Lee Mann photos of the Ptarmigan Traverse from the early 1960s!

As Phil Fenner and I have been going through Patrick Goldsworthy's collection of conservation materials (okay, Phil has done 99% of the effort here :), he found about a dozen 16x20 black and white prints of a mountain trip.  I quickly identified it as the Ptarmigan Traverse, an amazing mountain trip to be done only by seasoned, experienced mountaineers.  This traverse is hard enough to do with ropes, crampons and the requisite alpine gear, but Lee Mann did it with a HUGE 4x5 camera, which must have weighed a ton.
Anyway, Phil was kind enough to do a preliminary digitization, and get them on our photo gallery.  I have since ordered them and added/edited the original captions.  Enjoy the photo gallery here:
http://www.northcascades.org/wordpress/archives/gallery/lee-manns-photos

The Annotated Wilderness Act

Here's a great reference guide from Doug Scott of the Pew Campaign for America's Wilderness:
 

http://www.northcascades.org/public_html/The_Wilderness_Act_Annotated.pdf

Doug says,

This PDF distills everything I have learned about the word choices and the intent behind them in the Wilderness Act -- and the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act, the Endangered American Wilderness Act -- and the wilderness provisions of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act (how many knew the ADA had a wilderness provision?)

This is not only the legislative intent as a judge would parse it.  Indeed, there have been few if any needs for a judge to parse the Wilderness Act because Zahnie* was so precise a wordsmith.  But this also includes what I know about the intent behind Zahnie's word choices, and those made by his closest confidants, Dave Brower, George Marshall (long president of the Sierra Club), and others. [You'll soon be able to find] this and other resources on my site, wilderness-resources.net.  One thing up there (or soon will be) is a summary of all the major laws that made important policy corrections over the last 50 years -- including RARE-II.

This year is the 50th anniversary of The Wilderness Act, and we'd all do well go go back and give it a good thorough read, with Doug's help!

 *Howard Zahniser, who was the primary author of the Act and executive director of The Wilderness Society.