Humptulips Ridge Lookout (site 2)

Sandy Floe was a Forest Service brat being raised at Snider Ranger Station with first hand knowledge and stories of several lookouts from 1940 to now. Below are some stories she shared:

I was the lookout on Humptulips Ridge in 1958. The 10x10 building was moved from the first location in the spring of 1958 to the location on USFS ground where I served. The lookout was very small compared to the others on the district. The bed was along the south wall/windows with the SCR 610 (army surplus) radio and batteries at the end of the bed. The door was on the northwest side and the wood stove at the northeast side. The desk was along the east side between the stove and the bed. Water was stored in metal milk containers (5 gallon I think). There was very little storage space for food and clothes. Of course the Osborne Firefinder occupied the center of the lookout. Because I was the first lookout (1958) at that site, the false smoke/legitimate smoke list did not exist, I had to make one. This was a concern as I had to call the district office on the radio and report any smoke I spotted. If I used the call letters on my first contact as "4-11" it was the "Emergency Fire Call" and got everyone's immediate attention and caused excitement with all who could hear the radio. So it was necessary to try to determine if the smoke was legitimate or not. The Cry Wolf syndrome might get established if I called with a 4-11! and it was someone's cabin. People like to have a campfire along the East Fork when fishing and I would call it in but as a routine message. Later when the fire danger was extreme I would call it a 4-11 message and the local USFS fire guard would investigate. Rock slides on the side of the mountains were a concern and were listed and recorded because at a distance and the angle of the sun they looked like smoke.

More from Sandy on Humptulips Ridge Lookout:
Being a fire lookout has its times. Being totally alone results in some different thoughts and actions. Boredom is a root cause of some of these. The only contact is the voices on the radio. My call sign was King 35. Well, listening to the familiar voices on the radio, I began to repeat the them to myself as I heard them. Then toward the end of the summer I mimicked several of them on the radio. This resulted in the District Ranger ordering me off the lookout for a couple of days of R&R. But not before I had done an excellent and hilarious job of impersonating him (according to my friends at the Ranger Station.)

The lookout's location was not known at all to tourists. No outside visitors. So how to have people visit? My only source was the district employees. So how to get them to come up to the lookout? Tough problem. Then, an Ah Hah! moment. I had a 50 power spotting scope mounted on a stump about 30 feet from the lookout. I mentioned to a fellow employee that I had the scope set up and watched the lookout on Weatherwax Ridge through the scope from time to time. Weatherwax was a DNR lookout several miles SE of me and had a female lookout. I merely mentioned to my fellow employee that the female lookout ran around in the nude from time to time. Well, the word spread. A forest Service truck would arrive and right after the initial greeting the "visitors"
would head straight for the scope to, "Survey the forest close up."

Other entertainment was a result of necessity. I was overrun by mice. Hundreds of them it seemed. I had a couple of mouse traps but two mice per night didn't put a dent in the population. The last straw was when one moved in under my blanket one night. A very strange feeling. So I rounded up the biggest pot I could find (maybe 20" diameter) with vertical sides and filled it with a few inches of water. I took the wrapper off a condensed Pet Milk can and coated the outside with peanut butter. Then I drilled a hole in the center of the can on each end and passed a long welding rod through the can and mounted it to the pot so the can was in the center and over the water. Two wooden short board
ramps up the outside of the pot completed the project. The mice would smell the peanut butter, run up the ramps and jump to the milk can. The can would turn and dump the mice into the water. Got a lot of mice that way but I doubt I put a dent in the population.

Humptulips Auxiliary Lookout