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Frustrated with crowded resorts, more skiers risk avalanche hazards in backcountry

Published

10 months ago

February 23, 2025

Frustrated with crowded resorts, more skiers risk avalanche hazards in backcountry

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — On a clear, cold day in mid-February, we had spent hours on backcountry skis trudging up and across a remote mountainside in the eastern Sierra when we noticed that the trees directly above us were much smaller than the others we had passed along the way.

Still panting from the workout, I looked down the steep slope — something I had carefully avoided up to that point — and saw more suspiciously small trees stretching below us.

“Avalanche,” said my ski partner, Howie Schwartz, a veteran backcountry guide. “Huge one, back in the ’80s, reached all the way down to the valley.”

Schwartz demonstrates how to use probes designed to punch holes in avalanche debris to make contact with a buried ski partner.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

To his trained eye, the nearly vertical strip of new growth was a telling sign that we were slogging across the high-alpine version of a bowling alley. On the wrong day, tons of snow piled on the ridge a thousand feet above could release without warning and crash down like a wave that, instead of washing over us, would bury us and quickly solidify into the consistency of concrete.

The odds were firmly in our favor that day: There had been no new snow recently or abrupt changes in the temperature. Still, it was best to not linger, Schwartz said, with a nod to make sure I followed him across to the taller trees.

Avalanches are an unavoidable fact of life in the mountains. Two days after our trip, following a storm that dumped 6 feet of snow in 36 hours, a pair of ski patrollers were caught in an avalanche at nearby Mammoth Mountain resort. One was extracted without serious injury; the other was hospitalized but did not survive.

On the same day, two small avalanches struck at Palisades Tahoe. Nobody was injured, but a year ago four people were trapped and one died in an avalanche at the resort.

As shocking and sad as those cases are, they happened on some of the most aggressively protected slopes in the world. Large commercial ski resorts such as Mammoth and Palisades employ patrol teams that go out every morning before the lifts open to test the stability of the snowpack.

A lone skier glides down a backcountry slope.

If anything looks suspicious, they deliberately trigger avalanches — using explosives for big stashes of snow, using their skis and body weight for smaller ones — in the hope that no unexpected slides will occur when paying customers are enjoying themselves downhill.

But if things can go wrong at carefully managed resorts, imagine how much risk there is in the backcountry where nobody patrols, cellphone signals are spotty and, even if you can make a call, help might take hours to reach you.

On Monday, a 46-year-old backcountry skier was killed in an avalanche just south of Lake Tahoe. Due to what deputies called “extremely hazardous” conditions, it took an El Dorado County search-and-rescue team more than 24 hours to retrieve the body. They had to use explosives to set off avalanches in the area before it was safe for them to go in, according to a sheriff’s department post on Facebook.

In the last decade, at least 245 people in the U.S. have been killed by avalanches — the vast majority in the backcountry, according to data compiled by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center and the U.S. Forest Service. Some victims were hikers and snowmobilers, but more than half were skiers.

That’s a shocking number given how small the community of hardcore backcountry skiers is. Seemingly everyone who makes the sport a significant part of their lives has lost at least one friend to an avalanche.

“I know of far, far too many who have died,” said Schwartz, 52, who has been guiding professionally for three decades and helped design the curriculum for the country’s most commonly taught avalanche training course. “The longer you do this, the more people you know who die, even professionals, even other guides.”

Two skiers pause on a snowy slope to install climbing skins on their backcountry skis.

Despite the obvious risks, there has been a steady rise in the number of people heading to the backcountry to “earn their turns” in recent years. There was a surge 2020 after ski resorts shut down due to COVID-19, said Steve Mace, director of the Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center, which publishes daily updates on the weather and avalanche risk in California’s high country.

