Upper Lake Chelan has a 12,000+ acre fire burning called the Pioneer Fire. There is a massive response going on with something like 12 helicopters and 700+ firefighters. Here is a photo taken by Jim Henterly ( the Desolation lookout ) of the Pioneer smoke plume from Desolation.....
You will see on the main menu -- a new section on the Sourdough Mountain lookout. I staffed that lookout twice and will be posting some pictures from those days including a painting I did of my first night of the first time.....incredible scene ! Stay tuned -- it will take a month or [...]
Currently starting to read a memoir -- The Last Lookout on Dunn Peak. It is about a couple from back East that staffed some LOs in St. Joes Forest in Idaho in the early 1970s. They returned years later to staff one again. So far the book has been a lot of fun. Here is [...]
Here is a similar shot of me one time manning the nearby Sourdough LO --- which has a long series of steps up --- good times !
My son took this picture of me standing in the Deso doorway. I am usually smiling LO duty but I looked at little pensive that day.....probably quiet with little radio traffic, no smokes and no hikers--
As many of you know---back in the 1930s the USFS had photographers do panoramic photos from many lookout sites in the West---and that includes Desolation Peak. This last Sunday's Seattle Times Pacific NW Magazine had an article about a fellow named John Marshall from Wenatchee who is redoing many of those shots. Now with the [...]
My good friend Bruce R. sent me a small version of one of those classic old time National Park posters. I didn't know there was one for the North Cascades, a mostly unknown park. But not only that - it features the Deso Lookout, Hozomeen, and Ross Lake. There are many spectacular places in the [...]
9-17-23 Well the fire blew up again with several days of hot summer weather. So far the North Cascades Pass is still open however. Here is a shot from yesterday...click on this link-- Sourdough Fire 9-17
Wonderful surprise this morning in the New York Times -- an article on Fire Lookouts. Please see: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/climate/wildfire-lookouts-fire-towers.htm This article may be behind a paywall so hopefully many of you are NYT subscribers........... Desolation Peak and Jack Kerouac are mentioned........ bruce
Has reopened again as of this morning 🙂, there is now an additional fire along the Pass east of Sourdough around Blue Lake