Let’s get this restarted..!

October 21, 2022 / Tom Kloster / 7 Comments

2022 brought new life for our 80-year-old house in North Portland!

Why, I haven’t posted an article since the end of May! Where have I been? Painting, scraping, nailing… repeat! For 30 years we have lived in a World War II-era tract house built above the North Portland shipyards back in 1944, and this year we celebrated three decades of living here by adding some much-needed space on our second floor.

Like so many workers in the COVID era, the pandemic converted me to full-time teleworker overnight, so the new space on the second floor is a new home office where I’m spending (too much) time in Zoom meetings by day and working on the house at night.

Lath from our old plaster-and-lath walls cleaned and bundled for reuse by the deconstruction crew

If you follow the photo sequence (opening image), you might note that our house was without a roof during the month of April this year – a month when Portland set the all-time record for the wettest April ever. It rained every single day! The roof had been scheduled to be installed the first week of that month, and we finally got it tacked on during the first dry stretch in early May, after 6 weeks under a leaky, whole-house tarp. The frosting (quite literally) during this saga was a freak snowstorm in mid-April (again, climate change at work) that nearly destroyed the tarp. It was like camping in our own upstairs!

My role in the project has to install trim and window casings throughout and complete all of the interior painting – work I enjoy, but also really time-consuming. Thus, the unintended “sabbatical” from my blogging. With this article, I’m happy to be putting the paintbrush aside (for a moment) and getting back to writing a few articles about all things WyEast. If working on the house left precious little time for anything else except my day job, the monotony of painting and trimming gave me time to dream up lots of new topics to write about here – so, much more to come!

Eighty-six years of very slow Douglas fir growth created this perfectly straight trim board, first installed in 1944

This article stems direction from the trim work. Whenever possible with the remodel, I recycled old trim, doors and casings from the original 1944 construction, as it is mostly made from dense, incredibly solid old-growth wood. Most lumber cut in the Pacific Northwest in the 1940s was still from centuries-old trees. This piece of 4” baseboard trim (above) was typical – it has 86 growth rings! Modern wood trim of this dimension might have ten rings, and it’s finger-jointed, engineered wood made up of foot-long sections glued together, not cut in a single plank, straight from a tree.

This was on my mind while taking a much-needed day off from nailing and painting trim a few weeks ago when I came across this fallen giant (below) along Elk Creek, near Lolo Pass. It’ an old growth Douglas fir that survived in an island of ancient forest that was passed over by the logging heyday of decades past, when much of the north side of Mount Hood was clearcut.

That’s a big log! This Douglas fir giant fell along Elk Creek in the Lolo Pass area last winter, temporarily blocking Lolo Pass Road

How big is it? Just over 4 feet in diameter – very large for a forest located just below timberline on Mount Hood

I’d always admired this old stand of trees, so I stopped to measure the fallen giant – four feet in diameter. It was not even close to the largest trees I’ve come across in Oregon’s remaining old growth forests, but then I began to count the growth rings, and stopped at two hundred when I was less than halfway toward the center of the tree! Surprised at its age, I took several photos so I could count the rings more definitively at home with the aid of computer monitor. Upon later inspection of the photos, this ancient Douglas fir turned out to be 516 years old when it was finally tipped by a storm last winter!

All around this downed giant are dozens of equally ancient Western hemlock, Western redcedar and Douglas fir growing in a spectacular, species-diverse stand that I had passed through scores of times over the years. I’d always appreciated these big old trees, but I had no idea just how long they had been growing here. How lucky we are that they have survived multiple waves of logging over the past 150 years!

These giants – Douglas fir, Noble fir and Western hemlock – are the surviving neighbors of the big tree that came down along Elk Creek last winter

Then I thought about the 86 growth rings on that old piece of base trim I’d been working with. It occurred to me that it had likely been milled from just such a tree, and was likely hundreds of years old, just as much of the wood in my 1944 house is. In the 1940s logging was still mostly focused on old growth forests, with trees that were centuries old, and the mistaken belief that it would all grow back and we would never run out of big trees.

What struck me about this 500-year-old giant is how casually it had been sawed out of the road, as like any other blowdown that got in the way. We’re still learning to appreciate these irreplaceable monarchs as more than just the board feet of lumber or sticks of firewood they can be converted into. So, to honor this ancient Douglas fir I attached a few human milestones from our frail, checkered history to its long, peaceful timeline, as told in 516 annual growth rings (below).

500 years covers a lot of recent human history. This big old fir took root as a seedling a couple years before the first Spanish settlements appeared in North America in 1508 A.D.

[click here for a large version of this graphic]

Thinking of pre-1960s homes as “old-growth homes” was a bit of a revelation for me, though it makes sense. While private lands had been heavily logged for a half-century or more at that point, second-growth forests still weren’t being logged in a significant way until well into the 1950s. Logging on public land also went into full swing in the late 1940s, flooding the market with a new supply of old-growth logs cut from mountainsides that had never been logged before.

That’s why I was pleased to learn that a big, old Portland home just a few blocks down the street from mine was being carefully deconstructed this summer, and the materials set aside for reuse. When I took at closer look at the notice posted in front of the home, I learned this was no whim of the developer – a few years ago, houses like this were routinely razed, and the debris sent to the landfill in Arlington. Now, the City of Portland now requires homes built before 1940 to be deconstructed and the materials made available for reuse.

What it looks like to un-build a house, one floor at a time – this home will be replaced with multiple dwellings in growing Portland

Behind the disappearing old home, salvaged wood and bricks are stacked in neat piles, waiting to be transported to the Rebuilding Center, a recycled building materials nonprofit working in partnership with the City of Portland in this effort. There, old reclaimed lumber and other construction materials can be reused by builders in older homes where it matches the varying lumber dimensions that were common before modern standards were applied.

Salvaged wood is organized by dimension on site and prepared for reuse at the Rebuilding Center

While it was great to reuse my old wood trim, fact is that original, old growth wood is increasingly an artifact from an era that will never repeat. Yet, wood-frame homes aren’t going away, either. Instead, they are increasingly being built with engineered wood products that are stronger, more stable and use wood cut from fast-growing, farmed tree plantations, not public lands.

Many of the new structural beams in our remodeled home were produced this way, to exacting dimensions that would be impossible with conventional cut lumber. All around Portland multi-story buildings are also being constructed with engineered cross-laminated timber beams and panels that replace steel and concrete.

This new six-floor office building on Portland’s east side streetcar loop is a wood structure, constructed entirely with cross-laminated timbers and panels, one of several new mid-rise buildings proving the value of this new material

This new industry of manufacturing cross-laminated materials (also called “mass timber”) is growing in Oregon, and has the benefit of using very small trees that can be harvested from commercial farms or – importantly – from plantation thinning on our public lands. In this way, there’s a tremendous potential for this new industry to restore rural economies around Oregon that were left behind when old growth logging faded in the 1980s and 90s. You can read more here about this emerging opportunity.

Big trees left behind during the logging heyday of the 1960s, 70s and 80s on Mount Hood’s north side now tower over the crowded plantations that cover old clearcuts. Many of these giants are hundreds of years old. Now that technology has created modern wood products that are superior to traditional lumber, will we allow these recovering forests to grow old, once again?

I like this glimpse into the future. It’s one that could allow our magnificent mountain forests to finally recover, without the future threat of commercial logging of large trees, while also providing the materials needed to house future generations of Oregonians.

This end result of having better, stronger building materials while also restoring our public forests is encouraging. If we do manage this transition, future generations will surely thank us, too.

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Tom Kloster | October 2022

The Noblest of Firs

November 26, 2021 / Tom Kloster

Forests of Noble fir forests spread out to the horizon along the crest of Waucoma Ridge, just north of Mount Hood (Mount Adams in the distance)

We’re coming into another holiday season when millions of Americans will set up a Christmas tree cut in Oregon. There’s a good chance it will be a Noble fir, long prized as the most beautiful and durable of Christmas trees, representing about a third of the cut tree industry here.

There was a time when Noble fir grown as holiday trees were left in their natural state, which features elegant tiers of symmetrical branches and soft, deep green, upwardly curving needles. In recent years, Nobles grown for mass-market consumption have increasingly been sheared to produce a densely branched, unnatural thicket (acknowledging my bias, here!) in the same way that Douglas fir have long been cultivated in the Christmas tree trade. Still, the un-sheared Nobles remain the gold standard, and they sell for gold-standard prices at tree lots, too.

New grown emerging on Noble fir boughs

Noble fir cones

In Oregon, families also have the option of cutting their own Christmas trees at U-cut tree farms, a popular benefit of living in a region that produces millions of holiday trees for the nation. It’s also possible to cut your own tree on National Forest land, a tradition that dates back a century or more. Though more regulated today by the U.S. Forest Service, families looking for a more adventurous option than local tree lot can head up to designated areas on the mountain (typically powerline corridors or recovering clear cuts) and bring home their own cut tree.

The author at age 11 (second from left) with family and friends on a 1973 trip to Lolo Pass to cut Christmas trees. Noble fir were always the goal, but in those days of heavier mountain snows, simply reaching the Noble fir zone in December was an adventure!

Christmas trees are pretty much the extent of public knowledge of the noblest of our true firs. As the common name might suggest, noble fir is the largest of all true firs. Their name was given in the fall of 1825 by botanist David Douglas when he ventured into the high country above the Columbia River River Gorge, in the vicinity of today’s Cascade Locks. Though he wasn’t specific about the peak he climbed on the north side of the river, it is believed to be today’s Table Mountain. A few days later, he climbed to a high point on the Oregon side, most likely today’s Benson Plateau.

On this pair of climbs, he came upon magnificent, old-growth stands of Noble fir, and gave them their well-deserved name. While they are undeniably beautiful as young trees, old-growth Noble fir are a sight to behold. Like many of our Pacific Northwest conifers, these trees grow to be giants, with the largest on record reaching nearly 300 feet in height and nearly 10 feet in diameter.

Old-growth Noble fir forests near Mount Hood’s Bennett Pass

An ancient Noble fir giant towers above the surrounding forest canopy near Bennett Pass

Noble fir are also unique to the Pacific Northwest, with a range that extends from just above of Snoqualmie Pass in Washington south to the Siskiyou Mountains in Southern Oregon and the Trinity Alps region along the northern edge of California. In their southern extent, they are known to hybridize with California’s Shasta fir, a variety of the Red fir that grows in the Sierras and extends into the southern fringe of the Noble fir range.

