Summit Prairie Lookout in 1954

It was 1954, twenty six years before Mt. Saint Helens blew her top and thirty six years before I would retire from the U.S. Forest Service. I was training for a summer job as a fire fighter and fire lookout. There were about fifty of us taking the fire fighting training. Summer employees from all over the Gifford Pinchot National Forest were there. There were no women training in our group and none that I knew of in the Forest Service. I had yet to turn nineteen and was the youngest guy there. It would be seven years before I would begin a thirty year career with the Forest Service.

We were meeting in the warehouse at the Wind River Ranger Station. As I looked around I noticed the difference ages, sizes and appearance of the attendees. One fellow especially got my attention. He was from back east somewhere and was dressed in what I discovered later was the standard field coat for a forester, the Filson. He was tall, good looking and smoking a pipe. He not only looked self-confident he clearly felt himself superior to the rest of us. I guessed he had been through this training before and figured he knew it all. I discovered later that he was a student from a Forestry school back east. The moment I saw him I knew that must be the epitome of what a Forest Ranger should look like. I don’t know if he went on to a good career in the Forest Service or not but that image stayed with me all these years. I never got that tall or learned to smoke a pipe however.

Standing next to me was my friend Forrest. An appropriate name for a would-be forester I thought. Forrest was a wiry little guy and contrasted with the fellow I described above. However his interests were in business management not forestry. I met Forrest at college in Portland where he was studying business management. He served in many capacities during his career and made some good input into the Forest Service fire fighting business. He ended his career as an Administrative Officer for a Forest Supervisor in Arizona.

Forrest’s dad had been working for the Forest Service on the Mt. Adams Ranger District for several years and was about ready to retire. Their home was in Troutdale, just a few miles from where we were training.

Forrest was ahead of me in school, partly because I had laid out a year following high school, and he was also older. We lived in the same dormitory at the college we were attending. It was an old two story house that was home to eight of us and also for one of the professors and his family.

Forrest thought we would make a good team on a lookout and talked me into applying for a summer job on the Forest where his dad worked. We signed up for the summer to serve as Fire Lookouts at a lookout station called Summit Prairie. The lookout was several miles from the Ranger Station and about six miles from the nearest road. Since it was high country and snow was still present we would be doing a number of other jobs until we could get to the lookout.

Summit Prairie lookout was unique in that it was a two person lookout instead of the usual one person. Unlike most lookouts this one was situated on the ground rather than a tower. It had a good view of the forested areas for many miles around. The view was improved by previous fire lookouts cutting down the few trees around it. Our duties would include trail maintenance and clearing additional trees from around the lookout.

The fire fighting training mostly consisted of learning to use the various tools used to building fire lines. The McCloed looked like an oversized garden hoe. The Polaskie was a tool on an axe handle with a head that had an axe blade on one edge and a heavy sharp hoe type blade on the other. Both were good tools for digging and cutting. I have used a Polaskie for many years around my home The fire fighting shovel had a shorter handle than other shovels but the axe we used was ordinary.

We learned to clear brush, throw dirt and sharpen tools. We discovered that water was often a luxury in fighting a forest fire since many of the fires were not near a road where a tanker could be driven. We did have small water tanks on some pickups and one ton trucks but nothing like they had on National Forests in California. They had regular fire trucks on some of those Forests. Our primary job for the summer was to look for wild fires and not to fight the fires. There were other crews for that task.
During our training we learned about fire behavior and the ten standard Fire Safety rules. The main Rule stated that we were not to let the fire over take us. This rule seemed pretty reasonable, but unfortunately many firefighters have been over taken by fires and killed.

While waiting for the roads and trails to clear of snow, Forrest and I helped tear down old telephone lines, burn brush from last years road clearing and painted a guard station house. The Forest Service had maintained phone lines to all the fire lookouts and guard stations for many years. As two way radios became available and more dependable, these lines were slowly removed from the forests. For many years there were great piles of number nine wire piled behind every work center in the Forest Service. I later found this wire was great for repairing fences.

The summer of 54 was unusually wet and were no major fires on the Gifford Pinchot Forest. The only injury I had during this period was the result of helping Forrest rebuild a gate. We were trying to remove a large nut that had rusted. Forrest had put a large crescent wrench on the nut and some oil to loosen the threads. He asked me to help pull on the wrench. Together we pulled as hard as we could. Suddenly Forrest’s hands slipped and he reared up hard, his back hitting my nose head on. I still can’t breath from one side when I have a cold due to the break and failure to get it taken care of.

While getting ready to go to the lookout I learned a little about the history of the Forest Service. When the government first started hiring people to work in the National Forests, the main qualification was that you could pack a mule and tie a diamond hitch to secure the pack. You had to be able bodied and willing to spend days or even weeks horse packing and camping out.