But the number of backcountry skiers didn’t plummet after the pandemic emergency ended, Mace said. One reason is the eye-opening cost of lift tickets: A single day of skiing at Mammoth can cost as much as $219 this season. Another is the crowds: Despite the high cost, standing in a lift line on a holiday weekend can feel a lot like staring at taillights in rush hour on the 405 Freeway.

And then there is the resort vibe. When 19th century California naturalist John Muir famously said, “The mountains are calling and I must go,” he couldn’t possibly have imagined slushy parking lots crowded with Teslas and short tempers, or bars selling $15 beers.

The allure — some would say siren song — of the backcountry is the absence of everything resorts represent.

Even on the most hectic days within the boundaries of Mammoth Mountain, the untouched, unnamed slopes nearby offer precious silence and solitude. With no ski lifts you have to work a lot harder, but there’s something purifying in the effort it takes to climb hundreds of vertical feet to reach the top of a perfect line. The descent through unimaginably light, untracked powder is the reward.

On a good day — with a knowledgeable partner and the avalanche odds in your favor — all it costs is a few calories and a bit of sweat.

Two skiiers navigate through pine trees on a snowy slope.

With all of that in mind, Schwartz and I drove to the end of Old Mammoth Road on a recent weekday, where the gleaming vacation homes end and the landscape turns steeply up toward the Sierra crest.

We glued “skins” to the bottoms of our skis, synthetic material that allows the skis to glide forward through the snow but stops them from sliding backward, making uphill travel possible. We clicked into bindings that held only our toes in place for the uphill, and then, with a quick adjustment, locked our heels in place for the downhill run.

The temperature was well below freezing, but we left most of our layers in our backpacks, because the uphill portion would be an intense workout. We didn’t want to get soaked in sweat on the way up only to freeze on the way down.

Our safety gear included avalanche beacons, devices about the size of an old Blackberry that can send and receive electronic signals. We strapped them to our chests so that if one of us got buried in an avalanche, the other would, theoretically, be able to find the beacon.

We also had probes: long, thin sticks that unfold like tent poles and are designed to punch holes in avalanche debris to make contact with a buried partner. You hope you don’t poke someone in the eye, but if you’re using one, it’s a life-or-death emergency, so it’s no time to be squeamish. We also had collapsible shovels to help us dig if we were lucky enough to find our friend.

We pulled out all the gear and tested it at the bottom of the hill, an exercise that was more sobering than reassuring. Every step in the search-and-rescue process would take time, and someone buried in snow is likely to suffocate within minutes. It became obvious that the best way to stay safe in the backcountry would be to avoid having to use the emergency gear altogether.

A skier holds an avalanche rescue beacon in a mittened hand.

That’s harder than it sounds. Predicting whether a snowy hillside might slide depends on a dizzying array of factors, most of which are not obvious to the naked eye. For example, avalanches usually occur on slopes with a 30-degree to 45-degree angle. I’ve been skiing, hiking and climbing for nearly four decades, and I can tell you if something is steep, but the mathematical degree of its slope? I have no idea.

Another crucial factor is the way snow is layered. Think of it like a cake. Some storms are warm and wet, like frosting; others are cold and dry, like crumbly pastry. If a firm layer is resting on top of a weak layer, that’s a recipe for disaster. But it’s difficult to know without encyclopedic knowledge of the season’s weather in that precise location, or digging a deep pit and carefully examining each striation — like performing a bit of impromptu archaeology before your workout.

“If I were going to tell you one thing that really gets my hackles up, it’s a persistent weak layer,” said Mace, the avalanche forecaster. All the other dangers are relatively short-lived. New snow from a storm settles pretty quickly, for example. But a weak layer buried underneath the surface can last for months.

That’s where the Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center website comes in. It provides a color-coded scale of the threat level that takes into account recent weather, the nature of the terrain and the likely consistency of the layers lurking beneath the surface.

Mace, 37, worked for years as a ski patroller and mountain guide before taking on the avalanche forecasting duties at the Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center. Despite the risks, he does almost all of his skiing in the backcountry.

