Blog News

Updates and news about the WyEast blog.

The Mount Hood Quarter

/ Tom Kloster

Beginning this year, the new America the Beautiful Quarters program will release the first of 56 new United States quarter coins. The new coins feature national parks and other national sites in each state, the District of Columbia and U.S. Territories. Notably, Mount Hood is one of just two “national sites” in the new set that is not protected by the National Park Service (the other is the White Mountains in New Hampshire).

Still more significant is the timing: Mount Hood will join Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Hot Springs National Parks in being the first five coins featured in the inaugural year. This honor is yet another reminder of the mountain’s second-class status among the nation’s natural shrines, but is also more inspiration to correct that oversight. Mount Hood stands in hallowed company in this initial rollout of the new coin series.

The process for selecting the design of the new Mount Hood quarter is nearly complete. The design has already been narrowed to four options, with one option jointly nominated by a pair of blue-ribbon advisory committee as the preferred design. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner will make the final decision on designs for the first five quarters, and the U.S. Mint will issue the quarters later this year.

The first design option for the Mount Hood quarter features the picturesque view of mountain from the fruit orchards of the upper Hood River Valley. Though it would make a fine choice, this was not the design forwarded by the advisory committees.

The second option is somewhat awkward, since it places the Portland skyline somewhere in the vicinity of Hood River. Thankfully, this option passed over by both advisory committees, and is unlikely to be selected. It’s somewhat baffling how such an iconic view could be botched like this, and we can only hope that the error would have been caught had the design been selected!

The third option is the familiar and classic view of the mountain from Lost Lake, as seen in a century of countless postcards and other tourist collectables over the decades. This design is the recommended choice of both advisory committees, and seems likely to be the final design.

The fourth option is a variation of the (so far) favored Lost Lake option, adding clusters of Pacific rhododendron blossoms to the foreground. This would have been my pick for the coin, but was passed over by the advisory committees as “too cluttered”.

Surprisingly, there were no Mount Hood quarter finalists featuring Timberline Lodge and the familiar south side of the mountain, arguably the best-known view of the mountain. This might be explained by the U.S. Postal Service issuance of a commemorative postcard in 1987 (below) that featured the lodge on its fiftieth anniversary.

All of this comes on the heels of what was a spirited discussion in 2004, when Mount Hood was one of four designs under consideration for the State Quarters series. This anatomically challenged, clumsy rendering of the mountain was released for public comment on the designs options (along with three other alternatives that featured an Oregon Trail theme, native salmon and Crater Lake):

Despite the less-than-inspiring design of the Mount Hood coin in this earlier competition, there was a last-minute flurry of interest in combining the Oregon Trail and Mount Hood themes. After much debate, Governor Ted Kulongoski eventually picked the Crater Lake design (below), and this has now become a favorite among coin collectors.

This earlier choice probably helped move the Mount Hood coin to the front of the line for the America the Beautiful series, though it wasn’t necessarly a given. California, for example, will feature Yosemite on its America the Beautiful quarter, despite having featured the park (and John Muir) on its state quarter. Likewise, Arizona will portray the Grand Canyon on the new quarter, but also featured it on the state quarter series.

So, we’re fortunate that Mount Hood is now getting its due, and will be profiled in such fine company, with more than fifty national parks, monuments and historic sites. It’s an honor well-deserved, and perhaps a foreshadowing of the company that Mount Hood will share in the future.

Addendum

For Mount Hood memorabilia collectors, the 2010 America the Beautiful proof set is here! The following are a couple of scans of the set I received this week. With the set, you will receive the Mount Hood quarter, along with the other four inaugural year quarter — Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Hot Springs — in this sealed enclosure:

The set comes in this collectable box, with an enclosed certificate of authenticity:

You can order the set direct from the United States Mint.

2010 Campaign Calendar

/ Tom Kloster

Since founding the Mount Hood National Park Campaign in 2004, I have published an annual scenic calendar that features my best photos of “our next national park” taken during the course of the previous year. While there are familiar spots featured each year, I also include lesser-known scenes, and a number of secret locations that you won’t find in other calendars, and further illustrate why Mount Hood needs more protection.

The 2010 calendar features Elk Cove on the cover, photographed early last August on my annual pilgrimage, during the peak of the summer wildflower show. The snowy January scene was captured on a snowshoe trip up the White River last winter. February’s image is also wintry, with a frozen Rock Cove in the foreground, and the snowy, white cliffs on the Oregon side of the Columbia Gorge rising above mists in the background, and catching the last bit of evening light.

The March scene features the first flowers of the season in the eastern Columbia Gorge, at Rowena Crest. Look closely, and you can pick out both a hiker (and fellow photographer) and a grain barge in the river, far below. The town of Lyle, Washington is in the distance. The April scene features a little-known lily pond near Cascade Locks in brilliant shades of vibrant spring green. The May image is another lesser-known spot, the Mazama Tarn. This tranquil pond is located on the northwest side of Mount Hood, and for some reason, rarely photographed.

June takes us back to the Columbia Gorge, with a golden-hued sunset as viewed from the bluffs above Mosier. The July and August images are both from the McNeil Point area, first at the reflective McNeil Tarn, then higher up on the shoulder of Mount Hood, near the Sandy Glacier. The August image was captured on perhaps the most magical visit I have made to this beautiful spot over the years, with a mid-summer coat of snow on the mountain and dramatic clouds blowing in, ahead of another storm.