Despite their willingness to grow in planted rows as farmed Christmas tree seedlings in the hot, dry summers of the Willamette Valley floor, Noble fir are a subalpine species. They typically grow at elevations of 3,500 feet to 5,500 feet, where they are long-lived and acclimated to the harsh winters of our mountains. Not surprisingly, they grow more slowly under these conditions, but they are tremendously adaptable, and often grow on very steep mountain slopes and exposed, rocky ridgetops.

Centuries-old Noble fir giant near Bennett Pass

Noble fir is a sun-loving pioneer species in our forests, quickly colonizing in burn areas to form pure, long-lived stands. Hike through one of the towering old-growth stands found in the high country of the Columbia Gorge or on the peaks surrounding Mount Hood, and you’re likely walking through an old burn, with the age of the trees as a good indicator of when fire last roared through, long ago. That’s because they are not only post-fire colonizers, but also highly susceptible to fire as mature trees, as they lack the protective bark of fire-adapted conifers like Ponderosa pine and Western larch.

This cycle of burn-and-rebirth in our Noble fir forests is on full display today on the north slopes of Mount Hood, where the 2011 Dollar Lake Fire burned through sprawling stands of subalpine Noble fir. These forests were almost entirely killed where the fires swept through, yet today, the forest recovery is already well underway, with young Noble fir seedlings leading the way among other post-fire pioneer species.

Ghost forest of Noble fir skeletons where the Dollar Lake Fire swept through a decade ago

Ancient Noble fir killed by the Dollar Lake Fire will provide wildlife habitat for many decades to come as a new forest grows here

Noble fir seedling emerging from the charred ashes of the Dollar Lake Fire

Meanwhile, across the Clear Branch canyon on the north of the mountain, the forests along the crest of Blue Ridge and at Owl Point (along today’s Old Vista Ridge Trail) are made up almost entirely of Noble fir that had colonized an earlier burn there, one that occurred sometime in the early 1900s. This pair of photos (below) from Owl Point shows how the foreground was burned and just beginning to recover in 1952, while 70 years later the scene is reversed: the forests along Blue Ridge and Owl Point have largely recovered, while the north slope of the mountain is just beginning its recovery from the 2011 Dollar lake Fire.

When our Noble fir forests are spared of fire and logging, individual trees can easily live up to 400 years. The oldest known Noble fir have reached 600 to 700 years, though trees of this age are exceedingly rare after more than a century of commercial logging in the Pacific Northwest.

In the early days of extensive logging, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, true firs were considered a lesser wood, so the timber industry marketed the massive, old-growth Noble firs as “Larch”. This explains two Larch Mountains in the Columbia River Gorge, one on each side of the river, and each the site of extensive turn-of-the-century logging in the early 1900s. The better-known Larch Mountain is on the Oregon side, and its broad, high elevation slopes provided a perfect habitat for Noble fir.

Loggers felling a massive Noble fir on Larch Mountain in 1905

By the early 1900s, the Bridal Veil Mill on the Columbia River had established an upstream sister mill in the heart of these Noble fir forests, where the trees were hundreds of years old, having been spared by fire for many centuries. The upstream mill was known as the Palmer Mill (and later, New Palmer Mill, after the first mill burned), and a road on Larch Mountain still carries its name.

Loggers carried giant Noble fir cut on the slopes of Larch Mountain to the New Palmer Mill on logging railroads. This scene is from 1905

Old-growth Noble fir logs were milled at the original Palmer Mill site on the north slope of Larch Mountain. This scene is from 1896, when logging of the virgin Noble fir forests there was in its heyday

Palmer Mill was attached to the main mill by a long flume that followed Bridal Veil Creek, and it was the hub for a massive logging enterprise on Larch Mountain that felled most of the virgin Noble fir forests. Huge logs were first sent to Palmer Mill on a branched system of logging railroad spurs, then milled into rough lumber that was floated down the flume system to the Bridal Veil Mill for finishing into construction grade lumber.

Today, all but a few traces of the Palmer Mill are gone, and many of the Noble fir forests on Larch Mountain are approaching 100 years in age. The area somehow dodged the 2017 Gorge Fire that swept through vast areas of the Gorge, burning through thousands of acres of Noble fir forests in the Gorge high country.

Noble fir in the age of Climate Change

Today, Noble fir country in the western Oregon Cascades is a checkerboard of clear cuts that mark the advent of National Forest logging that began on a commercial scale in the late 1940s. When these trees were cut, the catch phrase used to justify logging ancient forests was “sustained yield”, though sustained yield forestry never envisioned restoring ancient forests to their natural state. Instead, the management philosophy was to provide a continual supply of 60-100 year-old trees from plantations that could be repeatedly logged via a vast network of logging roads built in our forests from the late 1940s through the early 1990s.

When 7.5 minute USGS maps were created in the 1950s and early 60s, there were already thousands of clear cuts on Forest Service lands that showed up on the new maps as a checkboard in heavily logged areas like Mount Hood’s Blue Ridge (shown here). Many more clear cuts followed, and sixty years later, these clear cuts are often overcrowded plantations of conifers that the Forest Service is now thinning through new timber sales

Despite the early bias against true firs, the wood produced by Noble fir eventually came to be valued for being light and strong, and was used during World War II in aircraft, as well as more common construction uses in windows, doors and paper production. This led to aggressive logging in the later years of the commercial timber boom of the 1950s-90s, when lower elevation forests had already been logged over, and high-elevation Noble fir forests were increasingly targeted.

The Pacific Crest Trail follows the crest of this ridge near Lolo Pass, where heavily logged, high-elevation Noble fir forests have been slow to recover. These clear cuts are now 40-50 years old, and yet the stunted, crowded young plantation trees are still dwarfed by the groves of big, old-growth trees that were spared the chainsaw

Clearcutting on the steep, mountainous terrain where Noble fir grow was never sustainable, at least as measured in human lifetimes. The big, high elevation Noble fir forests sold off by the Forest Service were often hundreds of years old, with even the smaller-diameter trees well over a century old. There was never a chance to produce a rotating “crop” of trees at these elevations large enough to justify logging for generations to come, but that didn’t slow the rush to log these forests.

Instead, the logging boom finally peaked with the listing of the Spotted Owl and subsequent “timber wars” in the early 1990s, and it has never fully recovered, though some logging on our national forests continues today.

This Noble fir fell across the Timberline Trail recently, and was sawed out by trail crews. While it is only about 15” in diameter, a count of the annual growth rings revealed this tree to be over 160 years old, demonstrating how elevation and mountain conditions slow the growth of these trees

It’s easily to lose perspective on just how old the trees in our mountain forests really are. The above is a timeline of human events that unfolded since this tree took root as a Noble fir seedling on Mount Hood until a windstorm knocked it down in 2020. This tree is approximately 14 inches in diameter and 160 years old.

These stumps near Bennet Pass mark some of the oldest and largest Noble fir ever logged near Mount Hood, with some of these trees approaching 300 years old when they were cut. These stumps look like they might be a couple years old, with bark still intact. In fact, these trees were logged about 30 years ago, yet the Noble fir seedlings growing in this recovering clear cut are barely six feet tall

This is the same stump that appears in the foreground in the previous photo, with approximate dates according to tree rings. When it was cut, it has lived through more than a quarter of the first millennium.

The Bennett Pass clear cut (shown above) might look recent, given the intact condition of the stumps and the young Noble fir trees just getting established. Yet, this forest was cut nearly 30 years ago, as shown in the aerial photo pair (below). Thanks to its high elevation at over 4,000 feet, and resulting slow forest recovery, this logged area is still just beginning to reforest.

After nearly 30 years, this clear cut in an old-growth Noble fir forest near Bennett Pass is only beginning to recover

These examples are typical of logged Noble fir forests throughout the Mount Hood National Forest. They simply haven’t recovered at the pace the Forest Service assumed when logging was still king. Noble fir seedlings in these cut-over areas have often grown very slowly, reaching just 6 or 8 feet in height after 30 or 40 years of post-logging recovery. The slow recovery has also compounded the fragmentation effect on wildlife that depend on uninterrupted old-growth forest habitat.

Today, the Forest Service is grappling with the perfect storm of an aging, overbuilt system of spur roads from the heyday of commercial logging coupled with increasingly catastrophic forest fires resulting from climate change and a century of fire suppression. This is especially true in high-elevation Noble fir country, where clear cut plantations are especially vulnerable to summer drought and fire, and logging roads are impacted by severe winter conditions.

To meet these challenges, along with Congressional quotas for timber production that have always been unsustainable, the Forest Service has pivoted to forest thinning the thickets of young plantation trees in previously logged areas. It’s arguable that this strategy will help restore forests to a healthy state, but sadly, the Forest Service mission isn’t to restore a mature, healthy forest. Their goal is to bring more marketable logs to maturity, the primary management objective for much of Mount Hood National Forest.

Forest thinning operation on Butcher Knife Ridge, north of Mount Hood, where roughly one third of the trees have been removed from a clear cut plantation to encourage a more diverse forest structure

Forest thinning typically produces massive piles of woody debris, as seen here on Blue Ridge, just outside the Mount Hood Wilderness. Logging debris was historically burned as “slash”, though new uses are under development to make better use of this material as we enter the age of widespread forest thinning

The jury is out as to whether forest thinning improves the health of crowded plantations better than simply doing nothing, given the impact of heavy equipment on tree root systems and the forest understory. The science does suggest that thinning can help as a preventative means for reducing forest fire severity, since it removes potential fuel from the forest. The benefit of thinning Noble fir plantations is less clear, however, since the species is already more vulnerable to fire than other conifers, and seldom survives fire.

Noble fir also tolerate crowded conditions better than other conifers, presumably because these trees are so effective at colonizing burns and often form nearly pure stands in the process. Young Noble fir forests often have little understory beyond a carpet of beargrass because the trees are so closely spaced. But these pure stands have also evolved to self-thin over time, maturing to a more open canopy that allows huckleberry, rhododendron and other mountain understory species to thrive among more widely spaced, mature trees. In these forests, young Noble fir are also part of the understory, as the forest canopy continues to regenerate.

The following images show self-thinning in a young (about 80 years old) Noble fir forest on Bald Mountain, along the Timberline Trail. A recent windstorm selectively toppled the weakest among these trees, a timeless process that Noble fir don’t need our help with.