“It brings me a lot of joy and peace. I love the uphill as much as the down,” he said. But Mace, too, said he has seen his share of tragedy. “I have been in this field a long time, and I have lost a lot of friends, people I loved.”

The most valuable lesson he has learned is patience. If he sees a particularly pretty line of snow carving down through some rocks, like an elegant white necklace, he doesn’t just throw on his skis, trudge up the hill and charge down, the way he did in his 20s.

These days, he studies the slope, like a gem cutter before lifting his saw. He watches the weather, assesses the layers and waits for the perfect dusting of powder. He accepts that it might take years for the stars to align.

“It’s a very harsh learning environment,” Mace said, with lots of unreliable “positive feedback.” You might ski something steep and wonderful, where nothing goes wrong, and think you’ve figured things out, he said.

“But there are a million reasons why an avalanche might not release” on any given day, Mace said. “It may not be that you made good choices; it may be that you just got lucky.”

Both Mace and Schwartz said it can be hard to find the right tone when offering advice to new backcountry skiers. They don’t want to underplay the dangers, but they also don’t want to discourage someone from pursuing what, for them, has become a passion.

“What you see more often than not,” Schwartz said, “is that people know what they’re doing is dangerous. They know there’s a mortal risk. But they do it anyway.”

I struggled, mightily, as Schwartz and I continued up and across the rugged slope. I’m a confident resort skier, but it was my first time in the backcountry and the unmanicured conditions proved tougher than I expected.

Wind had scoured away most of the powdery snow, and rain had left a slick, brittle crust. I grunted and cursed trying to get the unfamiliar skis to go where I pointed them. Schwartz smiled patiently and said the snow was “a little grabby,” anyone would struggle with it.

He didn’t, though.

When we finally approached the taller trees, the crunch-crunch of every stride grew steadily softer. There, sheltered beneath the branches of the towering pines, the snow was untouched, like a hillside covered in a foot and a half of down feathers.

Schwartz grinned and said, “This is it, man, this is why we’re here.”

Two skiers pass a "Road Closed" sign on their trek up a backcountry slope.

He reminded me to wait for him to get a good distance ahead. That way, if one of us kicked off an avalanche, we’d be far enough apart that it probably wouldn’t swallow us both, leaving one guy free to rescue the other.

And then he turned his skis parallel with the fall line, gathered some speed and started making effortless bouncy turns through the trees. The snow was so soft, he floated hundreds of feet to the valley floor in perfect silence.

Well, almost perfect. I could hear him laughing.

Business

Student Loan Borrowers in Default Could See Wages Garnished in Early 2026

Published

8 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Student Loan Borrowers in Default Could See Wages Garnished in Early 2026

The Trump administration will begin to garnish the pay of student loan borrowers in January, the Department of Education said Tuesday, stepping up a repayment enforcement effort that began this year.

Beginning the week of Jan. 7, roughly 1,000 borrowers who are in default will receive notices informing them of their status, according to an email from the department. The number of notices will increase on a monthly basis.

The collection activities are “conducted only after student and parent borrowers have been provided sufficient notice and opportunity to repay their loans,” according to the email, which was unsigned.

The announcement comes as many Americans are already struggling financially, and the cost of living is top of mind. The wage garnishing could compound the effects on lower-income families contending with a stressed economy, employment concerns and health care premiums that are set to rise for millions of people.

The email did not contain any details about the nature of the garnishment, such as how much would be deducted from wages, but according to the government’s student aid website, up to 15 percent of a borrower’s take-home pay can be withheld. The government typically directs employers to withhold a certain amount, similar to a payroll tax.

A borrower should be sent a notice of the government’s intent 30 days before the seizure begins, according to the website, StudentAid.gov.

The administration ended a five-year reprieve on student loan repayments in May, paving the way for forced collections — meaning tax refunds and other federal payments, like Social Security, could be withheld and applied toward debt payments.