As the war years put a demand on timber, the ranks of the Forest Service grew with Professional Foresters. At that time a Forester had to know how to cruise (measure the trees for lumber production) and layout roads for harvest and plant trees. That’s not to say the old timers could not be trained to do this but many of them stayed as fire fighters or supervisory people. Forestry schools became common in many colleges across the U.S.

In 1954 there were only a couple of these old time Rangers still working. By the way, not everyone that works for the Forest Service is a Ranger. That title is reserved for the one person in charge of a chunk of a National Forest called a Ranger District. However, many people not familiar with the organization still call anyone working for the Forest Service a Forest Ranger.

In 1954 there were eighteen National Forests in Oregon and Washington. Collectively these were called the Pacific Northwest Region, or simply by it’s National Numbering System as Region Six. Each Forest had several Districts, each with one Ranger. The man in charge of the National Forest (now it is commonly a woman) was called the Supervisor whose office was located in one of the larger towns in the area. The Forest Supervisor was generally selected from a list of Forest Service employees who were professional Foresters and were then working as a District Ranger. Time has changed all that. In my case the change was welcome because I was able to become a Forest Ranger while my training was as a Wildlife Biologist and Range Conservationist.

I considered it a real honor to be working for the oldest Ranger in the Region. His name was K.C. Langfield. He had worked his way into the job by being skilled with horses and mules as I mentioned earlier. I wish I would have had the opportunity to sit with him and hear some of his stories.

By the time I started working for the Forest Service anyone wanting to become a District Ranger or a Forest Supervisor had be classified as a Forester by definition, generally meaning a college degree in Forestry.

Anyone with another profession had to be re-classified as an Administrative Forester. Until 1968 when I was re-classified from a Wildlife Biologist to Administrative Forester, I knew of no one who had been able to. (More about this in another Chapter) .

During our days off Forrest and I generally spent time at his home in Troutdale. We went to church together and did some exploring of other lookouts on the Forest. On one long weekend I hitched a ride into Portland to take care of a marine aquarium I had set up as a science project in college. I was picked up by a couple of kids no older than I. They immediately began to show me how fast their old car could go. I was sitting between the two and could clearly see the speedometer when I got the nerve the open my eyes. It soon became stuck on ninety and stayed there for most of the trip. We made it to Portland in record time for me. As a result of that ride I decided that hitchhiking was not for me. I caught a bus back to work, a few dollars poorer but alive and well. I think that was the last time I ever hitched a ride.

Finally the big day came for us to head for the lookout. We spent the night at Mosquito Lakes Guard Station and met the Forest Packer there the next morning. He took all our gear and put it on a mule and tied a perfect diamond hitch, just like in the book. We loaded the mule and his horse into a one ton truck and headed north. Twenty five miles later we were unloading at the trail head near Council Lakes.

The packer and the mule headed up the trail. Forest and I hiked along behind. It was six miles to the lookout but I was so excited it seem only a few minutes until we were there. The packer had the place open and our gear inside when we got there but we had to raise the shutters that had been lowered for winter protection. The lookout was fourteen feet square with windows all around. The windows went from near the floor to the ceiling and consisted of eight by ten inch panes. The furniture consisted of a wood stove, a small table, two stools with insulators on the legs (more about the insulators later) twin beds and a fire finder (more about the fire finder later). The latter took up the center of the lookout which gave it a 360 degree view. And what a view it was.

To the west we could see Mt. St. Helens (about twenty miles), to the north, Mount Rainier (about thirty five miles) , to the east Mount Adams (about twelve miles) and to the south, Mount Hood (about fifty miles).

During early mornings while much of the low lands were fogged in we could see those four mountains poking up like icebergs in the ocean. We could also see a couple of other lookouts in the distance. During this period of time there were fire lookouts scattered all over the National Forests and most State Forests. A few remain today but most were replaced by electronic surveillance (satellite recordings of lighting strikes) and spotters in aircraft. A few old lookouts are available for rent to the public and I would encourage anyone reading this to take advantage of at least one. Look in the Internet under Fire Lookouts and you can find a list of those available and how to reserve them. During my career I spent time on three different lookouts and my family was able to stay with me on one of these.

We had to buy enough staple groceries for most of the summer. The packer could bring in a few things when in the area but we couldn’t count on any particular day. The only mail we received came via a sheepherder grazing a band of sheep in the mountains around us. As it was we had a short summer anyway because of a late start and early finish of the fire season due to wet weather. We had white gas for our lantern and that was the limit of our appliances. Forrest did bring a battery powered radio. He loved to listen to the western music stations. One of his favorites was Hank Snow or was that Hank Williams, but he loved all the cowboy types.