Recent downfall in a young stand of Noble fir on Bald Mountain are part of an ongoing, self-thinning process these trees have evolved for

Recent self-thinning event in a pure Noble fir stand on Bald Mountain. If it doesn’t burn, this protected forest inside the Mount Hood Wilderness will continue to self-thin, becoming an old-growth Noble fir forest in time

With logged high-elevation forests recovering very slowly, and high-elevation spur roads failing especially badly, and the mounting negative impacts of clear cutting, continued logging of our Noble fir forests simply isn’t a sustainable practice. A new management philosophy that centers on forest restoration and climate adaptation over timber extraction is long overdue.

Instead of waiting a century or more to produce marketable Noble fir saw logs, these recovering forests could be sold for credits on the carbon market, using their gradual recovery as carbon offsets for polluting industries. Over the long term, Noble fir have immense capacity for carbon capture and storage. Scientists studying the ancient Noble fir forests at the Goat March Research Natural Area, near Mount St. Helens, have determined this forest to have a biomass second only to the coastal Redwood forests of Northern California.

A mature, thriving Noble fir forest at the 4,000 elevation on Mount Hood, with a diverse mix of mature and younger trees, and a few wildlife snags

Such a shift in Forest Service philosophy would not only help the global response to climate change, it would also yield a host of other benefits that high elevation forests in our region provide – a list that include critical wildlife habitat, cooler and more stable stream runoff for endangered salmon and steelhead and crucial water supplies for nearby communities that depend on mountain snowpack that forests help retain.

Mature Noble fir forest on Mount Hood, with towering old-growth trees mixed with younger trees and a dense understory

Such a shift in focus would also allow for the Forest Service to retire many of its deteriorating logging spur roads, and revenue from the sale of carbon credits could provide needed funding to do the work. Beyond the escalating cost to maintain them, these roads are notorious for triggering landslides and dumping sediments into streams when cut-and-fill roadbeds fail from plugged culverts or landslides. They also represent an increasing hazard in the form of human-caused forest fires and illegal dumping, as some of the worst lawless activity occurs on these remote roads where law enforcement simply cannot have a meaningful presence.

This road decommissioning work has already begun in the Mount Hood National Forest, though only in fits and starts, as it has thus far been driven by declining agency budgets more than an eye toward forest recovery and restoration. A focus on the broader outcomes of climate, water quality and fish habitat could speed up this important work with a new sense of urgency.

Where to see Noble fir

Want to see some of these trees close-up? One of the best and most accessible places is the short trail to Sherrard Point, which is the rocky summit pinnacle of Larch Mountain. The road to the summit picnic area and Sherrard Point trail is gated in the winter, but usually opens by early June. An easy, paved trail and series of stairsteps leads to the viewpoint.

Noble fir giants at sunset in WyEast country

If you’d like a longer hike, the short, steep climb to the summit of Bald Mountain, near Lolo Pass, leads through some of the best old growth Noble fir in the Mount Hood area:

Bald Mountain from Top Spur

For an even longer hike, start from Lolo Pass and follow the Pacific Crest Trail to Bald Mountain, with much of the route through Noble fir forests:

Bald Mountain from Lolo Pass

Perhaps the best Noble fir forests in the Cascades are at Goat Marsh, near Mt. St. Helens. A short trail takes you into this fascinating research area and some of the largest known Noble fir trees in the world:

Goat Marsh Lake

Bald Mountain and Goat Marsh are snowed in during the winter months, but typically open by early June.

Enjoy!

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Tom Kloster | November 2021

2019 Campaign Calendar!

December 9, 2018 / Tom Kloster / 4 Comments

Calendar cover for 2019 featuring Whale Creek

[Click here for a large image]

‘Tis the season for top ten lists and year-end retrospectives, so in that spirit my annual Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar is pretty good snapshot of 12 favorite spots of mine across WyEast country this year. Since 2004, I’ve created an annual calendar dedicated to the campaign, each with a fresh set of photos. If you’d like a 2019 calendar, there’s info at the bottom of the article and ALL proceeds will once again go to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO).

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The annual campaign calendar has been a great motivator for exploring new terrain and improving my photography skills over the years. Each year the calendar project also renews my conviction that Mount Hood and the Gorge are uniquely special places, and deserve better care.

This article is a short tour of the 12 spots that made it into the 2019 calendar, with a few stories behind the photos and reflection on these increasingly fragile landscapes.

Starting with the cover image (at the top of the article), the calendar begins at lovely Whale Creek, a tributary of the Clackamas River that is also featured in the March image, so more about that spot in a moment.

Next up, the January image (below) captures the awesome west face of Mount Hood, where the Sandy Headwall towers 3,000 feet above the Sandy Glacier. This snowy view was captured from near Lolo Pass last winter.

January features the awesome Sandy Headwall

[Click here for a large image]

Not included in the close-up view are the bare slopes of Barrett Spur (below) and other alpine ramparts of Mount Hood that still didn’t have their winter snowpack in early February, when these photos were taken. While it’s not uncommon to have a late snowpack in the Cascades, these events are becoming more common as global warming unfolds in our own backyard.

Low snow on Barrett Spur in February tells the story of our changing climate

For February, I chose a close-up perspective of the ice “pillows” that form at the base of Tamanawas Falls (below) in winter. This has become a very popular winter destination in recent years, thanks in large part to social media! (…ahem…)

February features Tamanawas Falls

[Click here for a large image]

Tamanawas is Chinook jargon for “guiding spirit”, and is one version among a couple variations in spelling. More challenging is the pronunciation, and with the advent of social media, all manner of spoken variations are being used. For some reason, an especially popular spoken version that doesn’t even correlate to the actual spelling is “tah-ma-WAHN-us”.

It turns out the most accepted pronunciation is “ta-MAH-na-wahs”. I’ve been saying a slight variation of “ta-MAN-a-wahs” for most of my life, so I’ll need to work on that!

Cold Spring Creek and Tamanawas Falls in winter

As mentioned earlier, the March calendar image is from Whale Creek (below), located in the heart of the Clackamas River canyon. The creek is hidden in plain sight, flowing through the Indian Henry Campground and next to the east trailhead of the Clackamas River Trail. This area features some of the finest rainforest in WyEast country.

March features a rainforest scene along Whale Creek

[Click here for a large image]

Whale Creek was just one of many places in the Clackamas and Molalla River watersheds that I found myself exploring this year while much of the Oregon portion of the Columbia River Gorge was closed by the Eagle Creek fire. I visited the lower reaches of Whale Creek after seeing stunning photos of a string of waterfalls on the upper reaches of the creek, and quickly fell in love with this pretty stream. Watch for a future article on a trail concept I’ve been working on for Whale Creek with TKO and some area waterfall explorers.

Whale Creek in the Clackamas River canyon

Sadly, the Clackamas River corridor has a bad reputation, thanks to a history of lawless behavior (the recent Pit Fire was started by illegal target shooting, for example) and a long history of Forest Service management that viewed the area more like a tree farm than a forest — and the two go hand in hand, by the way.

Yet, hidden in the now-recovering rainforests of the Clackamas are dozens of spectacular waterfalls, towering basalt walls and rugged vistas that rival the Columbia River Gorge in beauty. There are also a lot of big trees that somehow dodged the logging heyday of past decades.

Whale Creek in winter

The Clackamas River corridor holds great promise for future recreation alternative to places like the Gorge, and the proven cure for lawless behavior is lawful recreation. I’m optimistic that we’ll make that transition here, and begin valuing places like Whale Creek for the intrinsic value of its forests, not just the saw logs it can produce.

April features White River Falls State Park

[Click here for a large image]

For the April calendar image, I selected a photo of White River Falls, both for the contrast in WyEast country ecosystems it displays and because this little state park could use some love and expanded boundaries. I posted an article with just such a proposal a few years ago, you can find it over here.

White River Falls with unprotected desert country beyond

The May calendar image features a sweeping view of the Upper Hood River Valley (below) from little known, seldom-noticed Middle Mountain. Its name tells the story, as forested Middle Mountain divides the upper and lower portions of the Hood River Valley. I learned of this spot about ten years ago from a local photographer and have gone back pretty much every year since.

May features the Upper Hood River Valley as viewed from Middle Mountain

[Click here for a large image]

Zooming in a bit to this idyllic landscape reveals a seemingly timeless farm scene that is easy to take for granted. And yet, these farms were at great peril just a few years ago, when voters passed the deceptive Measure 37 in 2004. The law was pitched as a way for landowners to “seek compensation” for land use regulation, but in truth was just another end-run around Oregon’s protections for farm and forestlands.

Voters later passed Measure 49, in 2007, blunting the impact of the earlier measure, but only after hundreds of urban-scale developments were approved in rural areas across Oregon (including a pair of giant, illuminated billboards along the Mount Hood Highway that still remain today). It was a reminder that while our farms may look timeless, we can never take them for granted. They will always need our support and protection if we want places like this to exist for future generations.

Timeless farm scene below Middle Mountain

Much of Middle Mountain is owned by the public, where county-owned forest lands continue to be (mis)managed as a cash register by Hood River County (the county likes to refer to these land as their “tree farm”). Local residents no doubt enjoy their modest tax rates, as a result, but I’m hoping the rapidly changing demographics in Hood River will bring a different mindset to how the thousands of acres of county forests that ring the Hood River Valley are managed.

Logging is still king on Middle Mountain…

One immediate concern on Middle Mountain is the manner of logging. Large clear cuts, like those scarring the slopes of Middle Mountain, are an unsustainable practice, with proven harmful impacts to forest health, water quality and salmon and steelhead populations. Clear cuts are also the cheapest, easiest way to bring haul logs out of the forest. That bottom line might be unavoidable for private forests, but as a public agency, Hood River County should at least adopt a selective harvest policy that leaves standing trees in logged areas.

…keeping Hood River County coffers full…

The county should also reject the reckless use of herbicides sprayed on logged over lands. This is a practice the private industry uses to shortcut the natural forest recovery and speed up the next harvest. The idea is to destroy the recovering forest understory in a logged area so that plantation seedlings might grow a little faster.

The forest on the left is next to go…

I’m not certain the county uses this practice on public lands, but it seems to be the case. Consider this notice posted a few days ago on their website:

“Recreation trails are sometimes temporarily closed during additional forest management operations. Operations such as the burning of slash, herbicide application, and the planting of seedlings, will necessitate trail closures. Trails are re-opened once operations are complete.”