That move ushered in the end of pandemic-era relief that began in March 2020, when payments were paused. More than 9 percent of total student debt reported between July and September was more than 90 days delinquent or in default, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In April, only one-third of the 38 million Americans who owed money for college or graduate school and should have been making payments actually were, according to government data.

“It’s going to be more painful as you move down the income distribution,” said Michael Roberts, a professor of finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. But, he added, borrowers have to contend with the fact that they did take out money, even as government policies allowed many to put the loans at the back of their minds.

After several extensions by the Biden administration, payments resumed in October 2023, but borrowers were not penalized for defaulting until last year. About five million borrowers are in default, and millions more are expected to be close to missing payments.

The government had signaled this year that it would send notices that could lead to the garnishing of a portion of a borrower’s paycheck. Being in collections and in default can damage credit scores.

The government garnished wages before the pandemic pause, said Betsy Mayotte, president of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors, which provides free advice for borrowers. But the 2020 collections pause was the first she was aware of, she said, and that may make the deductions more shocking for people who have not had to pay for years.

“There’s a lot of defaulted borrowers that think that there was a mistake made somewhere along the line, or the Department of Education forgot about them,” Ms. Mayotte said. “I think this is going to catch a lot of them off guard.”

The first day after a missed payment, a loan becomes delinquent. After a certain amount of time in delinquency, usually 270 days, the loan is considered in default — the kind of loan determines the time period. If someone defaults on a federal student loan, the entire balance becomes due immediately. Then the loan holder can begin collections, including on wages.

But there are options to reorganize the defaulted loans, including consolidation or rehabilitation, which requires making a certain number of consecutive payments determined by the holder.

Often, people who default on debt owe the smallest amounts, said Constantine Yannelis, an economics professor at the University of Cambridge who researches U.S. student loans.

“They’re often dropouts or they went to two-year, for-profit colleges, and people who spent many, many years in schools, like doctors or lawyers, have very low default rates,” he said.

This year, millions of borrowers saw their credit scores drop after the pause on penalties was lifted. If someone does not earn an income, the government can take the person to court. But, practically speaking, a borrower’s credit score will plummet.

Dr. Yannelis added that a common reason people default was that they were not aware of the repayment options. There are plans that allow borrowers to pay 10 percent of their income rather than having 15 percent garnished, for example.

The whiplash policy changes around the time of the pandemic were “a terrible thing from a borrower-welfare perspective,” Dr. Yannelis said. “Policy uncertainty is really terrible for borrowers.”

Business

Kevin Costner’s western ‘Horizon’ faces more claims of unpaid fees

Published

9 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Kevin Costner’s western ‘Horizon’ faces more claims of unpaid fees

In the midst of attempting to complete filming on his western anthology ”Horizon: An American Saga,” Kevin Costner is facing another legal dispute over the production.

On Monday, Western Costume Co. sued Costner and the production companies behind the epic western, claiming unpaid costume fees and damages to some of the clothing during the filming of the series’ second episode.

“The costumes are costly to replace if damaged or not returned,” states the complaint, which included copies of invoices for about $134,000 in costume rentals. “Without a reasonable basis for doing so and/or with reckless regard to the consequences, defendants failed to pay for the rented costumes and failed to return the costumes undamaged.”

Western Costume, the iconic business based in North Hollywood, is seeking to recover roughly $440,000, including legal fees, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

A spokesperson for Costner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal and financial problems that have dogged the sprawling western drama, which Costner directed, co-wrote, starred in and partially funded.

In May, United Costume Corp., sued the production, claiming $350,000 in unpaid fees for the first two chapters of “Horizon.” Two months later, the costume firm filed to dismiss the suit with prejudice.

In May, Devyn LaBella, a stunt performer on “Chapter 2,” sued the production for sexual discrimination, harassment and retaliation in Los Angeles Superior Court. LaBella alleged an unscripted rape scene was filmed without the presence of a contractually mandated intimacy coordinator.

