicles. And yet the park is full of them, blithely surveying the damage they contributed to and continue to cause. If I were in charge of the park service, I would convert the shuttle buses to electric and ban all fossil fuel vehicles.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

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This boiling mud pot in the Sulphur Works area is so close to the road that the shoulder has collapsed. There’s a parking area a minute walk away and the views include many other steamy volcanic features, rough landscapes broken by eruptions and snow in July. The trail to the larger Bumpass Hell area was blocked by snow from the parking lot. I didn’t care, since I’ve been there before with my kids, before the fire. We stayed at Drakesbad Guest Ranch with their amazing natural hot spring pool where we swam and floated under the Milky Way, one of my fondest memories of any national park.

In 2021, the 1 million acre Dixie Fire severely burned 70% of this Northern California park, mostly the wilderness area. With Mount Lassen over 10,000 feet, many of the trees in the park grow extremely slowly, so the fire damage will be visible for up to a century, assuming we don’t have another fire before the forest can recover. Like much of the park, Drakesbad Ranch is still closed, although most buildings were saved. The devastation is terrible to see.

The park newsletter does not mention the Climate Crisis in a complete denial of reality, but it did congratulate itself for ‘30 years of fuel reduction that decreased burn severity’. We now live in the Pyrocene Epoch, the Age of Fire, where man has created conditions for multiple million acre fires each year, when the most beautiful places can be destroyed in a few hours. Once we imagined our parks would be there for future generations to enjoy. Now we wonder if they will still be there for our next vacation.

Ice Age National Scenic & Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trails

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The Ice Age National Scenic Trail in Wisconsin is now a NPS unit, so I will create a new entry for it. The trail will link most Ice Age National Scientific Reserves in the area, which are NPS affiliates. The Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail runs from Montana to the Pacific Ocean. I’m keeping this post about all three together here.

Wisconsin’s scenic trail curves around the edge of the last ice age glacier 26,000-10,000 years ago, which covered the north near Lake Superior and east near Lake Michigan with a massive ice sheet. The trail extends from near the confluence of the Mississippi and St Croix Rivers east towards Michigan’s upper peninsula, south to Madison and back up the Door Peninsula between Green Bay and Lake Michigan. South and west of the trail contains both an area that had glaciers before that and a ‘driftless’ area without signs of glaciation. The glaciers stripped the earth of many layers of soil, leaving a flat land of lakes with short forests. The Wisconsin Dells, with its horizontally carved lines in the rock, is at the edge of the last glacier and the driftless area, where the ice sheets pressed and cut into landscapes that had not been glaciated before. From there the Wisconsin River flows down through the gentle driftless area to meet the Mississippi near Effigy Mounds. Frank Lloyd Wright build Taliesin in the driftless area, which reminded him of the verdant rolling hills of Wales, which were similarly carved by glaciers.

The massive glaciers ran west along the Canadian border all the way to the Pacific, past Glacier and Lakes Roosevelt (see photo) and Chelan. The ice covered what is now Seattle and down between Olympic and Mt Rainier. The floods geologic trail refers to the stretch from Grant-Kohr’s Ranch and Big Hole Battlefield in western Montana, through Idaho’s panhandle, across the giant flood plains between the Grand Coulee Dam and the Nez Perce park, down past the Whitman Mission, down the Columbia River Gorge to Fort Vancouver, up the Willamette Valley and finally down past Lewis & Clark’s fort through the wide mouth of the Columbia.

The simple geologic explanation for the vast floodplains and dramatic gorges, is that the ice melted, repeatedly collapsing ice dams between mountains, releasing huge waves of water and reforming the landscape. Much of the rich farming soil we depend on was placed there in a natural climate change event. Washington state produces billions of dollars worth of produce annually on those floodplains, including apples, milk, potatoes, wheat, beef, hops, hay, cherries, grapes and onions.

What some folks don’t seem to understand is that while the end of the last ice age was ‘sudden’ in geologic terms, man-made climate change is exponentially more abrupt. Imagine a deer seeing a hiker slowly approaching on foot and choosing to flee by jumping into the woods. Now imagine a deer seeing a truck approaching at 75 miles an hour and not having time to respond. That’s the difference between natural and man-made climate change. We don’t have time to stare into the headlights.