This certainly sounds like the private industry practice…

…might as well add “for now” to the last line on this boundary marker, unfortunately.

Of course, the county could show real leadership and simply ban this practice on private lands in Hood River County, as well. That is, if water quality, wildlife, salmon and steelhead habitat, long-term forest health and tourism are a county priority over the fastest route to clear cutting more logs. My sense is that voters in Hood River County are increasingly focused on these broader concerns, even if the county leadership isn’t there yet.

June features Shotgun Falls in the Molalla River canyon

[Click here for a large image]

For the June calendar image, I selected another lesser-known spot, graceful Shotgun Falls (above) in the Molalla River canyon. This pretty, off-trail waterfall has been on my list for some time, and the Gorge closure inspired me to finally make this trip last spring for a much-needed waterfall fix.

Shotgun Falls

Shotgun Falls is a classic “Oregon” waterfall, cascading over a tall, mossy basalt cliff. The falls is a short creek walk from the Molalla River Road, but protected by a 20-foot barrier falls just downstream that requires a slippery scramble to navigate. It’s an increasingly popular off-trail trip, and the streambed is starting to show the wear and tear, making this a great candidate for a proper trail that families with young kids and hikers looking for an easy waterfall trip could enjoy. More to come on this idea..!

Time for a real trail, here…

Sometimes a random moment burns a place and time in the forest into your memory. One such moment occurred on my trip to Shotgun Falls when my pack suddenly tipped while shooting photos from high above the falls. To my horror, it went bounding into the canyon, finally stopping just short of Shotgun Creek, about 60 feet below. Thankfully, my camera gear was safely zipped inside and I didn’t even end up with a soggy pack — the difference between a fond memory and forgettable one!

Takes a licking, keeps on zipping!

The July calendar image features a picture-perfect wildflower scene along Cove Creek (below), located at the base of Barrett Spur in Elk Cove. This idyllic spot is kept open by a deep, lingering snowpack in spring and regular winter avalanches that shear off trees, allowing the alpine meadows to thrive.

July features Cove Creek and Barrett Spur

[Click here for a large image]

Looking downstream along Cove Creek (below), 99 Ridge can be seen in the distance, covered with ghost trees killed by the 2012 Dollar Lake Fire. The fire reached the margins of Elk Cove, but passed over most of the forests here.

The Dollar Lake Burn swept over 99 Ridge, in the background in this view of Cove Creek

On this trip to Elk Cove, I met a pair of hikers carrying their exhausted pup down the trail. When I chatted briefly with them, I was reminded that hikers are really nice people: they didn’t even know each other. The man carrying the dog had run into the woman as she struggled to carry her dog back to the trailhead. He offered to carry the poor pup the rest of the way!

Hikers are nice people! (…see text…)

For the August calendar image, I selected a familiar view of Mount Hood from high on the shoulder of Cooper Spur (below). The Eliot Glacier dominates the view here, even as it recedes from global warming. As the glacier recedes, the exposed canyon floor once covered by ice has rapidly eroded, which in turn has begun to destabilize the moraines that flank the canyon.

August features the mighty Eliot Glacier

[Click here for a large image]

I experienced the hazards of the destabilized moraines firsthand when I stopped along the South Eliot Moraine that day and set my pack on a 4-foot long boulder that seemed to be the perfect trailside bench. Before I could park myself on the “bench”, it suddenly gave way, careening end-over-end into the Eliot Branch canyon, kicking off dozens of other rocks and an impressive dust storm along the way!

The south Eliot Moraine continues to crumble…

Thankfully, there were no hikers below — and I was also relieved that I’d snapped up my pack before the boulder disappeared over the edge! Clearly, my pack has nine lives… though I’m not sure how many remain…

08cEliotMoraineBoulderRollEliotBranch

Seeing the boulder finally land among the jumbled rocks 300 feet below was powerful reminder of the scale of this place, as the 4-foot “bench” rock was dwarfed by dozens of larger boulders scattered below the moraine.

A 4-foot boulder becomes a pebble among the debris rolling into the Eliot Branch canyon

The September calendar image captures fall colors along Still Creek, on Mount Hood’s southwest side. This photo was taken on a visit to a recent Forest Service project designed to restore salmon and steelhead habitat on Still Creek.

September features a grove of Red Alder along Still Creek wrapped in brilliant Vine Maple foliage

[Click here for a large image]

The project site was a badly overused “dispersed” campsite that had become an eyesore over the years. To rehabilitate the site, the Forest Service excavated a large trench to block vehicle access to the streamside campsite, reinforced the barrier with a row of boulders. So far, these barriers seems to be working, as there were no signs of continued camping or off-road vehicle use in the area.

Forest Service stream restoration work on Still Creek

At the heart of the restoration project, several very large logs with root wads attached (below) were hauled into the stream to create the natural “woody debris” habitat that our native salmon and steelhead rely upon. The logs and roots create deep pools and places for small fish to hide from predation as they mature to adulthood.

Bringing back logs and root wads that create prime fish habitat

There’s something primeval about uprooted trees lying across the creek. This is what most of our streams looked like before the settlement era, when forests were logged, streams were tamed and few big trees were left to become “woody debris”. The panorama below shows the full extend of this Forest Service restoration project.

Panoramic view of the restoration site

[Click here for a large image]

On a select few days each fall, the first high elevation snow of the season is followed by a few days of bright, clear weather — and with any luck, all of this coincides with fall colors. Such was the case in the calendar image I selected for October (below), with Mount Hood framed by flaming Vine Maple, as viewed from the Lolo Pass area.

October features an early snow on Mount Hood, framed by Vine Maples

[Click here for a large image]

Whenever I shoot this scene, an image of a scalloped-edge vintage postcard is in my mind. Thanks to many postcards from the 1940s, 50s and 60s that captured this side of the mountain in autumn, the scene is iconic. This card (below) from the 1950s is typical of the era, and was captured just around the corner from where I shot the 2019 calendar image.

Timeless inspiration, with fancy scalloped edges!

For the November calendar image, I selected a rainforest scene from along the Molalla River (below), where bare winter trees reveal the contorted, mossy limbs of Bigleaf and Vine Maple.

November features a pristine rainforest scene along the Molalla River

[Click here for a large image]

While the above certainly scene looks pristine, it’s really not. One of my favorite photographic themes is to capture “pristine” scenery in places that are not — but could be, if managed with an eye toward restoration. Such was the case with the previous photo from Lolo Pass, where transmission towers were literally buzzing overhead, and with the Molalla River, where a road culvert dumped the little stream in the photo from a 4-foot galvanized pipe.

…which turns out to not be all that pristine..!

Beauty can be found everywhere, and the path to restoration in even the most impacted areas in WyEast country begins when we see places not just for what they once were, but for what they could be, again.

The December calendar image is a freezing fog scene from the east slopes of Mount Defiance (below). This stunning phenomenon occurs a few times each winter when temperature inversions blanket the eastern Columbia River Gorge with dense fog and frigid temperatures. The effect is magical, though traveling the roads in these conditions can be treacherous!

December features a crystal wonderland from freezing fog on the slopes of Mount Defiance

[Click here for a large image]

The frosting of ice coating the forest in these scenes is called “soft rime”, and is made up of feathery, fragile crystals that can be brushed off like a fine powder. Soft rime forms when super-cooled vapor in fog accumulates directly on tree surfaces in delicate, elaborate crystals. Hard rime is defined as ice forming from freezing fog that first condenses to water droplets, then freezes on surfaces, creating a clear, hardened ice layer.

Freezing fog on Mount Defiance

Soft rime accumulations can be quite impressive in the Gorge, depending on how long the fog event lasts. These scenes were captured after five days of freezing fog and represent about the maximum amount of ice that can accumulate before crystals break off under their own weight.

Freezing fog on Mount Defiance

This photo (below) is a close-up of soft rime accumulations on a Golden Chinkapin growing on the slopes of Mount Defiance. These crystals as much as three inches long.

Soft rime ice crystals

The scene below shows an odd transition from bare road (and car) to frosted forest that looks like a photoshop creation. In this spot the rime had coated the trees and understory, but not the gravel road in the foreground, creating the strange two-tone scene. This photo is also a bit of a farewell, as my venerable trail car of the past many years years is featured. This old friend was retired to quiet a life in the city just a few months after this photo was taken, at the ripe old age of 13 years and 212,000 miles!

Farewell to an old friend…

The back page of the 2019 calendar features nine wildflower images from the past year. If you’ve followed articles on the blog, you’ll recognize a several photos featured in stories on Horkelia Meadow and Punchbowl Falls.

From top left and reading across, these flowers are Hackelia micrantha (Horkelia Meadow), Chocolate Lily (Punchbowl Falls Park), Oregon Iris (Shellburg Falls), Buckwheat (Horkelia Meadow), Calypso Orchid (Punchbowl Falls Park), Oregon Grape (Molalla River), Horkelia fusca (Horkelia Meadow), Collomia grandiflora (Clackamas River) and Skyrocket Gilia (Horkelia Meadow).

A year in wildflowers!

[Click here for a large image]

So, that’s it for the 2019 campaign calendar! I’ve already started colleting images for next year’s calendar and I’m looking forward to yet another year of exploring all corners of America’s next national park. Maybe I’ll even see you out on the trail!

Old goat that wandered up a creek…

In the meantime, you can order the 2019 calendar over at Zazzle. They’re beautifully printed, oversized designs with functional writing space — they’re working calendars and make great gifts! The calendars sell for $29.95, but Zazzle regularly offers deep discounts, so it’s worth watching for sales. This year, all proceeds from calendars will go to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO).

You can order a 2019 campaign calendar here

Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you’re able to get out and explore Mount Hood and the Gorge over the holidays!

_______________

Tom Kloster • December 2019

A New Vision: Restoring Hiyu Mountain

July 31, 2016August 1, 2016 / Tom Kloster

Early 1900s view of Mount Hood and Bull Run Lake, with Hiyu Mountain on the far right and Sentinel Peak on the left

Hidden in plain sight at the foot of Mount Hood and the headwaters of Portland’s Bull Run watershed, Hiyu Mountain is a little-known, much abused gem. No one knows why this graceful, crescent-shaped mountain was named with the Chinook jargon word for “much” or “many”, and sadly, only a very few know of Hiyu Mountain today.

