It’s Hard to Keep Up
In so many ways, it is hard to keep up with the pace of change right now. A week ago we had mountains buried in snow across Southern California; now we have a staggering February whiplash melt.
If that's not enough velocity for you, Angeles National Forest officials have apparently decided to terminate winter mountaineering on Mount Baldy. Because. The good news, such as it is, is that they did not close the entire forest (though given their stated rationale, that would seem to be the logical endpoint).
On the climate front, extremes are not a local phenomenon. Extreme weather—and extremely rapid weather shifts—are happening globally with what seems to be ever-increasing frequency. Not since the great drought years of the 2010's (and perhaps not even then) has the future of North American skiing looked so tenuous.
And even this just scratches the surface. Right now, gigantic technological shifts are happening. Take note of the newly-rebranded U.S. Department of War(!), which just declared war on an American company—Anthropic, creator of Claude—in addition, of course, to removing Venezuela's and now Iran's leadership.
It's a lot to process. What I see is a world that is rapidly changing in ways that cannot be reversed. Rather than exhausting ourselves trying to roll back time (and however much we may wish we could go back), I guess we have to find a way to adjust to this ever-evolving planet of ours. There's really no alternative.
— March 1, 2026
Andy Lewicky is the author and creator of SierraDescents