Abstract
Climate change is contributing to the rapid warming of mountain environments, resulting in glacial retreat, diminished snowpacks, and permafrost thaw. Such rapid changes have transformed the riskscape of mountaineering routes, altering climbing conditions and increasing objective hazards. In response, this study used a mixed methods approach that combines statistical climatological analysis with archival content analysis and semi-structured interviews with mountain guides to explore the relationship between climate change, route conditions, hazards, and adaptations in the Abbot Pass area of Banff National Park (Canada). Results revealed that long-term climatic shifts contributed to change in climbing conditions and objective hazards across all routes, creating a typology of climate-driven route evolution based on the original route characteristics. Mountaineers adapted to such change by employing spatial/activity and temporal substitutions to mitigate risks and exploit emergent opportunities. However, the use of such strategies was influenced by demographic (i.e., age, years of experience) and socio-cultural factors (i.e., place attachment, risk tolerance) and limited by hard limits to adaptation. Given the projected trajectory of climate change, our findings highlight the potential inevitability of mountaineers encountering such limits, resulting in forced transformations and significant loss and damages. Therefore, it is imperative to examine both the economic and non-economic consequences of these shifts and evaluate the ability of mountaineers and tourism providers to navigate a significantly transformed climate future in mountainous areas. While focused on a Canadian context, the findings and methodologies developed herein are relevant to other mountain geographies, where climate change is rapidly transforming environments frequented by mountaineers and represents a call to action for more research in field of climate change, adaptation, and mountaineering.
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Notes
Alpine grades provide a measure that integrates and summarizes all aspects of a route (e.g., technical difficulty, length, severity of terrain) to describe the degree of commitment and difficulty, ranked from easiest to hardest.
Yosemite Decimal System (YDS) — a 5-part grading system that refers to rock climbing difficulty based on the difficulty level of a routes hardest move.
Vertical height gain — based on the 4th class terrain and harder.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the interviewees and the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides for sharing their valuable time and insights; the Environment and Climate Change Canada for their generous use of climatological data; and the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies for sharing their considerable expertise, time, and resources.
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KH was supported by a doctoral scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (752-2023-2001) and the Lillian Agnes Fellowship from the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. GM was supported by a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship.
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KH contributed to the data identification and collection, statistical analysis, archival content analysis, writing, and project management. GM provided methodological support and guidance on analysis and contributed to the writing. Both authors have read and approved the submitted version.
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Hanly, K., McDowell, G. The evolution of “riskscapes”: 100 years of climate change and mountaineering activity in the Lake Louise area of the Canadian Rockies. Climatic Change 177, 49 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-024-03698-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-024-03698-2