North Cascades National Park

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This photo looks down from the High Bridge at the end of the road 11 miles from Stehekin (rent an e-bike) on Lake Chelan. Here the bridge connects to the Pacific Crest Trail which cuts northeast across the southern wilderness on the last leg to Canada. The northern wilderness section of the multi-park complex is across the Skagit River and west of Ross Lake up to the Canadian border.

Both the north and south roadless wilderness areas have many high peaks with receding glaciers, so the hiking isn’t easy. And the wildlife includes black bears, cougars, gray wolves and grizzly bears. Careless campers closed one campsite by leaving food for bears to find, and another was closed due to grizzlies fighting over a nearby carcass. Being long of tooth and short of courage, I just hiked the short Agnes Gorge Trail on the edge of the wilderness to catch some more glimpses of rushing Stehekin River.

Wilderness, of course, has now ended. Now that our carbon pollution is changing the climate globally, there is nowhere on earth unaffected by humans. With that change comes responsibility. Since we no longer allow nature to keep itself in equilibrium, we must act to restore balance. We broke it, so now we own it. The park has increasingly fierce wildfires, which we exacerbated. So the extra damage is our fault, and we must fix it.

Whiskeytown National Recreation Area

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The 220’ three-tiered Whiskeytown Falls were a local secret known only to loggers and a few others until rediscovered by the park service staff in 2004. The ‘strenuous’ trail opened in 2006, and, since the shaded trail is in the 3% of the park not completely burned by the 230,000 acre Carr Fire in 2018, I decided to hike it earlier this summer, rather than broil on the water in my kayak.

But then these folks from Cal-Fire Bully Choop & Sugar Pine CC #9 passed me on my way up. Rather than complain, I gave them a bit of applause and thanked them for their heroism. They were taking turns cooling off in the 50° water. Of course, it’s not fair to expect these young people to risk their lives to protect our forests and property from the Climate Crisis we are all guilty of making worse, so they deserve our thanks all the more.

At the visitor center, I noticed that they are using an underwater curtain to block the warm surface water from continuing downstream from the dam. This innovation helps keep the water temperature low enough for Chinook salmon eggs and fry in the Sacramento River. I’m not sure how long it will work given the Climate Crisis, but it’s the least we can do after damming Clear Creek. Maybe we could ban gas-powered boats too?

I was disappointed to read the park newsletter with three long articles about the fire and zero mention of the Climate Crisis. I expect my tax dollars to be used more wisely. Denying the crisis only gives us less time to act.

Lava Beds National Monument

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One of the surprising number of caves here, this photo is just inside the entrance of Valentine, a large multi-tube lava cave that’s fun to explore. I also like Skull Cave (named after animal skulls, mostly). It used to have a pristine ice floor at the bottom, but that’s turned dark, uneven and much smaller due to people. Merrill Cave used to have an ice floor large enough for skating, but it melted recently due to global warming, drained into a hole, and opened up a warm air vent. The same sort of thing has happened to at least a dozen other caves here, so you’re too late for the underground ice experience here, forever.

And it’s definitely a cave park. Except for parking lots, few walk around above ground. In 2000 the 85,000 acre Caldwell Fire burned 2/3 of the park, so I’m not sure what’s left to see besides dead trees and, of course, the lava beds themselves, which are black, rough and inhospitable. I recommend going to the visitor center to borrow a large lantern if you don’t have one, otherwise it can be hard to see down the more distant passages. They also have helmets if you’re a smaller, more flexible person who is willing to try the many more challenging caves. And, if you’re wondering what type of caves they have here (Goblin, Lizard or Vampire), I have to say Ghost. The caves have a haunted atmosphere with many strangely cold corners deep in the earth. Enjoy!

