I'm feeling really excited.

Just I can't wait to see where the journey takes me.

You know, this is just a very, very beginning.

Today on Windows to the Wild.

Gabriel Andrus takes us on a journey inspired by a photograph.

He wraps his arms around winter in New Hampshire to share its magic and its challenges.

So the cooking all happens on this old coal stove.

We got to keep it going.

We met Gabriel a few years ago in the galley of a schooner.

He was aboard the Shenandoah, working on an outdoor education program with students.

I kind of have to step outside your comfort zone in order to start learning and on the boat, you know, it's a novel environment and they're all working together.

Gabriel stayed in touch with us about his work on the schooner and his love of film making.

What we learned is that he had a story of his own on the front burner right now I'’’m planning, and I am skiing the length of New Hampshire from the Canadian border all the way south to my home town of Walpole, New Hampshire, to experience the new Hampshire winter landscape firsthand and observe how it's changing along the way.

Gabriel will film his adventure.

He's making a documentary about winter in New Hampshire.

Up in here until you get like on the main trail.

Yes.

And that really is the premise for this project is what winter was, what it is now and what it's becoming.

So any pre-trip jitters?

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely nerves for sure.

I think it would be I'd be more worried if I didn't have nerves.

He figures the trip will take about 20 days to complete.

He packs what he needs food, a tent, a sleeping bag and camera gear.

Yeah.

and my camera is right here.

It's, you know, obviously, it's a little nerve racking being a parent, but, I mean, we're kind of used to it with Gabe.

The various things he's done throughout his life, starting when he was, I would say, you know, in his at 12, 13 years old, you know, he's always been outdoors, mountain biking, swimming, climbing, whatever, you know.

So this is just a next level, if you will, for him, I think.

So, yeah, we're pretty excited for him.

Yeah.

I feel really happy to be immersed in this winter landscape because a lot of this winter hasn't felt super wintry.

So it's really special to come north and really to see all the trees laden with snow.

Gabriel loves winter and he's about to spend a lot of time knee deep in it.

Yeah, but you got to go up there, see that?

You know, there's this huge feeling of just almost relief and just anticipation and like this wash of excitement that's been washed over me because of how much has gone into this exact moment, you know, starting the journey.

His curiosity about what's happening to winter in New Hampshire came from a photograph, this photograph.

But I think back to that initial photo that I saw flipping through the photo album with my grandpa a year ago, and just seeing those pictures of him as a kid next to these massive snow banks and snow drifts, these old black and white photos and just being really inspired and wanting to learn more about winter, wanting to learn more about my grandpa and his connection to the winter landscape.

Am I supposed to be looking at the camera.

Or just yapping?

You can just look at me.

Oh, good God, I have to?

That's Bryant Andrus, Gabriel's grandfather.

Along with a sense of humor.

He has great memories of what winters were like when he was a kid.

He's got his grandson thinking about it, too, to.

The winters.

I think we used to get more snow.

Not necessarily deeper snow, but more storms with snow you had to really move, which was kind of a pain at times.

Sometimes you couldn't get away from the house for a week because the roads weren't open.

With my grandfather.

He's been keeping a weather log, I think, for the past 20 years, not his entire lifetime, but for the past 20 years or so, he's been keeping a daily weather log.

And he writes little illustrations, too, of what the weather looks like outside.

My grandmother, my father's mother.

Yeah, she did the exact very similar thing.

She kept a really close journal of daily activities, plus Bird.

She was a big bird watcher, so she always kept track of the birds up, come to her feeder.

So.

Yeah.

Something similar?

Yes.

Yep.

Pretty neat, actually.

Multigenerational.

Now, it skipped a generation.

It did.

Skipped right over me to Gabe.

All right, here we go.

With provisions packed on a sled.

Gabriel begins his 280 mile trip south from the Canadian border to Walpole, New Hampshire.

A quick wave to the Border Patrol, and he's on his way.

The journey Gabriel is taking began months ago.

He set out across the state to meet folks who could tell him what's happening to the winter that his grandfather knew.

So I moved to New Hampshire from Illinois in the eighties, late eighties.

And one of the first things we did when we got here was my parents took us skiing.

So we're going to head over to these soil frost tubes.

One of the people Gabriel filmed with is Elizabeth Burakovsky.

She teaches at the University of New Hampshire, and her love of winter began as a kid.

I have very vivid memories of our first time skiing, and it was an immediate like, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life.

And then I've also been cross-country skiing for a number of years now.

And having trails everywhere in New Hampshire really facilitates that.

Not having snow everywhere in New Hampshire makes it a lot more difficult.

Today, Elizabeth, studies and teaches about global environmental change.

So what we have here is marked in black as 2022.

That's our ground line.

Things like deforestation and how it might affect New Hampshire snowpack.

Her interest in it began years ago while working with other scientists on the Gulf of Maine.

