Trip report: Hidden Lake Lookout

Finally, the trip report and photo gallery.

I’ll keep this brief, as the accompanying photos will help tell the story of Hidden Lake Lookout (HLLO) 2014, but suffice it to say this little USFS fire lookout is the best structure in the state of Washington.

I first visited HLLO in late June 1989—I can hardly believe 25 years have passed, and that I waited until I was 25 years old to first go there!  Since then I’ve visited about every three years, as I believe this was my eighth time to the snug house cabled to the top of a mountain.  Not just any mountain, but a snow-capped 2,100 meter crag sitting at, and marking the confluence of,  the Cascade River; within direct line of sight of tidewater at the San Juan Islands.    Situated closely west of the North Cascade crest, this little mountain has expansive views of over 100 separate named summits, and nearly as many glaciers.  I think it was Betty or Harvey Manning that once said they preferred to be on “lesser” summits because it was always more fun/better views to look up at big peaks, than to look down on everything.  This is especially true when there are views to higher peaks, but also a vertical mile down to the winding, roaring Cascade River.  The “waves of mountains as far as they eye can see” certainly applies here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for the glaciers:  the snow pack this year is all about appearance, and not about substance.  That is, while the mountains look to be cloaked in deep snow, the water content is low, and it really is a veneer of white.  I hit snow right at the edge of the forest (most years in May/June there is snow at the parking lot, this time more than a mile up the trail), but the amount of avalanche debris in the Sibley gully was not impressive--full of gaps and simply not that much of it.  Of course, this also meant the ascent was done in complete safety, with avalanche lilies carpeting the already emerging meadows around 5,000 feet elevation.  My early start meant the snow was in great shape for hiking the long traverse around the true summit of Hidden Lake Peak.  I almost needed crampons in the steep shaded areas exiting the gully, but it was the right call to bring neither snowshoes (not even in the car) nor crampons (left in the car).  The scary ascent/traverse of the E face of the lookout peak was not too bad, with no threat of cornice avalanche on my head, and a nice steep “out” to miss the lower cornices.  It was really sloopy/soggy, but at least I wasn’t breaking through to the sharp rocks below. 

 

 

 

 

Again, I should note the lack of avalanches in the Hidden Lake basin.  Where normally there are huge blocks of debris from all sides of the big, cliffy cirque, this time things are really sparse, and what’s left of the cornices are melting in place—a sad tale if you’re a glacier.

The lookout is just as lovely as it was 25 years ago, perhaps even nicer thanks to the efforts of the “Friends of Hidden Lake Lookout” (of which I am a member).  As I wrote in the logbook there:

Today is the 70^th anniversary of D-day, and the 50^th anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964 is coming up.  We stand on the shoulders of Giants.  Thanks to Friends of HLLO (special shout to Ginny and Robert), and to Betty and Harvey Manning, Polly and John Dyer, Laura and Phil Zalesky, Christine and Patrick Goldsworthy, Margaret and Joe Miller (Joe was on Omaha Beach 70 years ago today), and all of the North Cascades Conservation Council.

 

By the way, the comment about “shoulders of Giants” is also a pun about standing on the shoulder of a big mountain.

How many have ever lived at the top of a mountain for a day?  I strive to spend at least one hour at every summit I visit (or used to visit, as the case may be).  I prefer to spend at least two nights at a given location to really get to know it, and to live it.  Thus, spending an entire 24 cycle at a summit is a real treat, made more-so by having a house there!  I am ever thankful for the desire and ability to do these things—I recognize I won’t be able to do this much longer.  This should have been one of the easiest trips of the year, but I came away creaking and gimpy.  Still, I managed to do it exactly as planned, and wasn’t even that scared descending the E face/traverse (mainly because I could go slow due to no avalanche threat). 

 

Photo gallery:

https://picasaweb.google.com/116543602651852680619/HLLO14060607?authkey=Gv1sRgCMeB-I-DyoXAeQ#

 

North Cascades is a model for other parks with its youth engagement

From the Seattle Times Sunday edition:

The park’s Pathways for Youth program has two objectives: to instill a love of the outdoors in teens who might not otherwise pull their noses away from a smartphone; and to help recruit youth of diverse backgrounds to the heavily white, middle-class corps of park rangers.
Last year, at least 2,500 youth took part in programs at North Cascades National Park, said Michael Brondi, the park’s youth-program coordinator.
“They’re encouraged to come fall in love with public lands,” he said.