This little mountain deserves better. The broader vision of the Mount Hood National Park Campaign is to heal and restore Mount Hood and the Gorge as a place for conservation and sustainable recreation, ending a century of increasing commercial exploitation and profiteering. As part of this vision, Hiyu Mountain could once again become a place of “hiyu” beauty, where snowcapped WyEast fills the horizon and where Bull Run Lake, indigo source of Portland’s drinking water, could finally be seen and celebrated by the public these lands belong to.

Two Worlds

Dodge Island and Mount Hood from Bull Run Lake; Hiyu Mountain is the tall, crescent-shaped ridge rising behind the island (photo courtesy Guy Meacham)

Hiyu Mountain rises 1,500 feet directly above Bull Run Lake, the uppermost source of Portland’s water supply. Lolo Pass is on the south shoulder of the mountain, connecting the Hood River and Sandy River valleys. The two sides of Hiyu Mountain mountain couldn’t be more different.

The northern slope that forms the shoreline of the Bull Run Lake is almost untouched by man, almost as pristine as it was when the Bull Run Watershed was established in the late 1800s.

Early 1900s map of Hiyu Mountain and Bull Run Lake

Massive old growth Noble fir forests tower along these northern slopes, where rain and snow from Pacific storm fronts is captured, emerging in the crystal mountain springs that form the headwaters of the Bull Run River.

Almost no one visits this part of Bull Run, save for an occasional Portland Water Bureau worker. This land has been strictly off-limits to the public for nearly 120 years, and remained untouched even as the Bull Run Reserve was developed as a municipal watershed.

Early 1900s map showing Hiyu Mountain and the first trails over Lolo Pass

On the south slope of Hiyu Mountain things were surprisingly pristine until the 1950s. This area was also part of the original Bull Run Reserve, but was later ceded – in large part because the south slopes of Hiyu Mountain drain to the Clear Fork of the Sandy River, and away from the Bull Run watershed.

Since the 1950s, a conspiracy of forces has almost completely altered the south face of the mountain and its summit crest. By the mid-1950s, the Forest Service had begun what would become an extensive industrial logging zone here, mining ancient trees in dozens of sprawling, high-elevation clear cuts in the remote Clear Fork valley.

These forests will take centuries to recover, and are today mostly thickets of plantation conifers in woeful need of thinning. The maze of logging roads constructed to cut the forests are now buckling and sliding into disrepair on the steep mountain slopes.

1927 map of Hiyu Mountain, Bull Run Lake and the south corner of Lost Lake

By the late 1950s, a logging road had finally pushed over the crest of Lolo Pass. At just 3,330 feet, Lolo is the lowest of mountain passes on Mount Hood and a route long used by Native Americans. But surprisingly, it was the last to see a road in modern times. The road over Lolo Pass coincided with the completion of The Dalles Dam in 1957, some 50 miles east on the Columbia River.

While the dam is most notorious for drowning Cello Falls, a place where native peoples had lived, fished and traded for millennia, it also sent half-mile wide power transmission corridors west to Portland and south to California. Thus, the new road over Lolo Pass enabled the most egregious insult to Hiyu Mountain, with the parade of transmission towers we see today tragically routed over the shoulder of Mount Hood.

The power corridor took advantage of the easy passage over Lolo Pass, an absence of tourists and public awareness (at the time) on this remote side of the mountain, and was built with complete disregard for the natural landscape. It remains as Mount Hood’s worst scar.

The Bonneville Power Administration’s quarter-mile wide perpetual clearcut that follows their transmission lines over the shoulder of Hiyu Mountain

Today, the south side of Hiyu Mountain remains a jarring landscape of ragged clearcuts, failing logging roads and the quarter-mile wide swath of power lines.

With regular clearing and herbicides, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) ensures that nothing much grows under its transmission lines except invasive weeds. It’s a perpetual, linear clearcut that serves primarily as a place for illegal dumping and a shooting range for lawless gun owners who ignore (or shoot) the hundreds of BPA “no trespassing” signs. It is truly an ugly and shameful scene that cries out for a better management vision.

The Lookout Era

The original lookout tower on Mount Hood in the late 1920s

By 1929, the Forest Service had built a 20-foot wooden lookout tower with an open platform atop Hiyu Mountain (above). It was an ideal location, with sweeping views of both the Bull Run Reserve and the entire northwest slope of Mount Hood. A roof was soon added to the original structure, but in 1933 a more standard L-4 style lookout cabin replaced the original structure (below). The new lookout provided enclosed living quarters for lookout staff, complete with a cot, table and wood stove – and an Osborne fire finder in the center of the one-room lookout.

The 1933 Hiyu Mountain Lookout in the 1950s

Osborne Fire finder in the 1930s (USDA)

When the new Hiyu Mountain lookout was constructed in 1933, the Forest Service was also completing a comprehensive photographic survey from its hundreds of lookout sites throughout Oregon. These photos are now an invaluable historical record. Forest Service photographers used a special panoramic camera to capture the full sweep of the view from each lookout, creating a trio of connecting panoramas from each location.

The following photographs are taken from a panoramic survey at Hiyu Mountain in 1934, and tell us what the area looked like in those early days.

The first photo (below) looks north, toward Bull Run Lake, but also shows the fresh fire lane cut into the forest along the Bull Run Reserve boundary – visible on the right and along the ridge at the top of the photo.

Bull Run Lake from Hiyu Mountain in 1934

(click here for a larger photo)

The fire lane is no longer maintained and has now largely reforested. The northern view also shows a simple wind gauge mounted on a pole below the lookout tower and the perfect cone of Mt. St. Helens on the horizon, as it existed before its catastrophic 1980 eruption.

The view to the northeast (below) shows Mount Adams on the distant horizon, and a completely logged West Fork Hood River valley, below. The Mount Hood Lumber Company milled the old growth trees cut from this valley at the mill town of Dee, on the Hood River. The ruins of their company town (and a few surviving structures) can still be seen along the Lost Lake Highway today. Trees cut in the West Fork valley were transported to Dee by a train, and a portion of today’s Lolo Pass road actually follows the old logging railroad bed.

The logged-over West Fork valley from Hiyu Mountain in 1934

(click here for a larger photo)

Unfortunately, much of the West Fork valley continues to be in private ownership today. Longview Fiber owned the valley for decades, but sold their holdings in a corporate takeover in the late 2000s to a Toronto-based Canadian trust. More recently, Weyerhauser took ownership of the valley, and has embarked on a particularly ruthless (and completely unsustainable) logging campaign that rivals the complete destruction seen in these photos from the 1930s (watch for a future WyEast Blog article on this unfortunate topic).

To the southeast (below), Mount Hood fills the horizon in spectacular fashion, but there are some interesting details in the photo, too. In the foreground, the rocky spur that forms the true summit of Hiyu Mountain has been cleared to enhance the lookout views. The continued swath of logging in the West Fork valley can be seen reaching the foot of Mount Hood on the left.

Mount Hood from Hiyu Mountain in 1934

(click here for a larger photo)

A detailed look (below) at the western panorama in the Hiyu Mountain series shows a lot of cleared forest, a necessity as the summit ridge continues in this direction for than a mile, blocking visibility for the new lookout. In this detailed scene, we can also see stacked logs and lumber that were presumably used to build a garage and other outbuilding that were added to the site in the 1930s.

Recently cleared trees at the Hiyu Lookout site in 1934

(click here for a larger photo)

When it was constructed, the lookout on Hiyu Mountain was remote and reached only by trail. Materials for the new structured were brought in by packhorse. The nearest forest guard station was at Bull Run Lake, where Portland Water Bureau rangers staffed log cabins while guarding the water supply.

A dense network of trails connected the Hiyu Mountain lookout to Bull Run Lake and other lookouts in the area. As the 1930s era Forest Service map (below) shows, a telephone line (the dash-dot line) also connected Hiyu Mountain to other lookouts on Hiyu Mountain and to the cabins at Bull Run Lake. The phone line north of the lookout followed the fire lane, and is likely still there, lost in the forest regrowth.

1930s map of Hiyu Mountain showing the extensive trail network of the pre-logging area

The 1930s forest map also shows the original alignment of the (then) new Oregon Skyline Trail, now the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). According to the map, the trail crossed right through the logged-over area of the West Fork valley (between the tributaries of Elk Creek and McGee Creek on the map) in the 1934 panorama photos, so not exactly a scenic alignment. Today’s McGee Creek trail is a remnant of this earlier route from Mount Hood to Lost Lake.

Today’s PCT stays near the ridge tops, roughly following some of the old forest trails from Mount Hood to Lolo Pass, then across the east slope of Hiyu Mountain, toward Sentinel Peak. A 1946 forest map (below) shows the Oregon Skyline Trail to already have been moved to the ridges between Bald Mountain and Lost Lake, though the area was still without roads at the time.

1946 forest map of the Hiyu Mountain area – oddly, Lolo Pass is not even marked!

By the early 1950s, there were dozens of forest lookouts in the area north of Mount Hood, with structures on nearby Buck Mountain, Indian Mountain, Lost Lake Butte, Bald Mountain, East Zigzag Mountain, West Zigzag Mountain and Hickman Butte. All were within sight of the lookout on Hiyu Mountain, and must have provided welcome — if distant – company to lookout staff.

During the 1950s, roads were finally pushed into the Clear Fork valley and over Lolo Pass as the industrial logging era began on our national forests. During this period, a logging road was constructed between Lolo Pass and Bull Run Lake, including a spur that climbs to the summit of Hiyu Mountain.

Bull Run Lake from Hiyu Mountain in the 1950s

Though not widely known today, the logging agenda of the U.S. Forest Service from the 1950s through the 1980s did not spare the Bull Run Reserve. In the 1960s and 70s, alone, some 170 mile of logging roads were cut into the mountain slopes of Bull Run. By the 1990s, 14,500 acres of these “protected” old growth forests of 500-year old trees had been cut, or roughly 20 percent of the entire watershed had been logged. Public protests and legal challenges to stop the logging began as early as 1973, but only in 1996 did legislation finally ban the destruction of Bull Run’s remaining ancient forests.

By the early 1960s, the Forest Service had begun to phase out the forest lookouts, and Hiyu Mountain’s lookout structure was removed by 1967. Since then, the main function of the summit road has been to log the south slope and summit ridge of the mountain and to provide access to radio antennas where the old lookout building once stood. The easy road access to the summit also brought one of Mount Hood’s seismic monitors to Hiyu Mountain in more recent years.

