Climate change and recreation: A warming planet will change how we play

BC Government photo

This article is part of a series of stories exploring the connection between climate change and recreation. Through conversations with scientists, advocates, land managers, recreationalists, and more, we’ll look at how a warming world and more extreme weather is impacting the activities we love. But more than glum news, we’re interested in how the recreation industry is already hard at work preparing for change, reducing the impacts, and actively trying to slow global warming. 

Climate change killed the Abbot Pass Hut. In 1922 Swiss mountain guides built the refuge in a lofty col in the Canadian Rockies, right on the B.C.-Alberta border. For 100 years it was one of the highest roofed accommodation in Canada. No longer.

In recent years the frozen ground under the hut started thawing, compromising the integrity of the building. The Alpine Club of Canada, which managed the hut, closed it in 2018 and, after several studies, Parks Canada decided the only option was to scrap the shelter. In June contractors disassembled the Abbot Pass Hut rock by rock. 

"It's emotional. It's heartbreaking," says Keith Haberl, the director of marketing and communications at the ACC. "Nobody wanted to see it go."

The demise of the hut is an example of the impacts climate change will have on recreation in British Columbia. Warmer summers, shorter winters, more intense precipitation, droughts and forest fire: the symptoms of global warming are influencing everything from biodiversity loss to how the public uses trails, the cost of building infrastructure to just getting to trailheads and campgrounds. We’re only just beginning to notice the effects, but before long they will be ubiquitous and experience altering. 

This is the first in a series of articles exploring the connection between climate change and recreation. Through conversations with scientists, advocates, land managers, recreationalists, and more, we’ll look at how a warming world and more extreme weather is impacting the activities we love. But more than glum news, we’re interested in how the recreation industry is already hard at work preparing for change, reducing the impacts, and actively trying to slow global warming. 

“Climate change is a growing concern and a major risk,”says Mathieu Roy, the chief trail experience officer for the Trans Canada Trail. He says climate change figures into almost every decision a trail organisation like the TCT makes. 

Right now it’s mostly reactive: dealing with sections of trail washed out by floods in B.C., closed by wildfires in Newfoundland, or threatened by rising sea levels on the east coast. But whether rebuilding or starting from scratch, the Trans Canada Trail is thinking about how it can adapt what it does to warmer, wilder weather, says Roy. That means rerouting trails away from vulnerable shorelines, building bridges to withstand bigger floods, and thinking about constructing trails so they do double duty as fire breaks, flood control, or even community evacuation routes. 

Climate change is also changing how and when people recreate. Consider mountaineering. Falling rock was always a major hazard, but as snow and ice melts earlier in the year, exposing loose rocks, rock fall has noticeably increased, says Mike Adolph, the technical director for the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides. To mitigate the risk, climbers tackle routes earlier in the spring, which adds more avalanche danger. Hotter summers melt snow bridges on glaciers making some summer routes impassable and take longer to fill with snow during the winter, impacting skiing. With a growth in climbing and skiing, the deteriorating conditions are funnelling more and more people towards fewer and fewer safe routes. 

Adolph worries the number of accidents is going to climb. “Every summer there are one or two near misses on established routes,” he says. So far, the number of accidents in B.C. hasn’t climbed enough to be statistically significant, but mountain guides, like Adolph, are dropping old rules of thumb, adjusting their scheduling and worrying. 

Some of the change is so dramatic it’s beyond the reach of risk mitigation efforts. The same mountain warming that led to the Abbot Pass Hut’s demise is also leading to shrinking glaciers and melting permafrost, which create more unstable slopes, rock faces and icefalls, increasing the number of major landslides and debris flows. There’s even evidence that melting glaciers lead to more volcanic activity.

“Many of these hazards are increasing in both frequency and severity as the climate warms and alpine permafrost melts,” writes Brent Ward, a professor and chair of Department of Earth Sciences at Simon Fraser University, and co-director Centre for Natural Hazards Research. “These risks are increasing…[because] the more people and infrastructure in warming mountains, means an increased likelihood of being affected by these hazards.”

One study noted two-thirds of large rock slides in northern B.C. originated in steep mountain faces where permafrost was likely present, but was melting. Another in the southern part of the province noted that landslides were most common in areas that had recently lost a glacier. Further, severe drought, record heat and large wildfires in southern B.C. last summer contributed to the extensive landslides, debris flows and flooding caused by heavy rain in November, says Ward. 

All these disasters are adding up. A preliminary assessment after the November floods pegged the damage to campgrounds and trails on Crown land at more than $500,000. That doesn’t include eroded trails and debris-covered campgrounds inside provincial parks or the cost of repairing washed out forestry roads that lead to trailheads and campgrounds. 

Climate change will have less obvious and largely unknown impacts as well, says Trans Canada Trail’s Roy. In a hotter future, if people use trails earlier in the day or even at night to avoid the heat, what does that mean for park operating hours or the toilet cleaning schedule? Can trail design help collect snow to extend cross country ski seasons or better provide ecosystem services to reduce biodiversity loss? What can gear companies do to help us continue recreating during smokey summers? 

He doesn’t have answers to most of these questions, but TCT is collecting data on all of it so they can make better predictions. There's no time to waste.

“I’m seeing floods, fires, wind storms, something happening every month, across the country," Roy says. "We’re talking millions of dollars in damages to trails. With the speed it is coming at us, we need to adjust more quickly.”

Ryan Stuart started writing about his adventures as a way to get paid to play. Twenty years later he’s still at it. Look for his name in magazines like Outside, Men’s Journal, Ski Canada, online at Hakai and The Narwhal. When he’s not typing at his home office in Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley, you can find him skiing, hiking, mountain biking, surfing, paddling or fishing somewhere nearby.