I am winding down my CIO career in Higher Ed so my thoughts wander more frequently to my next career of backpacking. It does appear that it will be a co-career with continued involvement with leading technological change in various industries, but backpacking is the immediate driver.

This brings me to the subject of this post which is the drought in the West. The headlines have been informing us for a few years now how serious this drought is especially in California. But those headlines focus on identifiable concerns such as the supply of drinking water or irrigation of our nation’s richest agricultural region. This last year has been extremely significant for the drought due to the lack of snow pack in the Sierra or Cascade mountain ranges. Now this starts to get my attention because backpackers need water and water is heavy to carry.

I only plan on backpacking in Oregon and Washington this year which normally would not present a water concern, however, snowpack in the Cascades is at amazingly low. Washington’s governor just declared a drought emergency referencing snowpack at 16% of normal. From what I see the snowpack is better in northern Washington but the rest of the Northwest is in trouble. Not for drinking water but for some agricultural and higher threat for forest fires, but most important backpacking. My real concern is for Oregon which does not have as many lakes in the mountains as are in Washington. I hope to backpack through Crater lake in early July which normally would be a great challenge since it is rare to be able to get into Crater lake before July. Today there is no snow there, Crater Lake Webcam. The good news for that segment is that I can refill water in crater lake, but the challenge will be how much water I will need to carry to get to the next lake.

I want to do the PCT from Willamette pass to Mt. Jefferson which would take me through the Sisters. There are a few lakes but typically you count on snow melt streams. In fact I have backpacked in the east side of the Sisters knowing that the streams would only be running in late afternoon when the temperatures heated up. But many of those streams will be dry so I will be very grateful to trip reports from other hikers to help plan the water resupply strategy. I rely heavily on the many member reports on http://www.oregonhikers.org along with data from http://www.pcta.org and with high hopes for how Halfmile’s iPhone app will help guide me.

Washington will be better thanks to more lakes but it could mean missing exceptional flowers and it will cause different concerns about wildlife. My highlight segment for this year will be Spider Gap- Buck Creek Pass Loop in NC Washington. Good news is that the snow pack is much closer to normal in the north so our first week of August trip should be awesome.