A report on New Hampshire's climate got her attention.

And reading that report, you know, I saw two things that confirmed my experience.

One was that the Gulf of Maine is warming really fast.

It's one of the fastest warming bodies of water on Earth.

And the other was that winter in New Hampshire was our fastest warming season.

And as a skier and rider who had been skiing since the eighties, you know, 20 years later in the early 2000'’’s, seeing that experience confirmed in data was powerful for me.

And I wanted to do more about it.

I wanted to know more about why it was warming, how much has it warmed.

How much snow have we lost?

We'’’re in the heart of the mountains now, heart of the White Mountains.

Up here at Zealand campground.

Oh, look at those beautiful spruce laden hills.

Wow.

It's like we found winter up here in the north.

Beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful.

What do you think so far?

amazing.

Oh, it's so good.

It's just surreal to be out here after everything that's gone into the project and just to be in this beautiful winter wonderland is incredible and makes me so excited for everything that's to come and to really feel and experience the state of New Hampshire wholly and completely in the natural flora and fauna.

And I'm really excited to just immerse myself in winter.

I grew up skiing.

I love winter time.

We had the chance to talk with Gabriel a month before he began his ski trip.

What you see behind him should be snow.

We're in the seacoast area of New Hampshire.

When winter looks a bit different than it should.

My colleagues and I at UNH and other organizations took a much longer term look at how winter has changed over the past like hundred years or so.

So since the early 1900s to today, we've lost about three weeks of winter in New Hampshire.

And it's substantial.

That means not just warmer temperatures.

You know, we are losing our cold, but we're also losing extreme cold days.

So those temperatures that are cold enough to kill off nasty bugs like Hemlock Wooly Adelgid, which we're battling here in our yard right now, or emerald ash borer.

That's sickening our ash trees, I mean, cold temperatures are part of the ingredients for keeping those pests at bay.

So we've seen these warming trends that have really clearly pointed to a loss of cold and especially extreme cold.

We've also seen the trends pointing towards three weeks less of snow cover.

And when I'm talking about snow cover, I'm talking about natural snow cover, not technical snow made by snow making machines.

And that loss of snow cover has impacts, again, not just on skiing, but also on our ecosystems.

And when I look at, again, the cultural aspect, the loss of snow has an impact on some people's moods.

It's it changes your perspective of what it means to be winter in New Hampshire.

And that to me is is concerning.

Gabriel met with people who experienced winter in a variety of ways.

They study it, they play in it, and their livelihoods depend on it.

Farmers got to talk to some farmers and it affects haying in the hay harvest.

And because you don't have that insulation of snow over the hay, what happens is in the in the spring when everything melts, you can get freeze and it kills the hay.

And so there's big swaths of hay that they need to replant.

It's amazing.

All the people I've been able to meet, it's been one of the greatest parts about this project, I think so far is all the connections and but I think really what I've learned overall is that people love winter.

People see what's happening to winter time, and there's a general consensus that there's something that we should we should do about it.

Oh, It's the sun.

Oh, there it goes.

sun came out.

Fog is lifted.

Beautiful.

See the hills around.

Feels so nice.

My hip having a weird hip thing but kind of working through it feels okay.

I'm feeling pretty good.

Feeling strong.

Still.

Yeah.

Stoked that the sun.

The sun is out.

A little break in the clouds the trail.

Gabriel is on is an important economic corridor for the state.

It's where people from New England and beyond come to play and spend money winter attracts skiers, snowmobilers, and people who want to leave the city behind.

According to the state, that's worth more than $150 million a year.

But without snow, people stay away.

And what we found is that during those warm snowless winters that are equally challenging to even make snow, we would see a loss of about a billion dollars in economic activity across the United States.

And when we looked at the number of skier visits in the state of New Hampshire, our warm, snowy years cost us about 20% decline in skier visitation.

And there's also a cascade of ecological effects that, you know, changing winter has on animals and trees.

And I've gotten to learn so much through meeting so many amazing people about the effects of climate change on winter in New Hampshire.

And I feel really impassioned to share the beauty of this landscape with people and help people connect to it.

When I wrote an op ed for The Guardian back in 2015, one of the last lines I put in there was like, you know, if we don't act on climate change, the loss of skiing is going to be one of our least concerns.

And I still believe that to this day.

Gabriel moves across 15 miles of trail each day, and with each day, the snowpack becomes thinner.

Once daylight slips away, it's time to stop, set up camp and reflect.

Camp is all set up cozy, homey, lovely, beautiful spot.

Hear the distant sound of snowmobiles amongst these beautiful spruce and fir and moose.

Saw some moose tracks on the way Kind of do my weather observations soon.

I'll be interested to see how much snow is up here.