For September, another lesser-known location is pictured — one of several unmapped waterfalls along beautiful Heather Creek, on the southeast shoulder of Mount Hood. Lovely Emerald Falls in the Gorge follows in October, and autumn colors are showing along Gorton Creek in the November scene. The final image for December is a misty morning view of the East Fork Hood River and Mount Hood after a heavy winter snowstorm.

The early Mount Hood National Park calendars were in a smaller format, and thus somewhat forgiving of my photographic efforts. But for the past several years, I’ve used a more popular, oversized 11×17″ format, and the switch has pushed me to assemble a set of images that show off at that larger size. Above all, the images I include are intended to underscore the message: Mount Hood SHOULD be America’s next national park!

You can preview all of the images in the calendar and purchase copies for $24.99 from the Mount Hood National Park store at CafePress. Here’s the link:

MHNP Campaign Store: 2010 Calendar

A portion of each calendar sale goes to the Mount Hood National Park Campaign, and I use all of the proceeds to defray costs of maintaining the website, post office box and other logistics. Thanks to all of you who have purchased them over the years, and supported the campaign in the process!

WyEast Blog: First Year Reflections

/ Tom Kloster

Mount Hood on a magical afternoon above McNeil Point last August, one of my photo-trek highlights of the year

November marks the one-year anniversary of the WyEast Blog, so I will indulge with a few reflections on the blog and how I intend to carry it forward as part of the larger Mount Hood National Park Campaign.

The unifying theme is the national park campaign, and blog has, indeed, had a significant impact on traffic at the main website (which was also revamped in late 2008, in tandem with the start-up of the blog). This was the primary objective in starting the blog, so I’m pleased with the response thus far.

For the first several months, I didn’t advertise the blog at all — but it slowly picked up readers as the scope of articles became evident. From the beginning, the blog was designed in a magazine format, with lots of images and topics ranging from science, history and recreation to politics and commentary.

By mid-year, the site was logging about 200 views per month, but in July I posted a link to the site from my PortlandHikers.org signature, and the resulting boost in traffic is evident (see chart, above). The blog has been recording more than 300 views per month since. I was a bit anxious about taking this step, since I have been fairly low-key about the Mount Hood National Park project in my work with Portland Hikers, but the response has been very positive.

I had planned to write 3-4 articles per month when I started the blog, and have settled closer to three per month, with a total of 34 articles published since the first post. One surprise has been the response to individual articles. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to the topics that are interesting to others (all of them are interesting to me, naturally!), though the most popular topics are an encouraging mix of natural and cultural history topics and more challenging policy critiques that I didn’t expect to resonate with readers.

The top article on the list was the Parkdale Lava Flow piece, and I admit, this comes as a bit of a surprise. As a geoscientist by training, the lava flow is of great interest to me, but I’m excited to find that others are equally intrigued by this little-known spectacle. That bodes well for its protection, and perhaps even improved public access for adventuresome visitors.

The many visits to the two-part article on the Boundary Clear Cut were also a pleasant surprise, and underscore the ongoing interest in federal forest policy — the Fire Forests of the Cascades article also ranked well in views, for example.

The article that drew the most commentary was a bold call to decommission The Dalles Dam and restore Celilo Falls. The contributors were particularly thoughtful and articulate in sharing their own ideas for realizing this vision, and they reaffirmed my own belief that big ideas are a necessary avenue to achieving environmental reforms and building public consensus for change (and thus the Mount Hood National Park Campaign).

Things to Come

In the coming year, I will continue to publish topical articles related to Mount Hood and the Columbia Gorge, and have at least 50 topics in various states of research and development. My early concern that I would somehow run out of new and interesting topics is no longer, as each article I’ve written has spawned a couple others.

I will also be spotlighting some of the Mount Hood National Park concepts a bit more in the coming year, in the spirit of getting those “big ideas” out there, and stimulating an outside-the-box look at an area we all love and want to protect and restore.

Thanks to all for reading the blog over the past year — thanks for putting up with my periodic typos and run-on sentences, and thanks for the personal comments and encouragement along the way. I’ll do my best to continue to improve the site in the years to come!

Tom Kloster
WyEast Blog

Campaign Website Overhaul

/ Tom Kloster

newbannerclipping2

This is a departure from the usual topical posts (and a bit of an explanation on the recent draught in this blog), but I want to finally announce that I’ve completed a massive overhaul of the Mount Hood National Park Campaign web site!

The new look (shown above) is retro, and largely drawn from the 1930s heyday of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) efforts that brought many of the “national park” elements to Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge. Some of the imagery is even more evocative, going back to the great landscape artists of the 1800s. The goal with the retro look was to enhance the sense of possibility — that it’s never to late to think big for Mount Hood and the Gorge.

The site content is also greatly expanded, with a new “proposals” area that includes ambitious concepts for greatly expanded hiking and bike trails, campgrounds, picnic areas, byways and lodges. The details on these concepts can be browsed in a series of indexed maps in the “proposals” section. Hopefully, these will be fun and inspiring for those with a detailed knowledge of the area to explore.

The “how you can help” section has also been greatly updated, reflecting new elected officials, our new political paradigm (hooray!) and some improved tools for crafting a letter to Congress in support of the national park idea. This includes a handy “national parks compared” page, with Q&A for those inclined to read the details.

But above all, the overhaul of the site represents a new direction for the campaign as an “idea campaign.” That’s my way of saying that visitors won’t be asked for contributions, and that I won’t be forming a non-profit anytime soon. Instead, the goal is simply to keep the big ideas alive, and our collective hopes for a Mount Hood National Park intact and inspired — and ready for action when the time comes to make the dream a reality.

Here’s the link to the new website.