Read more: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023899550_rainiernationalparkchallengesxml.html

Grizzly Bear Recovery Leadership Heads to North Cascades Ecosystem for Annual Summer Meeting June 24 -26

                            NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE

 June 16, 2014                                                                                                                                        Contact Gregg Losinski at 208-390-0635 for info

Grizzly Bear Recovery Leadership Heads to North Cascades Ecosystem for Annual Summer Meeting June 24 -26

MISSOULA – The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC), the multi-agency committee responsible for coordinating the recovery of grizzly bears in the continental United States and adjacent Canadian Provinces will be taking their annual summer meeting to the North Cascades Recovery Area.   The IGBC will be meeting at the Sun Mountain Lodge in Winthrop, Washington on the morning of Tuesday, June 24, 2014.

The IGBC was created in 1983 to lead efforts to recover the grizzly bear in the lower 48 states and adjoining Canadian Provinces.   The committee is made up of the top leadership of state, federal, and Canadian resource management agencies. The committee itself has no regulatory authority, but it serves the important function of coordinating government resources from agencies with a wide scope of missions, to insure recovery of the grizzly bear.  Recovery efforts are focused on six ecosystems that were identified when the grizzly was listed as a Threatened Species in 1975.

The summer meeting of IGBC in the North Cascades Ecosystem will provide these managers with a very different viewpoint from the successful recovery efforts achieved in the Yellowstone & Northern Continental Divide Ecosystems.  Sessions at this meeting will deal with discussing just how many bears are in the North Cascade Recovery Area and how the IGBC can help the local recovery efforts of the North Cascade Subcommittee move forward.

There will be presentations at the meeting by Lorna Smith, Executive Director of the non-profit group Western Wildlife Outreach (WWO) Program. WWO evolved from the successful GBOP (Grizzly Bear Outreach Project) and leads the information charge in the North Cascades Ecosystem. Chris Smith of the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI) will also be giving an update regarding the ongoing assistance that WMI has been providing to all of the ecosystems with bear information, education, and outreach.

The public is invited to attend the IGBC meeting and a time slot has been set aside at 11:45 AM for public comment. Individuals with disabilities may request meeting accommodations by contact Gregg Losinski at 208-390-0635 or through the Idaho Relay Service at 1-800-377-3529 (TDD).  The agenda for the Summer 2014 IGBC Meeting may be viewed at the IGBC Website at: http://igbconline.org/images/pdf/Summer_Agenda_2014.pdf

 

Darrell Smith
WESTERN WILDLIFE OUTREACH
Wildlife Biologist, Science Advisor 
darrell@westernwildlife.org
425.501.0045 cell
360.344.2008 office
www.WesternWildlife.org

 

Please note that an excellent backgrounder on the issue of grizzly bears in the North Cascades can be found on our website, at: http://www.northcascades.org/wordpress/programs/wildlife-conservation-program

We found this eloquent paen* to Wilderness on paper in the collection of the late Patrick Goldsworthy, and when we found it was already online with encouragement to share it, we thought we'd offer it here as a good read on the 50th anniversary year of The Wilderness Act. Enjoy!

A Letter to My Friends in Wilderness

[New Mexico, 2010]  As my life comes to a close, I feel compelled to express my gratitude to those of you who have journeyed together with me in wilderness and contributed to my understanding of wilderness and subsequently of myself.
I hope you will indulge me a few moments as I try to share with you what I have learned on our journey together.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 marked a turning point in America's attitude toward wild places. It was an acknowledgment that wild places were not only coming under the plow and the paving machines, but that their loss by such means was accelerating and would soon lead to a society impoverished by the loss of the fundamental relationship between humans and the lands which defined them.
The language of the Act is like few other laws we have enacted. It reads more like poetry than law and evokes an emotional response which invites introspection and envisioning of a future expressive of our concern for restraint and accommodation of other life forms.
This, in contrast to a precise formulaic law was the genius of the Act's principle author, Howard Zahnizer. He fixed the concept of wilderness in our minds rather than just in law or on a piece of real estate - and compelled us to look for and understand the characteristics of wilderness in our lives as well as in our landscapes.
The Wilderness Act will challenge and enrich scholars, legal experts, wilderness managers and wilderness advocates for as long as there is wilderness. We can only hope that the spirit which created this awareness of our place in the natural order prevails in our thinking, for, as Joseph Wood Krutch said, "Wilderness is the permanent home of the human spirit."

