Apparently this is the 36th year of the - ScholarsArchive at Oregon ...

The Forest Service had some cedar dug-out canoes at some locations
on the Skagit River which were only means of getting to the other side.
One Sunday the trail foreman and I took a dug-out, crossed the river, and
hiked up Beaver Creek to a cabin occupied by a fellow who was a fire guard
for FS in summer and a trapper in the winter. A real 'Indian experience"
crossing the fast moving river in the dug-out!
By July 4th our trail crew had worked its way up Ruby Creek and then
up onto McMillan nteadow in higher elevation. To celebrate the 4th I shaved
for the first and last time of the sununer. While we had been working the
trails the Ass't Ranger, Roy Clander, and a man from the Supervisor's
Office, Lage Wernstedt, had climbed Crater Mountain. It was done on a
bad day but they say the fog parted some so they got to see much of what
was visible from the top. Up to that time it had been picked only from
the map without anyone having been on it. (Side light: It was Wernstedt
that later developed the panoramic camera so that pictures could be taken
from every lookout or potential L.O. point.)
Soon after the 4th, the Ass't Ranger blazed a 'way trail" from
McMillan meadow up through timberline on Crater Mountain. A way trail
was pretty crude--any log a mule could jump over was not cut out--there
was practically no grading. Above timberline it took some grading in
snow fields so the nules could travel them. It was impossible to get the
mules to the top of the peak, so a place was chosen on the side ridge of
the peak (about 1,000 ft. below the summit) for my camp. I could rough
it up through the rocks and cliffs to the peak each day to be the lookout.
It took about an hour to get from nty tent to the top; the best I
ever made it down was 20 minutes. My tent was placed on the ridge where
the last tree was tall enough to hold up the ridge pole of nty 5 ft. x 7 ft.
tent. The other end was held -up by two poles cut and roped together as a
cross. My bed was made on the ground in the tent taking up more than half
the floor space with two cut poles and tree boughs between them. I built
a rough writing table of boxes that came with my supplies. (In those
days almost every-thing came in wooden boxes--corrugated paper box materia].
had not yet been invented.) My chair was also a box. The first stove
I had was a small tin affa.ir, but it was replaced by a fine Lang Range
with a cast iron top about 12" x 18", and good small oven which I found
most useful. For example, the first pot of beans I cooked on top of the
stove for several days but they never did cook to be soft enough to eat.
The altitude was too high (nearly 8,000 ft.) and the water boiled without
gettiig hot enough to cook beans. The only way to cook them was to bake
them in the oven. It was about as bad for potatoes--but I did not have
enough of those to last very long; besides, they could be fried.
My Crater Mountain Lookout on the Mt. Baker Forest near Canada was
not what most people think of as a "Lookout or a "Tower". I was the first
to occupy that mountain, and it was still in developmental stage. There
was no building. I sometimes say, "I was a lookout before lookout buildirigs
had been invented'. That is not really the truth--I may have been
the only one on that forest without a building. One was built the next
year. In fact I did the needed surveyirg so the ranger could order the
cable needed to get the materials to the top of the peak. There was no
trail to the top of the peak. It was well before the use of radio, and
what poor communication I had was via phone. We had hung on trees and
brush a temporary one wire line front my tent about 4-5 miles down to Ruby
Creek to tie into a permanent grounded phone line. When first put in,
there was not enough wire so I had to hike down the ridge to make a call.
Often deer would go through the line and break it so I would have to hike
down, find the break and tie it together.
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