In a motion filed in August to get the suit tossed, Costner said he had reviewed LaBella’s complaint and was “shocked at the false and misleading allegations she was making.”

In October, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied Costner’s anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss the case. The judge also denied LaBella’s claim that Costner had interfered with her civil rights through the use of intimidation or coercion with respect to her participation in the filming of a rape scene, but allowed several of her other claims to proceed.

The case is pending.

The production is also facing an arbitration claim for alleged breaches in its co-financing agreement with its distributor New Line Cinema and City National Bank, “Horizon” bondholder, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

In June 2024, “Chapter 1” of the planned four-part series was released in theaters followed by a streaming broadcast on HBO Max, but it was largely panned by critics.

In its review, The Times described “Horizon” as “a massive boondoggle, a misguided and excruciatingly tedious cinematic experience.”

It failed at the box office, grossing just $38.8 million worldwide, on a reported $100 million budget.

“Chapter 2” premiered at the Venice International Film Festival last September, but its theatrical release was pulled and remains indefinitely delayed, while the final two chapters remain in production or development, according to IMDb.

Business

Snoopy is everywhere right now — from jewelry to pimple patches. Why?

Published

21 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Snoopy is everywhere right now — from jewelry to pimple patches. Why?

As a child, Clara Spars, who grew up in Charles M. Schulz’s adoptive hometown of Santa Rosa, assumed that every city had life-size “Peanuts” statues dotting its streets.

After all, Spars saw the sculptures everywhere she went — in the Santa Rosa Plaza, at Montgomery Village, outside downtown’s Empire Cleaners. When she and her family inevitably left town and didn’t stumble upon Charlie Brown and his motley crew, she was perplexed.

Whatever void she felt then is long gone, since the beagle has become a pop culture darling, adorning all manner of merchandise — from pimple patches to luxury handbags. Spars herself is the proud owner of a Baggu x Peanuts earbuds case and is regularly gifted Snoopy apparel and accessories.

“It’s so funny to see him everywhere because I’m like, ‘Oh, finally!’” Spars said.

The spike in Snoopy products has been especially pronounced this year with the 75th anniversary of “Peanuts,” a.k.a. Snoopy’s 75th birthday. But the grip Snoopy currently has on pop culture and the retail industry runs deeper than anniversary buzz. According to Sony, which last week acquired majority ownership of the “Peanuts” franchise, the IP is worth half a billion dollars.

To be clear, Snoopy has always been popular. Despite his owner being the “Peanuts” strip’s main character and the namesake for most of the franchise’s adaptations, Snoopy was inarguably its breakout star. He was the winner of a 2001 New York Times poll about readers’ favorite “Peanuts” characters, with 35% of the vote.

This year, the Charles M. Schulz Museum celebrated the 75th anniversary of the “Peanuts” comic strip’s debut.

(Brennan Spark / Charles M. Schulz Museum)

But the veritable Snoopymania possessing today’s consumers really exploded with the social media boom of the early 2010s, said Melissa Menta, senior vice president of global brand and communications for Peanuts Worldwide.

That’s also when the company saw the first signs of uncharacteristically high brand engagement, Menta said. She largely attributed the success of “Peanuts” on social media to the comic strip’s suitability to visual platforms like Instagram.

“No one reads the comic strips in newspapers anymore,” Menta said, “but if you think about it, a four-panel comic strip, it’s actually an Instagram carousel.”

Then, in 2023, Peanuts Worldwide launched the campaign that made Snoopy truly viral.

That year, the brand partnered with the American Red Cross to create a graphic tee as a gift for blood donors. The shirt, which featured Snoopy’s alter ego Joe Cool and the message “Be Cool. Give Blood,” unexpectedly became internet-famous. In the first week of the collaboration, the Red Cross saw a 40% increase in donation appointments, with 75% of donors under the age of 34.

