MELTING MOUNTAINS: ALPINE SPECIES

View the online story and print replica, published as the A1 centerpiece on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025, in The Seattle Times.

In the summer of 2025, I worked with Seattle Times’ Climate Lab reporters to illustrate a glacier and five alpine species in a special story about Washington’s melting mountains. Scientists recognize that snowpack is declining, replaced by rain and delayed by dry, hot summers. As snowpack disappears, glaciers are retreating and tree lines are advancing upward. Sensitive species that depend on a narrow range of temperatures and parklike subalpine and alpine habitats may be unable to adapt to climate shifts.

Featured species include: mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus), pika (Ochotona princeps), avalanche lilies (Erythronium montanum), white-tailed ptarmigans (Lagopus leucura rainierensis), and Olympic marmot (Marmota olympus).

Process

Here’s some of my preliminary sketches.

Due to newsroom budget and time constraints, I couldn’t observe each species “in the wild.” Instead, I referred to a combination of images (8-16 photos per species) to come up with ideal portraits of each. I try to seek references in the public domain whenever possible, such as from the National Park Service, or sites that allow educational or media use with attribution, like Cornell Lab’s eBird.org.

I rendered the final art in Procreate on the iPad, leaning on my background in crowquill pen-and-ink and watercolor techniques. The ink linework—incorporating varied line weights—tends to reproduce well in print and online, and complements the classic feel of newspaper design.