Wildfires snuffing out outdoor fun
Many forced to change plans
LOS ANGELES – Andy Farquhar’s plans for an outdoor adventure have gone up in smoke twice this summer.
The retired attorney and teacher from the Philadelphia area had planned to hike with a friend for several weeks on the Pacific Crest Trail north of Lake Tahoe until the second-largest fire in California history stampeded across the Sierra Nevada, closing a 160-mile stretch of the trail and blanketing the region in thick smoke.
“I saw a satellite view of where we were going, and all it was was fire,” he said.
The two scrambled and chose a seemingly fireproof backup plan: canoeing a massive network of lakes and bogs on the Minnesota-canada border. That plan went poof when lightningsparked fires forced the closure of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
“We’re batting zero now,” Farquhar said.
Untold numbers of camping, fishing, hiking, horseback riding, rafting and biking adventures have been scrapped as U.S. wildfires have scorched nearly 7,900 drought-ravaged square miles this year. The vast majority are on public lands in the West that also serve as summer playgrounds.
More than 24,000 camping reservations out of 3.2 million so far this year have been canceled by wildfires, according to data kept by Recreation.gov, which books campsites on most federal lands. That does not account for no-shows or people who left early.
All national forests are closed in California to prioritize fighting blazes, including the a fire near Lake Tahoe, a year-round outdoor paradise that attracts skiers, hikers, mountain bikers, boaters and paddleboarders.
Lassen Volcanic National Park is also closed because of the another wildfire, the blaze that forced Farquhar to cancel his plan to hike from the Lake Tahoe area to the Oregon border.
In June, fires closed several national forests in Arizona, derailing plans Kristin Clark made with family to camp by Lynx Lake in Prescott National
Forest for her mother’s 70th birthday.
She reserved the campsite in February. As the vacation neared, she watched as wildfires grew, bringing new closures. She knew her trip was over before it began.
“That is the reality in Arizona. More and more frequently, we get wildfires,” Clark said. “I was bummed. My husband was bummed. We were really looking forward to a week in nature to kind of disconnect.”
Intense wildfires have coincided with a sharp uptick in people trying to find serenity in the wild after being cooped up during the coronavirus pandemic. Competition for online campground and backpacking permit reservations is stiff, and they can fill up six months in advance, leaving less flexibility for spontaneous trips or easy rescheduling.
Wildfire smoke has increasingly become a fixture on the Western landscape, ranging from a strong campfire odor in its most mild form to a serious health hazard that causes coughing fits and headaches.
For many, though, smoke appears to be an irritating but tolerable inconvenience when pricey or hard-to-get plans have been made.
A study of 10 years of campground bookings on federal land found relatively few cancellations or departures when smoke was present. The study by Resources for the Future, an independent nonprofit research institution, suggested campers were less likely to pull out of popular destinations like Glacier National Park in Montana or Yosemite National Park in California.
Those patterns could change, particularly after the past two years of severe, pervasive for which the study didn’t account, said Margaret Walls, a senior fellow with Resources for the Future who co-authored the work.
“In the past, maybe you just went. You didn’t think about the smoke,” Walls said. “You used to be able to say, ‘It’ll be all right around the Grand Canyon.’ Not anymore.”