The Ridiculous Red Zone

Hiyu Mountain is the long, dark ridge rising above Bull Run Lake and in front of Mount Hood in this 1960s photo

As recently at the 1980s, it was still legal – and physically possible – to follow the old, unmaintained lookout trail from Lolo Pass to the summit of Hiyu Mountain. Sadly, the Forest Service has since officially closed the trail as part of their stepped-up campaign with the City of Portland Water Bureau to deny any public access to the Bull Run Reserve, even for areas outside the physical watershed.

A few have dared to follow the Hiyu Mountain trail in recent years, and report it to be overgrown, but in excellent shape. The trail climbs through magnificent old Noble fir stands before emerging at the former lookout site. The route doesn’t come remotely close to the actual water supply in Bull Run, which underscores the ridiculousness of the no-entry policy.

Meanwhile, in recent years the City of Portland has been forced to flush entire reservoirs at Mount Tabor and in Washington Park because of suspected contamination from vandals. Yet, these reservoirs continue to be completely accessible and uncovered and in the middle of the city, protected only by fences.

Mount Hood from Bull Run Lake – Hiyu Mountain is the tall ridge immediately in front of Mount Hood in this view (Portland Water Bureau)

Why so little security in the middle of Portland, where the actual water supply is in plain sight and easily vandalized, and so much security where there is little chance of coming anywhere near the water source?

The answer seems to be a mix of dated laws, entrenched bureaucracy and a heavy dose of smokescreen marketing. Portland’s water supply has been under scrutiny by federal regulators in recent years for its vulnerability to tampering – or, perhaps more likely, natural hazards like landslides (Bull Run Lake was created by one, after all), catastrophic forest fires or even a volcanic eruption at nearby Mount Hood. This is because the water coming into city pipes is currently unfiltered.

Portland’s Water Bureau provides day tours for a limited number of Portlanders each summer willing to pay $21 for the trip. This is the only way the public can legally visit Bull Run (Wikimedia)

Portland’s elected officials are loathe to fund the price tag for modernizing the system to make it more safe and resilient. In their effort to avoid having to fund and build a filtration system, the City has instead relied heavily on the feel-good mystique of the Bull Run Reserve as a pristine, off-limits place where such measures simply aren’t needed. So far, Portlanders seem content to buy this excuse for preserving the status quo.

That’s too bad, because it’s always shortsighted to exclude the public from access to our public lands, especially if the purpose is as important as ensuring safe drinking water in perpetuity.

A better approach for both the City and the Forest Service would be just the opposite: look for opportunities to involve Portlanders in their Bull Run watershed, including trails like the route to Hiyu Mountain that could give a rare look at the source of our drinking water. Which brings us to…

A New Vision for Hiyu Mountain?

The popular reproduction lookout tower at the Tillamook Forest Center (Portland Tribune)

We already have a model for honoring Hiyu Mountain’s history at the Tillamook Forest Center, in Oregon’s Coast Range. This relatively new interpretive site is occasionally mocked for its prominent forest lookout tower without a view, but the purpose of the lookout is to educate visitors, not spot fires. Each year, thousands of visitors get a glimpse of how these lookouts came to be, and why they have largely disappeared from the landscape.

A similar project could work at Hiyu Mountain, though a restored lookout tower there could be for the dual purpose of educating visitors on both the history of forest lookouts and the story of the Bull Run Reserve, with birds-eye view of Bull Run Lake from the tower. A restored Hiyu Mountain tower could also provide a more aesthetic alternative for mounting Forest Service communications equipment now installed on top of the mountain.

The concept below would reopen the road to the summit of Hiyu Mountain to the public, with a restored lookout tower as the main attraction. Visitors would have stunning views of Mount Hood and into Bull Run Lake. The old lookout trail from Lolo Pass would also be reopened, providing a way for more active visitors to explore the area and visit the restored lookout tower.

Hiyu21ConceptMapSmall

(Click here for a larger map)

This concept would not put anyone in contact with Bull Run Lake or any of Portland’s Bull Run water, though it would provide a terrific view of the source of our drinking water. It would also pull back the shroud of secrecy around our watershed that allowed hundreds of acres of irreplaceable Bull Run old growth to forest be quietly logged just a few decades ago – the very sort of activity the public should know about when it’s happening on our public lands.

Another feature in this concept is an accessible trail (see map, below) to viewpoints of Bull Run Lake and a pair of scenic ponds that somehow survived the massive Forest Service clearcutting campaign on Hiyu Mountain’s crest.

The idea is to provide much-needed trail experiences for people with limited mobility or who use mobility devices, such as canes, walkers or wheelchairs. Trails with this focus are in short supply and demand for accessible trails is growing rapidly as our region grows. Why build it here? Because everyone should be able to see and learn about their water source, regardless of their mobility.

Hiyu22AllAccessTrailMapSmall

(Click here for a larger map)

These recreational and interpretive features would also allow Hiyu Mountain to begin recovering from a half-century of abuse and shift toward a recreation and interpretive focus in the future. While logged areas are gradually recovering, the area will need attention for decades to ensure that mature stands of Noble fir once again tower along Hiyu Mountain’s slopes.

What would it take..?

What would it take to achieve this vision? The Hiyu Mountain lookout trail is in fairly good shape, and could be restored by volunteers in a single season if the entry ban were lifted. The concept for an accessible loop could be funded with grants that specifically target accessible trails if the Forest Service were to pursue it. And forest lookout organizations already maintain several historic lookouts in Oregon, so they could be a resource for recreating and maintaining a lookout at Hiyu Mountain.

Welcome to your Bull Run watershed… (Wikimedia)

Most of the infrastructure is already in place, and just waiting for a better management vision for Hiyu Mountain. I’ve described one here, and there are surely others that could provide both public access and restoration.

But only the U.S. Forest Service and City of Portland Water Bureau can move us away from the antiquated entry ban at Bull Run. Hiyu Mountain would be the perfect place to start!

2013 Mount Hood National Park Calendar

November 23, 2012June 22, 2013 / Tom Kloster / 2 Comments

Each year at about this time I assemble the Mount Hood National Park Scenic Calendar. The proceeds are modest, but do help support the Mount Hood National Park Campaign website, WyEast Blog and related project expenses. But the main purpose is to simply promote the national park concept, and make the case for the campaign with pictures.

What the calendar looks like – oversized 11×17” pages you can actually use!

I’ve published the calendars since 2004, so this year’s calendar marks the ninth edition. All of the photos in the calendar are from trips and trails I’ve explored over the past year. I get a surprising number of questions about the photos, so in addition to simply announcing the 2013 calendar, this article tells a bit of the story behind the new images — and some are surprising!

The 2013 Scenes

The cover image for the 2013 calendar is Upper McCord Creek Falls, located just west of Cascade Locks. This is a popular destination for Columbia Gorge lovers, though often overshadowed by its more famous downstream sibling, Elowah Falls.

Cover Scene: Upper McCord Creek Falls

Upper McCord Falls is unique in that it flows as a twin cascade. A little known fact is that a third segment used to flow during the rainy season as recently as the 1970s, just to the left of the two segments shown in the photo (above). The third segment has since been blocked by stream debris, however, so for now, Upper McCord is best known as a twin cascade.

The falls is popular with photographers, but in 2010 was briefly obstructed by a large treetop that had split from atop a nearby maple, landing perfectly on its head, directly in front of the falls. While the local photography community simply grumped and groaned about this unfortunate development, Gorge waterfall explorer and photographer Zach Forsyth did something about it: he scrambled down the slope, and neatly tipped the 40-foot up-ended tree on its side. Thus, Zach made this year’s calendar cover possible – thanks, Zach!

Upper McCord Creek Falls with “the stump” in 2010

Upper McCord Creek Falls is tucked away in the hidden upper canyon of McCord Creek, just a few hundred yards from the brink of Elowah Falls. The trail to the upper falls is especially spectacular, following a ledge chiseled into sheer cliffs in the early 1900s to pipe water to the former Warrendale Cannery, below (portions of the pipe system can be seen along the trail). The falls is hidden from view until you abruptly arrive at the dramatic overlook, directly in front of the falls – one of the finest and most unexpected scenes in the Gorge.

The January calendar scene is a wintery view of the rugged west face of Mount Hood, just emerging from the clouds after a fresh snowfall. This view was captured just a few weeks ago near Lolo Pass, as the evening light was briefly catching the summit.

January Scene: West face after an early winter storm

Like most “mountain in the mist” images, this one was a reward for patience: I waited for two chilly hours for the clouds to clear! It worth the wait, though I’ve also had my share of disappointments when that glorious glimpse of the mountain didn’t materialize.

For the month of February, I picked an image from a trip last winter along the Little Zigzag River. I had planned to snowshoe to Little Zigzag Falls from the Kiwanis Camp, but there were only about 18 inches of snow on the ground, much of it fluffy and new. So, I simply trudged through leaving some very deep boot prints in my wake — and happily, the only footprints on the trail that afternoon.

February Scene: Little Zigzag River in winter

The weather was extremely cold on this visit, revealing one of the surprising effects of running water in winter: it turns out the sheer volume of relatively “warm” water (that is, above freezing) flowing down the Little Zigzag river actually heats the narrow canyon, much like an old steam radiator heats a room.

Following this radiator analogy, the temperate gradient is most noticeable when air temperatures are really cold. It was about 12º F that day, yet the air right next to the stream, and especially in front of Little Zigzag Falls measured in at a “balmy” 30º F. I found myself peeling off layers while shooting the stream and falls, only to hurriedly put them back on as I ventured back down the trail and into the real cold!

For the month of March I chose another waterfall scene, this time the lush, verdant base of popular Latourell Falls in the Columbia Gorge.

March Scene: Latourell Falls in spring

On this visit to the falls, Oregon State Parks construction crews were starting work on several major upgrades to viewpoints along this busy trail. As a result, the most popular trailhead at the Latourell Wayside was closed. Instead, I took a back route to the falls and had the place to myself for the better part of an hour — nearly unheard of on what should have been a busy spring weekend at Latourell Falls.

The April calendar scene is from Rowena Plateau at the McCall Preserve, in the dry, eastern Columbia Gorge. The iconic yellow balsamroot and blue lupine were in peak bloom on this sunny afternoon in mid-spring, and the glassy surface of the Columbia River in the background reveals a rare day of calm in the normally windy Gorge. The very tip of Mount Adams peeks over the hills on the horizon, on the Washington side of the river:

April Scene: Balsamroom and lupine on Rowena Plateau

The trip to Rowena was especially memorable for me, as I was hiking with an old college friend who was visiting Oregon for a few days. Rowena was a great place to catch up on news and old memories.