Upon passage of the Wilderness Act, the Forest Service developed management policy and direction to administer this new National Wilderness Preservation System, Forest Service Manual Section 2320. It consisted of 34 pages. Today it is 55 pages and in the process of being revised in the WO.
When you hold that Forest Service Manual Section 2320 in your hands, you hold a precious symbol of the Forest Service's commitment to America's wilderness, one which is being challenged by all manner of argument.
Within the agency, there are those who are impatient with the idea of the minimum tool and craft arguments to justify the use of chain saws, trail machines, jackhammers, helicopters, and other expedients for the sake of convenience or economy.
There are those who are wedded to the idea of mitigating the challenges of wilderness by constructing improvements, identifying and removing hazards, writing detailed guidebooks and publishing detailed maps.
There are those who feel that the existing definition of wilderness may be inappropriate to an evolving social conscience rooted in technology, urbanization and speed, and that management must be modified to reflect those changing social values.
There are those who feel that human intervention in natural processes within wilderness is necessary when those processes don't fit their perceptions of what is natural.
There are those who hold an anthropocentric rather than bio-centric view of wilderness and accordingly suggest that accommodation for human use, rather than preserving an untrammeled wilderness resource, be the paramount consideration when shaping wilderness policy.
Outside the agencies, there are those who, in their eagerness to see more public lands gain the protection of wilderness, have agreed to legislative provisions which compromise the wilderness quality of the very lands they wish to preserve as wilderness.
There are those who think of wilderness as beautiful landscapes or wildlife sanctuaries or recreation areas rather than as places which integrate the enduring physical, biological and spiritual dynamics of an untrammeled part of the earth.
The authors of the Wilderness Act held no such views.
They were keenly aware that there were but few remnants of the landscapes which had shaped the American character and they wanted to ensure that these were preserved in the condition of wildness which confronted and influenced our early pioneers.

They knew that wilderness had to remain a point of reference in both our natural and cultural histories, an enduring benchmark for our journey through time and space, unchanged by human intervention and subject only to natural forces. They knew that wilderness was an indispensable part of our humanness and was critical to our understanding our place in the universe.
Today, the American public can be grateful that you have been vigilant and stood shoulder to shoulder with the dedicated group of wilderness advocates both within and outside the public land management agencies to assure that these challenges to wilderness are being resolved in favor of the philosophy so well articulated in the Wilderness Act.
You are the stewards of America's wilderness and I want to speak to you of stewardship.
Webster's Dictionary defines a steward as "One called to exercise responsible care over the possessions entrusted to him(her) ; One who manages another's property."
I am extremely grateful to you for having chosen to be stewards of these lands. You have assumed a sacred trust, to be executed with reverence, humility, and a profound sense of responsibility. You are not engaged in a business or delivering a product or providing a service or producing a commodity. You are engaged in no less than preserving the nation's precious remaining repositories of wildness and guarding the permanent home of our human spirit.
Over the years, I have watched as the growth and complexity of the National Wilderness Preservation System have presented you with new stewardship challenges. You have met those challenges with care and deliberation and resolved them with uncanny respect for the language and intent of the Wilderness Act.
Today, you can be proud that since the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, which designated 9 million acres of Forest Service land as wilderness, the people of the United States have respected your stewardship and repeatedly petitioned the Congress to entrust to you the care of more wilderness areas. Their efforts have placed more than 109 million acres in your care.
You can be proud that the federal land management agencies have created the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center to provide training in wilderness philosophy and wilderness stewardship for federal employees.
You can be proud that the federal land management agencies have created the Aldo Leopold National Wilderness Research Center to conduct social and biological research to support and improve wilderness stewardship.

And you can be proud of your role in preserving that "enduring resource of wilderness" envisioned by the authors of the Wilderness Act.
As you enter another year of wilderness stewardship, please be as caring of yourselves as you are for wilderness.
Take the time to open yourselves fully to the dynamics of wild landscapes and their affects on your mind, body and spirit. Share your passions with your colleagues and the earth. Become fully alive. These days you share with the wildness are gifts you will treasure forever.
My fondest memories are of those times when nature's influences were most keenly felt:

• Being picked up by a gusty ridge top wind and pitched through the air like a rag doll.
• Huddled on the lee of a rocky summit during a storm and feeling hypothermia trying to rob me of my abilities.
• Being carried along in the tumbling whiteness of an avalanche.
• Walking out of the snow and ice of high mountains and again smelling the green of the earth.
• Lying in a sunny meadow and sensing that all the spirits there were filling my being with strengths unknown and unknowable.
• Sensing the unseen presence of the others in the landscape.
• Feeling a timeless wisdom trying to order my thoughts to wholeness.

For most of us our connection with wilderness is commonly understood to be primarily rooted in the cultural and aesthetic responses which evolved from the experiences of early explorers and settlers on the new landscapes of America.
We have recently discovered, however, that the underlying basis for our responses to wilderness goes deeper, much deeper: Going to the wilderness is going home.
Anthropologists and others have been suggesting for a long time that we are still the wild creatures we were in the Pleistocene. We haven’t changed. Only our circumstances have changed.

