Katharine Gage: New Hampshire's shrinking 4,000-footers

To The Daily Sun,

For our independent senior project during the last month of our senior year of high school, two friends and I are hiking New Hampshire’s 4,000-footers. There are currently 48 of them. We sat at the top of Osceola today, looking out over the horizon and chatting about the other mountains we had hiked and were planning to hike in the coming weeks.

We contemplated the 17-mile trek to the wooded summit of Owl’s Head, and once again joked about digging up the top of the 4,025 foot mountain to kick it off the 4,000-footers list. But then it hit me that elevation is measured from sea level, and we realized that this joke is much closer to reality than we thought. The sea level is rising due to climate change, so the elevation of every mountain is shrinking. After the hike, I did some research to determine the extent of this problem.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects we will see between two and six feet of sea level rise this century. This is a conservative estimate, because it does not account for the contribution from Antarctica melting. When accounting for all factors, climate scientist Dr. James Hansen writes that the possibility of twenty feet of sea level rise this century cannot be ruled out.

So what does this mean for the NH 4,000-footers? The future does not look bright for Tecumseh at 4,003 feet, Isolation at 4,004 feet, and Wambeck at 4,006 feet. The next couple might last a few decades longer, but Whiteface at 4,020 feet and Galehead at 4,024 feet will be the next to go, followed by – you guessed it – Owl’s Head.

So if you aspire to hike the 48 NH 4,000-footers, you should do so while they last. If you instead aspire to hike “all” the NH 4,000-footers but dread the 17-mile trek to the wooded summit of Owl’s Head, then just wait a while and your problem may be solved. But most importantly, if you wish to help protect our planet and the life on it from the worst case scenario of sea level rise and other devastating effects of climate change, please join Citizens’ Climate Lobby and ask your Congressmen to take immediate and effective action at cclusa.org/write.

Katharine Gage

Windham