My friend also happens to be an eminent geologist working for the federal government, so we had a great conversation about the mystery of “desert mounds” (also known as “biscuit scablands”), which found on Rowena Plateau and in other areas in the Columbia Basin (watch for a future WyEast Blog article on this subject…).

Hikers passing one of the mysterious desert mounds on Rowena Plateau

Continuing the balsamroot-and-lupine theme, the May scene in the new calendar comes from Hood River Mountain, a tract of private land that is (for now) open to the public, but at risk of closure, due to heavy use by hikers.

This is one piece of land that will hopefully come into public ownership someday, before a less responsible private owner places trophy homes on these beautiful slopes. I wrote about this unfortunate oversight in the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Act in this article from a few years ago.

May Scene: Hood River Mountain in May

On Memorial Day last spring, I made a trip to Dry Creek Falls, a beautiful waterfall saddled with one of the most unfortunate and uninspiring place names in the Gorge! The June calendar image is from that trip, and captures Dry Creek rambling through the forest a few hundred yards below the falls.

June Scene: (not so) Dry Creek in spring

This area has a unique history: an old, derelict diversion dam and waterworks survives at the base of the falls, where the City of Cascade Locks once tapped the stream for municipal water in decades past. Perhaps this is the origin of “Dry Creek” name — did the stream below the diversion actually go dry when the dam was installed? Perhaps, but today it flows year-round, and makes for a beautiful streamside hike in spring.

Dry Creek Falls and the remains of the old diversion dam and waterworks

The July scene in the 2013 calendar is from a trip to Elk Cove last August. This is one of my annual pilgrimages, and I have photographed this particular spot just east of Cove Creek too many times to count — yet I’m always excited to get there, and recapture the stunning scene.

July Scene: Summer wildflowers at Elk Cove

The wildflower bloom on Mount Hood was delayed by several weeks this year, so even though I was a bit late in visiting Elk Cove, there was still a bumper-crop of purple aster mixing with the blue lupine and mop-heads of western anemone, or Old Man of the Mountain.

Not visible in the calendar view of Elk Cove are the blackened forests directly behind me: the Dollar Fire of 2011 swept across a 5-mile swath along the northern foot of Mount Hood, charring the northern fringes of Elk Cove, including several large stands of mountain hemlock that frame the view from 99 Ridge.

The Dollar Fire burned a 5-mile swath across the north slope Mount Hood

Though it’s initially shocking to see healthy forests killed by fire, it is also part of the natural cycle of forest renewal. Thus, we’ll now have a front-row seat to the fire recovery process that will unfold over the coming years along the popular north side trails. I wrote this blog article on the Dollar Fire earlier this year.

For the August calendar image, I picked a less familiar scene from an otherwise popular hike: the soaring trail to the 8,514’ summit of Cooper Spur. To beat the crowds, I set my alarm for 3 AM and raced to the trailhead at Cloud Cap. I was the first to arrive at the string of dramatic viewpoints along the trail, and caught the first rays of sun lighting up the northeast face of the mountain.

August Scene: Eliot Glacier from Cooper Spur

This view is from the north shoulder of Cooper Spur, just below the summit, and looking into the impressive jumble of crevasses and icefalls along the Eliot Glacier. Though the sky was crystal clear (you can see the moon setting to the left of the mountain), the winds from the south were strong and blustery. So, getting this shot from the lee side of the spur also meant enjoying some respite from the intense wind and blowing volcanic grit.

For the September image, I selected a lesser-known view of the mountain: the remote and rugged Newton Canyon, on the southeast side, where Mount Hood has a broad, massive profile.

September Scene: Rugged Newton Creek Canyon on the east side of Mount Hood

Glacial Newton Creek is best known for the havoc it brings far below, where the stream has repeatedly washed out Highway 35 with violent debris flows that toss Toyota-size boulders and whole trees across the road in their wake. Construction crews were busy this summer completing yet another repair, this time for damage that occurred in the 2006 floods. As always, the new road is bigger and higher than the old. We’ll see if Newton Creek is persuaded to flow through the new series of larger flood culverts this time…

The October scene is from Wahclella Falls on Tanner Creek, a popular family hike that also provides terrific viewing of spawning salmon and steelhead in early autumn.

October Scene: Wahclella Falls in autumn

Fall colors were somewhat muted in 2012, thanks to an unusually long, dry summer that extended well into October. As a result, the broadleaf trees in many areas had already dropped a lot of leaves due to the stress of the drought, before they would even have a change to change with the seasons.

While fall colors at Tanner Creek were less affected by the summer drought, the autumn scene in this year’s calendar has to make due without without the help of the particular tree, the Wahclella Maple I wrote about earlier this year. You can see the hole it left by comparing this year’s image (above) and a 2010 image (below).

Wahclella Falls in 2010 with the Wahclella Maple still standing above the footbridge

Since 2007, I’ve made annual trips with friends and volunteers to tend to the Old Vista Ridge Trail on the north side of Mount Hood. This historic gem from the early 1900s was an overgrown, forgotten victim of the Forest Service clear-cutting juggernaut for some 40 years, but somehow managed to escape their chainsaws.

Volunteers re-opened the Old Vista Ridge Trail in 2007, spurred in part by a Forest Service scheme to turn the area into a playground for dirt bikes and ATVs — an appalling plan that was eventually abandoned, in part because the rediscovered trail had revealed the beauty of the area to so many.

In 2010, the trail became the official northern boundary of the expanded Mount Hood Wilderness, when President Obama signed a new wilderness bill into law. This change should close the door on future Forest Service threats to the area, and today the hike into one of the best on the mountain.

November Scene: Mount Hood from Owl Point

The November calendar scene is from a viewpoint along the Old Vista Ridge Trail known as Owl Point, the rocky outcrop with stunning views of the mountain. Bright red huckleberries light up the foreground in this scene, and the first dusting of snow highlights the mountain. In the distance, you can also pick out the browned forests on the slopes of Mount Hood, where the Dollar Fire swept across the base of the mountain in 2011.

The final image in the new calendar is another taken from Lolo Pass, perhaps one of the most spectacular views of Mount Hood. This image was taken just before sundown after a fresh snowfall had blanketed the mountain.

December Scene: Winter arrives at Lolo Pass

I paid the price for taking in the sunset that night at Lolo Pass, as my car was broken into at the trailhead – something I’d somehow managed to avoid in all my years of hiking! As frustrating as it was to deal with the repairs and lost belongings… I’d do it all over again just to spend those magical hours watching the mountain that night — it was truly breathtaking! Here, take a closer look, and see for yourself:

Mount Hood from Lolo Pass | 2012
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The thirteen images I chose for the 2013 calendar are from a few thousand images I’ve taken this year on something just shy of 40 outings to Mount Hood and the Gorge — a bit less time on the trail than a typical year would allow, but no complaints! As always, these adventures took me to new places and discoveries, as well as fond visits to my favorite old haunts.

And as always, the magnificent scenery further confirmed my conviction that Mount Hood should (and will!) be set aside as our next National Park! Hopefully, the calendar makes the case, as well.

How can you get one, you ask?

The new calendars are available online:

2013 Mount Hood National Park Calendar at CafePress

They are large and functional, measuring 17” across by 22” tall when hung, with plenty of room for writing notes and scheduling activities. CafePress packages them carefully, with each calendar sealed against a corrugated cardboard backing for support.

The calendars sell for $29.99 + shipping, with about 25% of the proceeds going to support the Mount Hood National Park Campaign. They make terrific stocking stuffers (…although you’ll need an 11×17” stocking…), and CafePress now makes it even easier by offering PayPal as an option.

And as always, thanks for your support!
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Addendum: Gorge uber-Guru Scott Cook set me straight on a couple of comments in the above article:

Hey Tom, so of course I read your blog like a good Gorge denizen. A couple of points…I’m not trying to sound like a know-it-all…but I know that you do like to get at the bottom of things and eschew conjecture:

The pipes visible on the Upper McCord trail are from Myron Kelly’s pulp mill, not Warren’s cannery. There are some pix on my blog of Kelly’s mill and iterations of his pipes. I have another old pic too showing the pipe running along the cliff cleft, illustrating to me that the cleft was a pipeway instead of a WPA/CCC construction.

(author’s note: here’s a photo I shared with Scott that shows CCC crews clearing out the old waterline shelf to make way for the trail to Upper McCord Falls — note the Historic Columbia River Highway, far below, and the CCC crew bosses in full uniform)

…and, about Dry Creek falls, the Creek was called Dry Creek before the water works were installed. The reason is that just downstream of the PCT trail bridge, just down the access road 200yards, the creek dries up in the summer to nothing, just a dry creek bed as the creek goes subterranean until re-emerging downstream of the powerline corridor.

If you walk down the access road in the summer, the stream is of course flowing under the bridge, but when you walk downstream the sound goes away and you just figure the stream curved away from the road, but nope, if you bushwhack over just 100 feet you’ll see the dry stream…as you will if you continue down the access road also.

Down the (Dry Creek) access road is a bunker-looking building that was built in the 30’s to store the water from the stream’s waterworks for the city’s first municipal supply. The water shed is still in use today, but the water is pumped upwards into it from wells in the town below.

Next edition of Curious I’ll have Dry Creek Falls as a loop using the powerline access road…so people can learn the history and see the Dried-up Creek as well (cuz everyone loves a loop). Look for my pix on Google Earth of all this stuff and the dried-up creek. -Scott

Thanks, Scott!

Discovering Bald Mountain

April 13, 2011July 11, 2012 / Tom Kloster

The country is filled with “Bald Mountains”, but for sheer scenic spectacle, few can compare to the Bald Mountain that rises just four miles away from the towering west face of Mount Hood. At one time, a fire lookout stood atop this Bald Mountain, and the view from the tower must have been the envy of fire lookouts around the Northwest.

Today, Bald Mountain isn’t entirely bald, having grown a dense forest of noble fir along the crest and northern slopes over the past half-century. Yet, it was in the 1970s, when the Timberline Trail was rerouted to lead hikers across the steep, open meadows on the south slope of the mountain, that hikers became familiar with Bald Mountain. Today, this spectacular traverse continues to provide one of the most popular, exhilarating sections along the classic loop hike.