Paul Shepard, perhaps the most insightful scholar of the history and evolution of human ecology has written: "The discovery of the DNA by Watson and Crick was hailed for its implications for human health and well being. Soon it is expected we will be able to create the perfect banana or the perfect cow and clone it forever. We may soon be able to change the order of genes in our chromosomes to make us taller, thinner, stronger. Maybe even less maladapted to our current circumstances."
But more importantly, the mapping of the human genome confirmed that, genetically, we are still wild, Pleistocene creatures.
Finally, an answer as to why we feel so at home in wilderness.
Shepard declared that "The home of our wildness is both etymologically and biologically wilderness. Although we may define ourselves in terms of culture and language and so on, it is evident that the context of our being now, as in the past, is wilderness, an environment lacking domestic plants and animals entirely, and to which, one might say, our genes look expectantly for those circumstances which are their optimal ambiance."
"The time is coming, " he said "to understand the wilderness in its significance, not as adjunct to the affluent traveler, to an educated, esthetic, appreciative class, or to thinking of nature as a Noah’s ark in all of its forms, but as the social and ecological mold of humanity itself, which is fundamental to our species".
To understand the significance of wilderness, we must take the time to separate culture from biology, learning from instinct, - and to search deep within for those ancient gifts which truly inform our humanness.
I have but one request of you.

Go -- Find yourself in the wilderness. Be at home. Let your genes once again find expression in the world that defined them.
Rejoice in your humanness.
You are a genetic library of gifts informed by centuries of life in wilderness.
Gifts from the experiences of antecedent creatures - ichthyian, reptilian and mammalian which lie still in your brain stem.
Gifts from the struggles of the naked ape with neither fang nor claw who was able, not only to survive, but to adapt and flourish -- simply and elegantly -- in wild landscapes.

When we first walk into wilderness, we feel like alien creatures, intruding into the unknown but if we stay a while, usually about a week, and pay attention to ourselves, those gifts become apparent.
We become aware that our eyes see better. We can pick things out in the landscape more keenly; we can measure distance more accurately; and shape, color and contrast are vividly apparent.
Our noses discriminate and identify the odors on the wind, the smell of a bighorn is a lot different than that of a bear, there is a marsh upwind.
The sounds we heard on our first day came from a general direction but now our bi-aural senses are so keen we can almost pinpoint the source and distance of a sound and identify it.
The awkwardness we first felt when moving over broken ground has been replaced by a fluid economical rhythm of movement that seems almost effortless.
Our spine flexes, gathering and releasing energy; our pelvis tilts, our center of gravity is keenly felt and we are again those confident primal animals on the landscape.
We sense our relationships with the other creatures with whom we share these landscapes, relationships which reaffirm our humble role as members of the vast community of life.
These are not new skills learned, they are ancient abilities recalled, pulled from the shelves of that genetic library deep within our being.
As we peer into campfire flames, the comfort of thousands of fires, in thousands of caves, over thousands of years, warm us from the inside as well from the outside.
The diminuendo of the Canyon wren and the raucous scolding of the Stellar's jay invite our hearts to sing.
The warmth of the sun and the snap of the cold affirm that we are alive and vulnerable.
The mountains, the deserts, the storms and the rivers challenge our cunning and demand our respect.
The vastness of the landscape humbles and fixes us in scale.
As we lie on the earth in the evening, the march of Orion across the heavens fixes us in time.
We are still those Pleistocene creatures -- at home and full of the wonder of being.
This is the wildness in our genes, found manifest in a simple, bipedal hominid, surrounded by a peace that transcends time and in a place we shall always need: wilderness.
Thank you
George Duffy, Wilderness Ranger (Retired), Mountaineer, New Mexico
http://www.crystallake.name/duffy/duffy.htm 

---

January 8, 2010
I am forwarding to you a letter we recently received from George Duffy, a retired Forest Service Employee...
For those of you that have had the great good fortune to know and work with George, you already know of his dedication as an employee and of his passion for wilderness. For those of you that haven't had that opportunity, you will begin to understand what George brought to our agency and to wilderness when you read the enclosed "A Letter to My Friends in Wilderness."
George recently sent this letter out to many of his friends in the wilderness community. George's observations, musings and reminders are inspiring and energizing to those of us who play a role in the stewardship of the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Chief in his letter committed to George to share his reflections widely. I encourage you to spend a few minutes reading this letter and to share it with others.
/s/ Joel D. Holtrop
JOEL D. HOLTROP
Deputy Chief, National Forest System

*Paen: A song or hymn of praise, joy, or triumph, originally sung by Greeks in gratitude to Apollo.  -http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=807