» On Trail August 2008 » Washington Trails www.wta.org “High Still Air”

Desolation Peak lookout in the North Cascades. Once an integral part of fire preven- tion, Washington’s remote lookout cabine are now prime hiking destinations.

The rich history of fire lookouts in Washington State What is the lure of a lookout site—the views? call your own. And the government even paid The solitude? Nostalgia for a simpler life? Per- you to be there!” haps it is, as Gary Snyder wrote in his poem, “You felt like you owned the world up there,” “Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout,” said Bev Heebner of the ten summers she and “Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup, her husband Charlie spent atop Oregon Butte in Looking down for miles southeastern Washington. Through high still air”. The people who staffed lookouts were For decades, people have spent summers as outdoorsmen and teachers, young and retired, fire lookouts scanning the skies for smoke or loners and couples, poets and scientists. They enemy airplanes, reading pulp fiction, chasing committed to two months at the height of the mice and befriending mountain goats, eating fire season, from snowmelt in July through the beans and hauling water. “It was a great life,” first snows of September. It was a summer job wrote Ray Kresek in Fire Lookouts of the North- like no other. west. “You woke up in the morning to the finest The first lookout station was merely a pup views of all. You breathed the freshest air in tent and a tall tree on a high mountain, called a the world. You ate and did the chores when the “rag camp.” Western Washington’s first lookout spirit moved you. You had a whole mountain to cabin was built in 1910 atop Red Mountain near By Judy Bentley Mount Adams. Devastating fires, such as the www.wta.org August 2008 » Washington Trails On Trail «

Preserving Lookout History

Ray and Rita Kresek started the Historic Lookout Project and the Fire Bob Adler (left) and Forest Clark, members of Friends of Kelly Butte, at work restoring Judy Bentley Lookout Museum lookout window frames. Preservation of fire lookouts is primarily done by volunteers. in their Spokane Yacolt Burn of 1902, convinced federal, state site. On bare mountains, the cabins were built home to spread and private timber companies to construct on the ground. Among the trees, the lookouts knowledge about a vast network of fire lookout stations in the perched on towers. Cables and ground wires and encourage 1920s. During the Great Depression, the Civil- secured them in high winds and protected the preservation ian Conservation Corps added hundreds more them from lightning. They were furnished with of lookouts. The and set up lines of communication by stretch- a radio or telephone, a few old pots, a bunk, a one-acre museum ing 44,750 miles of telephone lines through the lantern and a fire finder. features 19,000 woods. At the system’s peak, there were 5,000 No matter how seductive the views or relics from lookout lookouts nationwide—more than half of them refreshing the air, the first job of a lookout was towers, includ- in four Northwestern states—including 685 in to spot fires. In the early years, the lookout was ing Smokey Bear Washington. also a first responder. Equipped with a fire-pack treasures, eight The highest was at 12,276 feet on Mount with several gallons of water that he could different fire find- Adams, but it was used for only three seasons, hoist onto his back, he could set off to dowse a ers from around then abandoned to the year-round ice. The most fire in its earliest stages, especially fires started the world, an L-6 difficult to reach was Three Fingers, perched by lightning. More often, however, his job was lookout tower cab, above an eagle’s nest in view of Mount Baker; to report fires by telephone or radio so crews a replica of a 1929 the approach was a series of ladders spiked could be dispatched quickly. To locate fires pre- spar tree lookout into a 100-foot rock wall. Some say the most cisely, the lookout used the fire finder, common- 60 feet tall, and a extensive views came from Pyramid Peak, the ly called an “Osborne” after designer William B. 1953 Chevrolet fire highest lookout in the Lake Chelan District. Osborne. The Osborne stood on a table in the truck, a 200-gal- Others say the most spectacular views were center of the cabin and mapped out a radius of lon pumper. The from Desolation Peak in the North Cascades, 22 miles in every direction. The lookout found museum is free, immortalized by Jack Kerouac in his novels the fire through a sliding vertical sight, took an open anytime by Desolation Angels and The Dharma Bums. Only azimuth reading (degrees from the north pole) appointment be- one person ever spent the summer on top of and determined the fire’s distance from the tween March and Mount St. Helens; a proposed cabin atop Mount lookout using landmarks and quarter sections November. Call Rainier was never realized. of the map. 509-466-9171 for The cabins and towers came in standard Each lookout contained its own panoramic reservations. designs, remembered affectionately by their photo, showing every stand of trees, meadow, government labels: D-6 cupola, D-1 cupola, R-3 peak, and valley in the vicinity. The photos log cabin, L-4, L-5, L-6 and R-5. The most typi- were produced in the 1930s by a team carry- cal lookout, an L-4 or L-5, was a 14- or 10-foot- ing 100 pounds of camera gear to 1,400 lookout square “cab” with a shingle roof, heavy shut- sites and 200 patrol points in Oregon and Wash- ters, and windows on all sides. It was pre-cut, ington. The photographer perched a tripod on hauled to the mountain top, and assembled on- the peak of the cabin roof to take each photo- » On Trail August 2008 » Washington Trails www.wta.org