Though most visitors to Bald Mountain keep to the Timberline Trail, you can still follow the historic old path that leads to the former lookout site, with its magnificent, close-up views of Mount Hood. Thanks to the quiet efforts of a few anonymous volunteers over the decades, the trail remains open and lightly maintained, with only an occasional log to step over along the way.

As the old path climbs toward the summit, hikers find themselves in a dense, young forest, and have to use their imagination to picture the open slopes of beargrass — with no forests — that existed when the first lookout was built on “Bald” Mountain more than a century ago.

Along the old trail, hikers will also spot blazes on the few trees that stood at the time of the former lookout tower. These blazes mark most historic trails (see this recent article on blazes) in the Mount Hood area, and confirm that the present alignment of the summit path to Bald Mountain dates back to at least the World War II era, and likely before.

A look at the 1911 USGS map of Mount Hood (below) shows that a “lookout” stood on Bald Mountain long before roads crossed Lolo Pass, and decades before the Timberline Trail was built. The early lookout structure was likely no more than a wood platform, later replaced with a conventional lookout tower. Interestingly, the Beaver Lakes shown on the map have since faded away, too, filled in with forest:

The 1946 USGS map of the Mount Hood area (below) is the last to show a lookout on Bald Mountain (and the Beaver Lakes), but in the intervening years from the 1911 map, the Timberline Trail and Skyline Trail had been completed, with both routes passing just below the lookout.

In fact, it’s likely that the section of Skyline Trail from Lolo Pass to Bald Mountain was originally built for lookout access, since the trail over Lolo Pass was among the earliest built in the area, and in fact, followed an ancient Indian route connecting the Sandy and Hood River valleys.

The alternating ticks shown along the dashed trail segments on the 1946 map indicate a telephone line along the route. Today, these routes often have ceramic insulators still attached to trees, and on this route further suggest that this section of trail was originally built with the lookout in mind. The route is now part of the Pacific Crest Trail, which replaced the old Skyline Trail, and remains one of the best approaches for hiking to Bald Mountain.

What did the old tower look like?

Fire lookouts in the Pacific Northwest followed a few standard designs beginning in the 1930s, after much improvisation in the early lookout designs that were built through the 1920s. The Bald Mountain lookout probably followed this evolution, with some sort of simple platform beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, and later, a more substantial structure built to Forest Service standards.

We have a much more exact picture after June 1944, when archived Forest Service documents show a new lookout was designed, apparently to replace an existing structure on Bald Mountain. The following are samples from the 1944 architectural plans for Bald Mountain. There are no clear records of when this lookout was removed, but it was likely in the late 1950s or 1960s, when hundreds of lookouts were viewed as outmoded by the Forest Service and destroyed.

The cab — or cabin — in the 1944 designs for Bald Mountain is a 14×14 foot structure (above) that would closely resemble the surviving cab on the Devils Peak lookout, just to the southwest of Mount Hood in the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness. This simple design featured five windows per side and a low, pitched roof.

Inside the cab (below), the living space was organized around a Osborne fire finder, located in the center of the floor, surrounded by a wood stove, table, kitchen, storage cabinets, shelves and bunk. A catwalk wrapped around the outside of the cab, allowing lookouts to maintain the windows, raise and lower shutters and haul firewood and supplies up from below with pulleys.

The 14×14 foot cab rested atop a 43-foot wood-frame tower (below), complete with a spiraling stairway that ascended within the tower uprights. Though the tower was anchored directly to the ground, the main stabilization came from guy wires anchoring the tower to concrete footings in four directions.

The most remarkable aspect of this tower (and many others) is the fact that most of the materials were carried to the site over trails using livestock. That included the cut lumber, concrete, construction hardware, fixtures and windows — an amazing feat when you consider this was repeated dozens of times at lookout sites around the region.

The lookout plans for Bald Mountain also contain one “standard” element that wasn’t so standard, at least compared to other lookouts in the vicinity: a garage and storage shed built around the base of the tower. In this view, the stairway to the tower can be seen on the right, with the dashed lines above the garage marking the location of the tower uprights:

As this design detail from the 1944 plans suggests, there were a number of concrete footings used in the construction of the Bald Mountain lookout tower. Today, these seem to be the only remaining traces of the structure. Three footings are loose, and have been moved around and used by campers over the years. Other footings remain in the ground, mostly reclaimed by the undergrowth. This footing is located along the spur trail leading to the east viewpoint from the lookout site:

Visiting Bald Mountain

There is some irony in the historic Bald Mountain trail being “lost”, as the mountain is now almost completely circled by the Timberline Trail, and thousands of hikers make their way along this route every year. Almost all of these visitors walk right past the unmarked summit path leading to Bald Mountain.

But for those seeking the route less traveled, the hike to the summit is easy, provided you successfully navigate the maze of popular trails in the area. The key is knowing how to spot the unmarked junction with the Timberline Trail. Take a close look at this photo to help you recognize the spot if you choose to visit the old trail — this view is how the trail appears from either of the approaches described below:

From Lolo Pass: The Classic Approach

The classic hike begins at Lolo Pass, and follows the Pacific Crest Trail through handsome forests for three miles to the base of the Bald Mountain summit path. The total mileage on this option is 6.6 miles round trip, with an elevation gain of 1,400 feet. The following is a map of the Lolo Pass approach that accompanies the hike description I wrote for the Portland Hikers Field Guide:

Click here for a larger map

For a detailed description of the Lolo Pass approach, visit the Portland Hikers Field Guide page:

Lolo Pass to Bald Mountain Hike

The Field Guide description also includes driving instructions to the trailhead. This is a dry hike, so carry water — and in early summer, plan on the usual bugs that plaque hikers just after snow melt. My favorite time to hike this trail is on a clear day after the first autumn snow dusts the mountain in late September or October. This is when the area is free of bugs AND crowds.

From Top Spur: The Family Route

For a shorter hike that works well for families with kids (or for adults looking for a short afternoon or evening activity) you can also approach Bald Mountain from the Top Spur trailhead. Be forewarned that this is one of the most popular trailheads in the Mount Hood region, and mobbed on summer weekends.

But even on busy weekends, you can smile to yourself as you leave the crowds behind, and head up the quiet, old lookout path for some solitude — hidden in plain sight! From the summit viewpoint, you can literally look down on hikers passing hundreds of feet below on the Timberline Trail, oblivious to your presence.

Click here for a larger map

The Top Spur option is just two miles long, round-trip, with an elevation gain of 550 feet. Though short, portions of both the Top Spur and Bald Mountain trails are steep, so you will notice the elevation gain! The tradeoff for kids is the feeling of climbing a real mountain. Bring a pair of binoculars for kids to explore the details of Mount Hood or watch hawks float across the Muddy Fork Valley, below.

For a detailed description of the Top Spur approach, including travel instructions, visit the Portland Hikers Field Guide page:

Top Spur to Bald Mountain Hike

One of the most magical times to visit Bald Mountain is evening, when you can watch the awesome west face of Mount Hood light up at sunset, but still have enough light to hike back to the Top Spur trailhead.

Both hikes are usually open from mid-June through mid-November, and both require a Northwest Forest Pass to park. Both trailheads usually have portable toilets, but no water — be sure to carry your own.

Transmission Corridor Redux

February 3, 2009July 11, 2012 / Tom Kloster

The current controversy over the proposed Palomar utility corridor (that would slice across the Clackamas River country, south of Mount Hood) is an uncanny reminder of the 1950s disaster that brought the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) transmission lines to Lolo Pass, north of Mount Hood. In both cases, the result is a permanent, linear clearcut running up and down mountainsides, with almost no regard for visual or environmental impact.

The disastrous BPA transmission corridor over Lolo Pass set a new low for siting transmission corridors

The BPA lines came with the completion of the John Day and The Dalles dams, along the lower Columbia River. As if drowning the incomparable Celilo Falls weren’t enough, the transmission lines crested the Cascades at Lolo Pass, at the time one of the more remote and spectacular corners of the Mount Hood backcountry.

In the 1950s, American society was still in the early years of sprawling hydroelectric projects and rows of transmission towers marching toward the horizon. At the time, these images equaled progress, and nothing more.

Transmission corridors are straight, but nature is not: the BPA corridor saws across the shoulder of Sugarloaf Mountain in this view

But the BPA lines over Lolo Pass marked a particularly senseless disregard for the landscape, needlessly ruining mountain valleys, blocking Mount Hood vistas, and creating a permanent nuisance with the permanent clearcut that is maintained along the corridor.

The transmission lines also brought a new road to Lolo Pass, along with a devastating logging program that nearly cleared the Clear Fork and Elk Creek valleys, along the corridor. The permanent clear cut below the transmission lines was maintained for decades with chemical herbicides, though the BPA has more recently bowed to pressure to maintain their swath of destruction with mechanical methods.

Over the years, the lines have multiplied, and today, the Lolo Pass swath encompasses four large transmission lines in a quarter-mile wide swath. The maze of “closed” dirt maintenance roads below the lines are a perennial draw for target shooters, off-highway vehicles and illegal dumpers. These activities, in turn, have helped turn the linear clear cut into a conduit of invasive species, brining Scotch broom and Himalayan blackberry deep into the Cascades.

The Lolo transmission corridor began on the scale of the Palomar proposal, but has grown over time

The lessons from the Lolo Pass disaster are many, but above all, we’ve learned that a single utility corridor will almost surely grow over time, as utility planners make the case that future lines ought to follow these existing paths of least resistance.

We’ve also learned that the visual and environmental blight that the corridors create is insidious, causing forest managers to discount the value of adjacent, intact forests as somehow tainted — as less worthy of protection or even recreation use. This will surely be the case if the Palomar corridor is approved.

But the story of Lolo Pass is not complete, and the final chapter has yet to be written. Why? Because after just 50 years, the BPA lines are already approaching their design life, and will eventually need to be replaced.

Mount Hood towering above Lolo Pass

Under the logic that led to the expansion of this corridor to encompass four parallel transmission lines, it would be easy to assume that the towers and lines will simply be replaced in place, within the existing corridor.

But it will be equally possible to imagine something better for Lolo Pass — relocating the corridor and restoring the pass, and perhaps finding a better, more efficient, less destructive way to transport our energy.

That’s the dream and vision for many who hold the former beauty of Lolo Pass in their memories, and can imaging restoring this corner of the mountain to its fomer splendor. But it’s also a reminder not to repeat the Lolo Pass mistake at Palomar, setting yet another legacy of perpetual, linear destruction in motion.