Buffalo National River

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[Sorry to hop around so much, but I want to wrap up a region]. Last year folks celebrated the 50th anniversary of the river’s designation, but somehow Arkansas allowed a concentrated 6,000 hog feeding operation on Big Creek to pollute the Buffalo River with runoff from tons of pig crap. The resulting increase in algae and e-coli bacteria was damaging water quality in the park significantly. After protests, the hog operation was halted (and paid off handsomely), but local politicians have not been willing to make the ban permanent.

I woke in Tyler Bend Campground all ready to paddle 10 miles of the middle section from Baker Ford to Gilbert (where someone from the General Store would leave my car), but a sudden line of thunderstorms dissuaded me. That storm system killed three people in Texas with tornadoes and brought lots of lightning to this river in Arkansas, so I was glad to hit the road early instead. Pollution from either industrial ranching or fossil fuel burning is taking the fun out of some of my best trips.

Despite rural development—like Branson—, the Ozarks are still very beautiful, and the river is 135 miles of free-flowing nature. Nearby there’s a 100 foot wide natural bridge, one of many alcoves and interesting geologic features in the area that likely caused the French trappers to describe the area as having arches or “aux arcs” (say it out loud).

Americans, being poor linguists and unaware of the remote arches and bridges upstream, have long been confused about the origin of the name “Ozarks”, speculating that the French were talking about natives with curved bows or some bend in the river. This is moronic, as all bows and rivers are curved, so the French explorers would have no reason to use such a useless description. Americans had similar problems in understanding the French name for the Canadian River, which obviously derived from the Spanish word cañada, as the river passes Texas’ Palo Duro, the second largest US canyon. Rather than try to understand foreign languages, Americans assumed the French explorers did not know how to Canada by river.

Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument

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I figure I climbed Mt Katahdin in Maine over a dozen times as a kid, so I decided just to hike out here to Orin Falls (above), about 6 miles round trip. Surprisingly little has changed in the decades since I last visited. The logging roads are still long, unpaved, bouncy and largely unmarked, and they still have lean to’s for the Appalachian Trail that officially ends on the mountain. The Swift Brook Road one lane bridge is still spectacular, and there are still moose here, wandering out in the roads and ducking into the woods to avoid being photographed. (Definitely a “save this park for offline use” ahead of time if you’re using the NPS app, otherwise you could get lost. My watch kept asking me if I wanted to send an SOS.)

The counselors/ environmentalists who brought us here as summer campers to teach us about nature would be pleased that this is now a national monument, but they would see that not everything has remained unchanged. Man has dramatically altered our climate, so the species here are virtually all in decline. The environmentalists may have won a battle over the logging industry here, but we’re losing the war. On the tour road I stopped at Lynx Pond—one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen as a teenager—, but it was surrounded by dead trees and was much drier than I remember. The slow growing forests of Canada and the northern states are at risk of wildfire, if they’re not burning already. It is not enough to save places like this. We must also save the climate.

Taos Pueblo

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Taos Pueblo has been continuously occupied for over 1,000 years—perhaps far longer—, much older than European settlements, and it is a World Heritage Site. Archaeologists have not extensively excavated the area—because the Red Willow people are still living there—, but there is evidence of trade with Mesa Verde and other early Native American settlements dating back many centuries. The multistory building above is home to many families, and folks on the upper floors climb ladders to access their apartments. While modern doors and windows have been added, the families, community and tribal government preserve the village in its original form, using mostly traditional building materials and avoiding electricity and plumbing anywhere within the village.

The pueblo sits below the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a significant portion of which were returned to the community by President Nixon, including the Blue Lake and the headwaters of the Red Willow Creek. The creek runs through the middle of the village, is the sole source of water and flows into the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande Gorge southwest of Taos is strikingly beautiful, as are the Palisades near Eagle’s Nest northeast. The pueblos in this area are at the crossroads of ancient trading routes from coast to coast and to Central America.

Taos means Red Willow in the Tiwa language, and it is a town in an area crowded with history. Coronado arrived in 1540, and the Spanish built the first San Geronimo Church in 1620. When their Native dances, songs and worship were prohibited, the people here joined the Pueblo Revolt, which destroyed this any many other churches and forced the Spanish to retreat to what is now Mexico. The Spanish eventually reconquered the area and rebuilt the church. After the Spanish were forced to cede their territory to end the Spanish American War, the US Cavalry eventually was sent to subdue the people, who took refuge in the church. There were no survivors of the artillery bombardment, and the old church grounds are now a cemetery. The new San Geronimo Church contains a statue of the Virgin Mary from the old church, and the villagers practice both their indigenous Nature-focused religion and Catholicism with indigenous elements.