graph. Stehekin wilderness.” Then “there was this to- Although lookouts didn’t scan the skies 24 tal, unearthly silence—not a sound whatsoever. Renting a hours a day, they soon knew the terrain and the It was as if time itself was suspended.” Lookout patterns of fire starts, such as sleeper fires. Ray Food, water, and wood or fuel were hauled Kresek described a sleeper fire as a lightning by mule team or “shank’s mare.” In the begin- fire that lies in a pocket at night. As soon as ning of the season, snowmelt provided water; Only Evergreen the sun hits it at dawn, it sends up a puff of later the lookout hiked daily to the nearest lake, Mountain smoke. The fire may then lie dormant for as pond, or spring. “The water kept getting heavi- Lookout, ten long as a week, until the fuel burns on a hot, er; the trail kept getting longer; the groceries miles northeast of windy day. A keen lookout can spot the initial got heavier,” said Heebner of their decision to Skykomish, and puff of smoke and watch for it when the fire retire from lookout duty before someone asked, the Clearwater flares later. “Aren’t you getting too old for this?” Lookout Cabin Lightning storms are spectacular on the Women and couples became more common in in southeastern peaks. “We lived for the lightning storms,” lookouts during World War II, when the govern- Washington south Heebner said. “Wham, bang…very exciting.” ment staffed the stations year-round as part of of Pomeroy can be Outside, the buildings were protected with the Aircraft Warning Service. Their task was to rented. But both heavy copper lightning arrestors. Inside, the watch for enemy planes, particularly flying in have been unavail- lookout could rest his feet on an insulated stool. from the west. After the war, lookout stations able recently due “There is little or no danger involved if one took a more peaceful turn. Poets of the Beat to storm damage stays inside,” said former lookout and glaciolo- Generation, including Gary Snyder, Jack Ker- to the access road gist Austin Post, but “the blinding, tremendous ouac and Phillip Whalen spent summers scan- and repair work, flash and crackle of the lightning bolts strik- ning the North Cascades skies not only for fires respectively. To ing only a few feet overhead is still impressive but for inspiration. Snyder crafted many poems check availability, enough.” among the peaks in addition to Kerouac’s two call the National Another attraction was silence, the high still novelized memoirs. The 2007 summer lookout at Recreation Reser- air Snyder described. Lookouts learned the Desolation posted lines from Kerouac’s jour- vation Service at rhythms of the day. Occasionally on Pyramid nal on the window: “On Desolation, I was the 1-877-444-677 or Mountain, Post experienced five minutes at alonest man in the world.” visit www. the end of the day when “the shadows were By the mid-1970s, lookout jobs were scarce. ReserveUSA.com. extending long across the myriad peaks of the The Washington Department of Natural

The author, right, and Kay Forsythe visit the Oregon Butte lookout in Southeast Washington. Unlike many lookout cabins, it’s still staffed in the summer. www.wta.org August 2008 » Washington Trails On Trail «