I mean, you're just sitting in your tent and peek out at the stars and surrounded by blanketed snowy landscape is really a special, special moment and reflect on my relationship with my grandfather and doing daily weather log, sort of able to connect with him in that way and have that in common with him.

Do that daily weather observation like he does.

And as I got further and further south and saw winter sort of slowly dissipate and melt and fade away, it affected me.

I was I was sad to see it and I realized that I really don't want to focus on the loss of winter.

I think as a person I tried to hang on to hope and optimism and really trying to communicate that in this film as well because there are a lot of solutions out there.

We have the solutions.

There's things that people can do as individuals, and there's stuff that we can do as a state and as a country that can make a difference.

So that gives me a lot of hope and, you know, younger generations and, you know, kids and, you know, that all gives me a lot of hope for the future when we think about what is going to happen in the future.

I mean, that's what's happened in the past.

So far.

We've already bought into that and accepted that that's what happened to us.

When we look into the future now, we have choices.

We can't change the past, but we can make decisions moving forward to change the trajectory that we're on for future winters.

And when we act, you know, in a way that is getting people to come together to reduce fossil fuel burning, reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, to embrace energy efficiency and use less energy overall, we see a future that's that's actually not too bad.

You can you can save, you know, a good a good chunk of winter by doing that.

First and foremost, when people are done watching the film, I want them to feel inspired.

I want them to feel hopeful.

I really want people to initially watch the film and just be like, Wow, like winter is beautiful and there's something that we can do.

You know, there's there is hope and just walk away feeling inspired.

So in creating this film, I've taken a lot of different perspectives.

I am taking a lot of different perspectives, and I really want it to be unifying as well and help people realize that this winter is something that we are all a winter in New Hampshire is something that we all are a part of.

We found Gabriel on the trail a week after he left us at the Canadian border.

Coffe.

Thanks so much.

Last night sleeping.

It was pretty warm.

I have a -20 sleeping bag, so I'm like super warm most nights, especially with the warm weather that we've been having.

So I usually kind of sleep like half out of my sleeping bag.

And then it snowed sort of in the middle of the night and kept snowing.

Was nice to wake up to.

A fresh layer of snow is the first time since the beginning of the trip that I've woken up to the snow.

Besides the time that it rained, my route has been adjusted.

Initially, I was going to go through the Pemigewasset Wilderness, but I've had some equipment issues.

The sole on the boot is starting to separate duct tape is working and for now.

So we'll see how that holds up.

And also, I just feel a little bit safer having a little bit more time to prepare a route, like a more detailed route through the Pemmy And the warm weather we've had makes some of the stream crossings questionable.

And in the forecast, you have some really warm days.

I've definitely been surprised by the lack of snow on some of the trails and just how little snow there is even here.

So it makes me a little nervous about how much further I'm going to be able to go The pace has really been ground to a really slow, slow pace is slow, slow pace because of the lack of snow and slow going.

Long day, hoping to make it to camp before dark.

After ten days and 158 miles on the trail, Gabriel ends his journey and returns home.

He encountered an adversary he couldn't beat.

Melting snow.

I was really only able to make it halfway on skis, made it to around the Thornton Campton area of New Hampshire.

So that was about halfway.

And the snow even started to thin as I was coming down into the White Mountains and Jefferson and even up to Milan, some of the trails are starting to kind of see bare spots.

And I was really surprised to see the snow thinning that soon.

Gabriel skied as far as winter would take him.

He leaves the trail earlier than expected, but takes a lot of experiences with him.

My initial goal with the expedition was to make it back here to Walpole.

I'd be coming right up this hill here and that was my initial goal to make it to Walpole, to ski here and to hike a little bit if necessary.

But I came up short on that goal because of how early I had to stop skiing.

So in that sense I came up short of the goal.

But I think in personally the goal was always to go out there and to really just connect with the winter landscape and be able to share that with other people through the film.

So in that sense, I think I accomplished the goal making our way down south to see the mountain.

Oh, oh, you can see the presidential range.

Oh my God.

Oh.

Oh, yeah.

That's exciting.

Check it out.

Cool.

There they are.

I realize that this story is so much bigger than just one person's journey, and so it's sort of been like a journey of me as a filmmaker and young person, just trying to figure out how to navigate the rapidly changing world and what I can do to sort of help and communicate in something that I love.

This is one small part of a very big issue.

But I think when you can break it down and find that passion and approach it with excitement and enthusiasm and come at it through something that you love, which for me is wintertime and for a lot of the people that I talk to is winter time, I think you can do a lot of good when you come at it from that passionate, inspired perspective, it's been a joy to share Gabriel's passion and journey into New Hampshire's winter.

I'm Willem Lange and I hope to see you again on Windows to the Wild.

Support for the production of Windows to the Wild is provided by the Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Bailey Charitable Foundation and viewers like you.

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Thank you.

Ugh, I'm going to make the outtakes.