The locals give tours, sell handicrafts and run bakeries and cafes. Al’Thloo’s (grandmother’s) Cafe serves excellent Piñon Coffee and a Taos Pueblo Taco on freshly baked Frybread. The proprietress explained that the creek is currently near record flooding, due to the unnatural heat this Spring, and she informed me about the havoc that the Climate Crisis is having on snowpack, wildfires, drought, irrigation, crops and ranching. Her husband fought in WWII, and her family has been involved in supporting Native American causes for decades from here to Standing Rock. I wish more people were as clear-eyed and passionate as she is.

What About Charging?

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It’s easier than you may think. Does your car tell you when you’re about to drive too far from the nearest gas station? Does it include fuel stops in your itinerary automatically, or let you know the prices before you decide where to fuel up? When was the last time you filled up for free? Can you fuel up overnight while staying at Mesa Verde, in a campground, while eating a burger, drinking a white mocha or watching the base jumpers fly off the bridge into the Snake River Gorge in Twin Falls, Idaho, above?

I have only had a few tricky charging situations so far. One was at the Dairy Queen in Needles, California, where every time the owner updates his seasonal specials, his sign truck blocks 3 of the 4 chargers for much of the day. I asked him why he didn’t tell Tesla in advance, so that the cars would route drivers to a different charger, but that never occurred to him. I also suggested that he could park the truck on the other side of the sign and only block 2 of 12 gas pumps, and he looked at me like I was crazy. I decided not to buy any ice cream while waiting.

Recently, I was unable to contact the owner of a JuiceBox charger in Terlingua, Texas, so I just charged up a little for free. One more tricky situation was at the supercharger in Lamar, Colorado, where the town was celebrating some event and the street was temporarily blocked off. But while I was waiting, a town councilwoman came up to offer me BBQ and asked if I was enjoying the live band. I had a beer to help me survive the wait.

Like any vehicle, you can go further if you slow down or turn off heating/cooling and open the windows. To extend my range while traveling in remote areas, I use the free PlugShare App to scout out my charging options and use my adapters (standard J1772, RV 50v, RV 30v, and rarely CCS). The trick is to remember that you need to sleep somewhere on a long road trip, so just find a campground with electricity or a hotel near a slow charger and plug in over night. Tesla destination chargers can be found in some spectacular areas, and they’re often free to hotel guests. [No, I’m not compensated by Tesla in any way].

A few folks quibble that this is not entirely “zero carbon” travel, but it’s not my fault if the grid isn’t fully renewable yet. The sooner we all switch to electric vehicles, the sooner fossil fuel goes extinct. My vehicle doesn’t burn carbon, and I can’t help exhaling carbon dioxide. And to clarify my rules, I have two different goals: 1) to travel to as many places as I can without burning carbon and 2) to enjoy those places, which sometimes involves burning a little bit of carbon to get around the parks.

Most folks seem to understand that driving EV’s save money compared to gas, but I don’t think people fully appreciate the difference. While I was on my way to the restroom, a guy asked me how much it cost to fill up, so I told him usually less than $20. He said, “just like my truck”, but I know his truck costs $200 to fill up at those gas prices. And both vehicles have comparable range. Math isn’t that hard.

I tried to convince the rangers at Death Valley to do more to encourage visitors to switch to EV’s, but they said that they don’t want to force people to buy “expensive vehicles”. A $100,000 5th Wheel or $200,000 Class A rig only goes a mile or two per dollar of fuel. I go at least ten times that, over 15 miles per dollar. It’s very easy to save $10,000 in fuel costs per year switching to an EV, and even more if you go on long road trips, find free charging or use solar to recharge at home.

But the real reason to switch to EV’s is to save life on Earth. Why wait?