Unhappy Trails

"Water break?"

Andy and Peter agree, so we drop our packs, setting them against big logs that were thrown up last winter by the churning river. We're at Kennedy Hot Springs in the northern Cascades. It's late spring, and today we have the place to ourselves. In a few weeks, the good-natured racket of families, dogs, and Boy Scouts will compete with the din of the rushing of the river.

It's no surprise that this is a much-loved place. Reached by an easy hike through a virgin forest of outsized fir and cedar, the hot springs are nestled beneath perennially ice-clad peaks. If you had enough energy and time, trails from this spot could take you to more than a million acres of roadless wilderness. It's a favorite jumping-off point for trekkers of the Pacific Crest Trail, the storied footpath connecting Canada to Mexico. And for my fellow climbers and me, it's a stop on the most popular route up volcanic Glacier Peak, Washington's fourth highest mountain.

It was one year ago when we stopped for water on an overcast day. What I didn't know then was that Kennedy Hot Springs had just four months to live.

In October 2003, when frost-nipped backpackers usually linger to soak beneath yellow alder leaves, a record-smashing rainstorm lasting nearly a week drenched nearby Darrington with 6 inches of rain in 24 hours. The storm unleashed a slough of mud, rocks, and timber that crashed down the overflowing White Chuck River and Kennedy Creek, burying the hot springs.

As Ron DeHart, with the U.S. Forest Service, crisply put it to me, "It's gone. It doesn't exist anymore as far as we know."

The real tragedy, however, is that the destruction of Kennedy Hot Springs is just an appetizer on the menu of climate change. And the next course is already on its way. In fact, scientists say that flooding is one of the principal effects of global warming in the Northwest.

There is an overwhelming consensus among atmospheric scientists that human-caused gases—from cars, factories, and other sources—are slowly but steadily cranking up the planet's thermostat. Studies of satellite readings, ocean temperatures, glacial retreats, melting ice sheets, soil samples, tree rings, and coral all point to the same culprit: human-sponsored greenhouse gases. Though the phenomenon is commonly called global warming, the effects of climate change may take a variety of different forms, including cooling in some places and dramatic temperature swings in others.

At the University of Washington, a multidepartmental collaboration known as Climate Impacts Group (CIG) puts a regional face on the global problem. In one recent report, CIG research scientist Philip Mote, together with 18 other scientists, documented the likely effects of global warming in the Northwest. Using seven different computer models to simulate future climatic conditions, they predicted more flooding in some rivers, when precipitation falls in sudden bursts of rain.

Hmmm . . . sounds familiar.

I asked Dr. Mote whether the Kennedy Hot Springs–crushing rainstorms were caused by climate change.

In the cautious parlance of scientists everywhere, he told me that no climate model—no matter how sophisticated—can detect the fingerprints of global warming on any specific event. Science is capable only of predicting patterns and trends; it can't say for certain whether a particular storm would have happened in a world without global warming.

"But were the storms the sort of thing one would expect from climate change?" I asked.

He shrugged and admitted, "It kind of fits the picture."

The feds agree. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency worries that "more precipitation may come in short, intense bursts . . . which could lead to more flooding." And in a warmer climate, more precipitation falls as rain (and less as snow), which immediately runs off into streams and rivers.

As Mote points out, no one can say for certain whether global warming caused October's floods. Nevertheless, the floods are the kind that scientists have been predicting—and what they expect in the future. That means Kennedy Hot Springs may not be the last of our favorite places to meet an untimely demise. And it means that by sizing up last year's flood damage, we can get a glimpse of what global warming may do to Washington's trails.

100 Hikes Underwater

As it turns out, last October's floods did a lot more than bury Kennedy Hot Springs. You can forget about your plans for hiking from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail. Twenty-five to 30 miles of the path is gone, including a number of critical bridges.

"Gone?" I asked DeHart, at the Forest Service. "What do you mean when you say 'gone'?"

"It's gone," he barked. "It washed off the mountain. You can't even see where the trail was."

He ticked off the list of flood casualties: the Mountain Loop Highway, the Monte Cristo ghost town, and Baker Lake; 13 campgrounds, 15 trails, 20 trail bridges, 40 roads—all unusable until they're repaired.

When I asked DeHart how soon things will be patched up, he gave a short, sad laugh. "It's absolutely a budget killer," he explained. "There's no way this organization has the wherewithal to fix it."