“People went crazy over it,” Menta said, and journalists started asking her, “Why?”

Her answer? “Snoopy is cute and cool. He’s everything you want to be.”

Art of the Peanuts characters hangs at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center.

The Red Cross collaboration was so popular that Peanuts Worldwide brought it back this year, releasing four new shirt designs. Again, the Snoopy fandom — plus some Woodstock enthusiasts — responded, with 250,000 blood donation appointments made nationwide in the month after the collection’s launch.

In addition to the Red Cross partnership, Peanuts Worldwide this year has rolled out collaborations with all kinds of retailers, from luxury brands like Coach and Kith to mass-market powerhouses like Krispy Kreme and Starbucks. Menta said licensed product volume is greater than ever, estimating that the brand currently has more than 1,200 licensees in “almost every territory around the world,” which is approximately four times the number it had 40 years ago.

Then again, at that time, Schulz enjoyed and regularly executed veto power when it came to product proposals, and licensing rules were laid out in what former Times staff writer Carla Lazzareschi called the “Bible.”

“The five-pound, 12-inch-by-18-inch binder given every new licensee establishes accepted poses for each character and painstakingly details their personalities,” Lazzareschi wrote in a 1987 Times story. “Snoopy, for example, is said to be an ‘extrovert beagle with a Walter Mitty complex.’ The guidelines cover even such matters as Snoopy’s grip on a tennis racquet.”

Although licensing has expanded greatly since then, Menta said she and her retail development associates “try hard not to just slap a character onto a T-shirt.” Their goal is to honor Schulz’s storytelling, she added, and with 18,000 “Peanuts” strips in the archive, licensees have plenty of material to pull from.

Rick Vargas, the senior vice president of merchandising and marketing at specialty retailer BoxLunch, said his team regularly returns to the Schulz archives to mine material that could resonate with customers.

“As long as you have a fresh look at what that IP has to offer, there’s always something to find. There’s always a new product to build,” Vargas said.

Indeed, this has been one of BoxLunch’s strongest years in terms of sales of “Peanuts” products, and Snoopy merchandise specifically, the executive said.

Bejeweled keychains of Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

Daniella Yacobovsky, co-founder of the celebrity-favorite accessory retailer BaubleBar, reported similar high sales for the brand’s recent “Peanuts” collection.

“Especially for people who are consistent BaubleBar fans, every time we introduce new character IP, there is this huge excitement from that fandom that we are bringing their favorite characters to life,” Yacobovsky said.

The bestselling item in the collection, the Peanuts Friends Forever Charm Bracelet, sold out in one day. Plus, customers have reached out with new ideas for products linked to specific “Peanuts” storylines.

More recently, Peanuts Worldwide has focused on marketing to younger costumers in response to unprecedented brand engagement from Gen Z. In November, it launched a collaboration with Starface, whose cult-favorite pimple patches are a staple for teens and young adults. The Snoopy stickers have already sold out on Ulta.com, Starface founder Julie Schott said in an emailed statement, adding that the brand is fielding requests for restocks.

“We know it’s a certified hit when resale on Depop and EBay starts to spike,” Schott said.

The same thing happened in 2023, when a CVS plush of Snoopy in a puffer jacket (possibly the dog’s most internet-famous iteration to date) sold out in-store and started cropping up on EBay — for more than triple the original price.

The culprits were Gen-Zers fawning over how cute cozy Snoopy was, often on social media.

Yellow and white pouches with Snoopy pimple patches.

Hannah Guy Casey, senior director of brand and marketing at Peanuts Worldwide, said in 2024, the official Snoopy TikTok account gained 1.1 million followers, and attracted 85.4 million video views and 17.6 million engagements. This year, the account has gained another 1.2 million followers, and racked up 106.5 million video views and 23.2 million engagements.

Guy Casey noted that TikTok is where the brand experiences much of its engagement among Gen Z fans.