Resources, the U.S. Forest Service, and the National Park Service relied more on technol- Four Great Lookout Hikes ogy and aerial reconnaissance and, eventually there were more people in the woods with cell Kelly Butte phones and GPS systems. Washington now South Cascades has 105 lookouts still standing, with only 30 of About 2 miles east of Greenwater on WA 410, turn north those still actively used for firefighting. Some on FR 70. Drive 8 miles to FR 7030 on the were deconstructed by govern- left; follow it 6.4 miles to a rough road on ment agencies worried about the left for the Kelly Butte trailhead. Walk liability, some have been left to or drive 0.6 miles to the beginning of rot and some have been rescued the trail. A new trail slightly to the east of by friends. the older trail offers an alternative to the The National Park Service crumbling rock and dirt gully you ascend maintains ten lookouts in Wash- with ropes. The climb to the lookout is ington: four in Mount Rainier approximately 1.5 miles, with 900 feet National Park, and three each in of elevation gain. Full views of Mount North Cascades and Olympic Na- Rainier and meadows full of wildflowers tional Parks. “They take heroics on a clear early summer day. The lookout to maintain them,” says Laurin is under restoration. Huffman, of the Park Service’s Seattle office. The goal is to keep Oregon Butte them from becoming a nuisance Umatilla National Forest and to make them available From Dayton, take Eckler Mountain Road for occasional fire-watch uses. south to FR 46 (Skyline Road) to FR 4608 With fuel prices rising, Huffman at the Godman Guard Station, 30 miles suggests, people on the ground Kelly Butte lookout. Judy Bentley south of Dayton. Turn left and continue may actually become more eco- six miles to the Teepee Trailhead. The hike nomical this summer than aerial to the lookout is 3 miles. After 1 mile, the trail branches surveillance. Tod Johnson at into lower and upper routes; the lower is more direct, North Cascades National Park describes a fire shadier, and newer. The higher route goes past West Butte, management policy that includes three parts: reconnects with the trail just before the spring. At a junc- some aerial reconnaissance; national real-time tion with Trail 3113/6144, bear right to the lookout, which is lightning maps developed from ground sensor still staffed in the summers. data sent via satellite to a control center; and lookouts at Desolation, Copper Mountain and Columbia Peak occasionally Sourdough. “Because it’s wilder- ness,” says Johnson, “we don’t want to fly if we Northeast Washington don’t have to. We don’t want to put people in Find the trailhead for Kettle Crest Trail 13 at Sherman Pass the backcountry if we don’t have to.” The look- on WA 20. The trail winds along the west side of Columbia outs can provide a good visual Mountain, about two miles to a junction description of what a fire is with Loop Trail 24, a 1-mile loop to the top doing, and the Park Service that gains 662 feet. A spur trail from the decides whether to suppress it loop leads to the top, the lookout cabin on or let it burn into glaciers and the ground, and the remains of the tower. rocks until the first snow of the season. Desolation Peak Ray Kresek insists that fire North Cascades lookouts should remain an This trailhead must be reached by the East important third leg of the fire Bank Trail (16 miles) or by boat, (your own detection system. “The secret or the Ross Lake Resort water taxi; make of any fire is to get on it as a reservation ahead of time). To use the quick as you can,” he said. water taxi, park at Milepost 3.4 on WA 20 at Twenty-four-hour surveillance the Ross Lake Trailhead. Hike 1 mile down is more reliable than infre- to a gravel road Go right to the dock and quent aerial reconnaissance or people whose cell phones telephone for the taxi, which will take you Columbia Peak lookout. Judy Bentley to campgrounds along the lake, such as don’t have reception or who Lightning Creek or to Desolation Landing. don’t know where they are in From the landing, the hike is 4.7 miles one-way with 4,400 the woods. Kresek cites the Thirtymile Fire of feet of elevation gain. The lookout at the top with spec- 2001, which trapped and killed four firefighters, tacular mountain and Ross Lake views is staffed during the as an example of the need for constant eyes summer. on the horizon. The North Twentymile lookout was only three and a half miles from the origin of the fire, but it was unstaffed that summer. » On Trail August 2008 » Washington Trails www.wta.org

