Lauren Fox was in the midst of a 14-day Himalayan trek when rocks began falling around her. Earlier in the day she’d watched an avalanche from a distance; this time, one of her guide’s was yelling “RUN!”
Fox had traveled to Nepal’s Manang District in September 2024 to report on the collision of climate change and outdoor recreation in one of the world’s most iconic mountaineering locations. The Himalayas, a rugged mountain range between China and India, include the world’s tallest mountain, Mount Everest (8,848 meters), and more than 100 peaks that stand over 7,200 meters above sea level. (Denali, the highest peak in North America, is 6,190 meters high.)
Teahouses along the trail provide food and shelter for hikers who, in turn, support the economy. Fox had hired two women, Tila Roka and Sabi Tilija Pun, as her guides on Annapurna Circuit, and was paying for nightly meals and accommodations and access to the Annapurna Conservation Area.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Photos courtesy of Lauren Fox.
Tourism and agriculture drive the region’s economy, but climate change threatens both. Rising temperatures fuel weather extremes, strengthening rain storms and extending dry periods. Receding glaciers add to an already high risk of flooding.
Fox spent the day before the avalanche sheltered in a teahouse as unseasonably early snow fell. She watched as the teahouse owners surveyed their destroyed crops while simultaneously fretting about the safety of a mountaineering group that had left the night before. Above them, snow was destabilizing the mountainside; in the valley below, deadly floods raged.
Fox—who dodged the rockslide unscathed—was in Nepal with the support of a Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowship. She’d traveled around the globe to speak with people whose careers are affected by climate change. Now, she was witnessing those impacts firsthand. “Everything that I’d been researching happened in front of me,” she says.
A Personal Connection to Climate Change
Fox grew up hiking, rock climbing and snowboarding in and around Aspen, Colo., and sees outdoor recreation as a powerful way to connect people to the realities of climate change. “Our whole town revolves around how much snow there is. It’s all everyone talks about,” she says. Climate change—and in particular its impact on snowfall and forest fires—has dominated those conversations in recent years.
She learned of the Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowships as a student in Global Health Storytelling, a course cotaught by faculty from COM and the BU School of Public Health. The Pulitzer Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to journalism and education, supports dozens of reporting fellowships each year, including two for BU students. Fox’s proposal to study the intersection of climate and recreation was accepted in spring 2024.
“I wanted to see what that looks like at the extreme, somewhere people have been living for generations,” she says.
On-the-Ground Reporting
In the months leading up to her trip, Fox spoke with nonprofits in Nepal about climate change, reached out to climbers for advice on travel logistics, and discussed her plans with her Pulitzer-assigned mentor, a US-based journalist from Nepal. She arranged to attend a local training camp for aspiring women guides—the subject of a short film that Fox reported while working on her climate change story. And she enlisted Tila and Sabi, alums of the camp, to guide her on the Annapurna Circuit and serve as translators for her reporting.
From her advance reporting, she learned about efforts to mitigate climate change impacts, like planting more trees along riverbanks to prevent flooding. But she also heard stories of younger generations, disillusioned by the vanishing career opportunities, leaving the region to study and never returning.
I wanted to see what that looks like at the extreme, somewhere people have been living for generations.
Lauren Fox
Fox’s trip was carefully timed—she would arrive after the monsoon season and early in the mountaineering season. But of course, climate change has rendered such traditional distinctions obsolete. The storm that Fox watched from a teahouse was part of the heaviest rain in Nepal since 1970. More than 200 people died in flooding in the country in late September 2024. Homes were destroyed and infrastructure washed away.
“It’s a country that produces very little of the carbon dioxide emissions that they’re being affected by, but everyone knows what’s happening to the environment and what causes it,” Fox says. “It’s snowing and raining at the wrong times and in the wrong places. People don’t know when to plant their crops.” And guides can no longer rely on a steady income. Following the storm, three of Tila’s trekking clients cancelled trips.
“I wanted the story to be solutions based,” Fox says. “Once I got there, I realized that a lot of people don’t know what to do and are asking for solutions.”
Since her time in Nepal, Fox published her primary story in the Nepali Timesand completed her film about female guides, which she’s submitting to film festivals. Another story, about the day of the avalanche, was published by the Pulitzer Center.
“I was witness to the raw human impacts. No longer abstract statistics of glacial-outburst floods or rising temperatures,” Fox says. “This feeling could not be quantified.”
Although she didn’t find the solutions she’d sought, the experience did provide some clarity. “I want to bring human voices into stories about the climate,” she says.