Indeed, the platform is a hot spot for fan-created Snoopy content, from memes featuring the puffer jacket to compilations of his most relatable moments. Several Snoopy fan accounts, including one dedicated to a music-loving Snoopy plushie, boast well over half a million followers.

Caryn Iwakiri, a speech and language pathologist at Sunnyvale’s Lakewood Tech EQ Elementary School whose classroom is Snoopy-themed, recently took an impromptu trip to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa after seeing its welcome center decked out with Snoopy decor on TikTok. Once she arrived, she realized the museum was celebrating the “Peanuts” 75th anniversary.

Two red construction-paper doghouses with Snoopy on each roof.

It’s a familiar story for Schulz Museum director Gina Huntsinger.

“Last December, we were packed, and I was at the front talking to people, and I just randomly asked this group, ‘Why are you here?’”

It turned out that the friends had traveled from Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas to meet in Santa Rosa and visit the museum after seeing it on TikTok.

According to Stephanie King, marketing director at the Schulz Museum, the establishment is experiencing its highest-ever admissions since opening in 2002. In the 2024–2025 season, the museum increased its attendance by nearly 45% from the previous year.

Huntsinger said she’s enjoyed watching young visitors experience the museum in new ways.

In the museum’s education room, where visitors typically trace characters from the original Schulz comics or fill out “Peanuts” coloring pages, Gen Z museumgoers are sketching pop culture renditions of Snoopy — Snoopy as rock band Pierce the Veil, Snoopy as pop star Charli XCX.

“When our social media team puts them up [online], there’s these comments among this generation that gets this, and they’re having conversations about it,” Huntsinger said. “It’s dynamic, it’s fun, it’s creative. It makes me feel like there’s hope in the world.”

A white wall with "Passport to Peanuts" art.

Laurel Roxas felt similarly when they first discovered “Peanuts” as a kid while playing the “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” video game on their PlayStation Portable. For Roxas, who is Filipino, it was Snoopy and not the “Peanuts” children who resonated most.

“Nobody was Asian. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not even in the story,’” they said.

Because Snoopy was so simply drawn, Roxas added, he was easy to project onto. They felt similarly about Hello Kitty; with little identifying features or dialogue of their own, the characters were blank canvases for their own personification.

Roxas visited Snoopy Museum Tokyo with their brother last year. They purchased so much Snoopy merchandise — “everything I could get my hands on” — that they had to buy additional luggage to bring it home.

For some Snoopy enthusiasts, the high volume of Snoopy products borders on oversaturation, threatening to cheapen the spirit of the character.

Growing up, Bella Shingledecker loved the holiday season because it meant that the “Peanuts” animated specials would be back on the air. It was that sense of impermanence, she believes, that made the films special.

Now, when she sees stacks of Snoopy cookie jars or other trend-driven products at big-box stores like T.J. Maxx, it strikes her as a bit sad.

“It just feels very unwanted,” she said. For those who buy such objects, she said she can’t help but wonder, “Will this pass your aesthetic test next year?”

Lina Jeong, for one, isn’t worried that Snoopy’s star will fade.

Jeong’s affinity for the whimsical beagle was passed down to her from her parents, who furnished their home with commemorative “Peanuts” coffee table books. But she fell in love with Snoopy the first time she saw “Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown,” which she rewatches every Valentine’s Day.

This past year, she was fresh out of a relationship when the holiday rolled around and she found herself tearing up during scenes of Snoopy making Valentine’s crafts for his friends.

“Maybe I was hyper-emotional from everything that had happened, but I remember being so struck,” that the special celebrated platonic love over romantic love, Jeong said.

It was a great comfort to her at the time, she said, and she knows many others have felt that same solace from “Peanuts” media — especially from its dear dog.

“Snoopy is such a cultural pillar that I feel like fads can’t just wash it off,” she said.

Soon, she added, she plans to move those “Peanuts” coffee table books into her own apartment in L.A.