Instead, the fire was discovered incidentally by Butte lookout, southwest of Stampede Pass. a plane leaving another fire. The Kelly Butte story reveals how restoration How to In addition to having functional value, “the attracts volunteers. “I’m not a fisherman. I’m not lookouts are a cultural resource,” said Charles a hunter. I don’t like being bit up by mosquitoes Help Beall of North Cascades National Park. “They’re at lakes,” said Bob Adler, a lookout restoration Want to support a valuable part of the wilderness experience.” volunteer and WTA member. “So I started going lookout restora- Talking to visitors about forest history and to high places, and before I realized it, I had tion? Visit the ecology is a primary task of lookouts. Kerouac gone to 70 or 80 lookout locations.” The Forest Forest Fire Look- envisioned pilgrims who would follow him to Service encouraged Adler to adopt Kelly Butte out Association the heights; today hikers and literary buffs because it was one of only two lookouts left in website at www. make the pilgrimage to Sauk, Sourdough, and the White River Ranger District. Volunteer Dar- firelookout.org. Desolation lookouts, if only for a day to share ryl Stafford’s family has picnicked at the Kelly To support or the mystique of the writers who stayed there. Butte lookout for decades. His great-granduncle join Friends of Poet and nature writer Tim McNulty spent the lived at Lester, supplying the seven lookouts Kelly Butte, con- summers of 2003 and 2004 as a fire lookout near Stampede Pass by mule team with goods tact woodman- at Sourdough, fifty years after Gary Snyder. shipped on Northern Pacific trains. “It’s time to [email protected], McNulty’s chapbook, “Through High Still Air, give back,” Stafford said of his volunteer work. 425-487-3461, A Season at Sourdough Mountain,” was dedi- A logbook at the lookout records visitors who or send a check cated to Snyder and named after the line from have been coming for as long as 50 years. made out to Ev- Snyder’s poem. In “Hub of the Wheel,” McNulty The lookout was in bad shape when the erett Mountain- describes the Beaver fire of 2003: volunteers began. Their first task was bagging eers/Kelly Butte, “Fingers of smoke from wildfires up the debris and 77 broken windows (only one to P.O. Box 43, reach down Big Beaver and Pierce Creek valleys was intact). Then they repaired the roof. Forest Snohomish, WA and cover the deep blue of Ross Lake Clark, Western Washington director of the For- 98290. like a quilt.” est Fire Lookout Association, located shingles Lookout advocates are working hard to made from “confiscated cedar,” cedar cut in ille- preserve and restore other cabins still left in gal logging and cofiscated by authorities. Twen- Washington. Individual volunteers and groups ty-two volunteers carried 17 bundles to the such as the Everett Mountaineers Lookout and lookout site in the summer of 2005. There were Trail Maintenance Committee (LOTM) and King setbacks, like broken shutters that allowed 30 County Emergency Search and Rescue have inches of snow into the cabin. Adler, a glazier, worked on the restoration of the Three Fingers, and the Friends of Kelly Butte restored all of Pilchuck, Heybrook, and Evergreen lookouts. A the windows this winter and spring, in a barn group of volunteers known as Friends of Kelly at the Lord Hill Regional Park. This summer the Butte is currently working on restoring Kelly windows will be helicoptered to the station and installed. Next summer, the lookout will get a paint job and cosmetic fixes. Kelly Butte is not the only restoration project Good Reads ongoing. In the same district, Suntop has been Malcolm S. Bates, Three Fingers. (Cloudcap, 1998). adopted by volunteers. This summer, the Forest Martha Hardy, Tatoosh. (The Mountaineers Books, Service sponsored a work party on the Red 1980). Mountain lookout near Mount Adams and the Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels. (Riverhead, 1995). Indian Heaven Wilderness. Ray Kresek, Fire Lookouts of the Pacific Northwest. For lookout wannabes, only two cabins are (Historic Lookout Project, 1998). available for rent in Washington (see box). If you just want to peer in the windows, lookouts Earl Larrison and Harry Higman, Pilchuck: Life of a remain in all four corners of the state: from Mountain. (1949). Dodger Point in the Olympics to Columbia Peak Tish McFadden and Tom Foley, How to Rent a Fire in the Kettle Range, from Oregon Butte in the Lookout in the Pacific Northwest. (Wilderness Press, Blue Mountains to Desolation Peak in the North 2005). Cascades. Suntop Lookout on Huckleberry John McLean, The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Ridge in the White River Ranger District is ac- Bravery and Betrayal. (Henry Holt, 2007). cessible by car once the snow melts. Some sites are a day hike with reasonable elevation gain, Tim McNulty, Through High Still Air, A Season at Sour- such as Kelly Butte and Thorp Mountain on dough Mountain (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2005). Kachess Ridge. Others require more extended Gary Snyder, No Nature: New and Selected Poems. exertion, such as Three Fingers, Dodger Point (Pantheon, 1992). and Desolation Peak. Whether you arrive on a John Suiter, Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip sunny day hike or a drizzly overnight backpack, Whalen and Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades. the lookout is a human benchmark, linking past (Counterpoint, 2002). and present in the vast expanses we crave. 