We made an agreement early on that he would get up early and fix breakfast. I would do the dishes and get dinner. Forrest was an early riser anyway and I liked to sleep in. We had soup and sandwiches for lunch. The only problem with that arrangement was the early music. Forrest always tuned in a cowboy radio station as soon as he got up, which was daylight. That was the only issue we argued, over. I was surprised at Forrest’s reaction when I jumped him about the radio. He is normally such an easy going fellow but I pushed the wrong button and found out he had some definite ideas about a few things. He won that battle.

We were eager to get started on our trail maintenance work. The Cascade Crest trail ran just under the lookout and we were to maintain about ten miles of it (more if we could). Our big problem was the size of the trees that had fallen across the trail. Some of the Douglas-fir were four to six feet in diameter. We had a six foot, hand powered, cross cut saw (loggers called it a Misery Whip). With the big trees we had to cut several blocks off before we could roll them off the trail. Some trees took us all day to buck up and move. We would really start laughing when we got to a point on the log where our saw was only two inches longer than the cut we were trying to make.

Clearing the trail and hiking along it was a job I loved and I remember many of our days clearly. We met black bears along the trail every day and carried our axe at the ready. We never had trouble with them even when we met on the trail. We did have one incident to remember. We were working along the trail and spotted a big brown colored bear lying in a snow bank across the creek. It was about a hundred yards away and looked huge. We started yelling at it to see if we could spook it. Instead it stood, looked our way and started toward us. Needless to say we cleared no more trail in that area that day. I have since wondered it it could have been a grizzly.

One day we spotted a small black bear eating huckleberries. We were above it and had the wind in our favor so we sneaked to within a hundred feet of it. It was so busy eating berries it never heard us. We jump in the air and yelled as loud as we could. The bear did a somersault right through the bush, never looked back and ran away. We had been told that a bear couldn’t run very fast down hill. That little bear was really moving and out of sight within ten seconds.

The Mt. Adams Ranger District was famous for it’s huckleberry patches. The Indians living along the Columbia river had used the patches for many years. They were still using them while I worked there. I never got to watch them pick berries but was told they used a big wooden comb and just combed the berries off the bushes into woven baskets. Forrest has some of the baskets they used to pick the berries in. His dad had collected them years before.

In the evenings we were allowed to use the Forest Service radios to talk to other lookouts. We were so far above surrounding mountains we could talk to all the lookouts on the Forest and even some in Oregon and northern California. It wasn’t long however before we ran out of things to talk about and we did little chatting later in the summer. Our best contacts were with the Steamboat Mountain and Sleeping Beauty lookouts since they also looked into some of our country. There were a number of lookouts within just a few miles of us, including one on State land and one run but the National Park Service near Rainier National Park.

The sheepherder stopped by one day with some mail. He said the previous herder had lost about a hundred sheep the week before and he was trying to find them. He had a rifle with him and said it was for protection from bears. The Ranger had told us that the herders were not supposed to shoot the bears. Not more than an hour later we heard a rifle shot. The next day while clearing the trail in the area where we had heard the shot we found a freshly killed black bear. I decided I would like to have the skull so I cut the head off the bear with my sheath knife and packed it back to the lookout.

I put a bucket of water on the stove and began to boil the head. I did not do a very good job of removing the skin and did nothing to remove the brains. In an hour or so the lookout began to smell terrible. Forrest made me remove the head and shut down my operation. I had to agree since we were both gagging from the smell. I later learned I could have put the head in an ant pile and let them clean it for me.

A small group of hikers passed the lookout the next day and set up camp on Summit Prairie Creek about a mile from the lookout. We could clearly see their fire that night. The next day we hiked down to see if they had put out their fire. It was still warm so we drowned it with water. Next to the fire were three large cans of sauerkraut. We could not imagine anyone packing something like that for so many miles into the mountains. Each can weighed three pounds. Forrest suggested we take it back to the lookout and eat it. That evening I opened a can of the kraut and started heating it. In a few minutes Forrest and I looked at each other and grabbed out noses. I took the pan off the stove and ran outside and dumped the kraut. The heating sauerkraut had smelled exactly like the cooking bear head. We put the rest of the kraut into the garbage.

We did not have regular days off since the lookout had to be manned every day. However Forrest and I took turns going for a hike. One day I decided I was going to hike down to Council Lakes and go fishing. The lakes were six miles back down the trail we had come in on. I took a sandwich and my fishing rod ( I had taken the rod to Mosquito Lakes and did not want to leave it there so brought it to the lookout). I had some dry flies, a spinning reel and a clear plastic float that would carry the fly out into the lake. I had caught fish with that system before so was confident I could take a few fish from the lake. On the way down the trail I had an odd feeling something was watching me but I could not see anything. By the time I got to the lake I had forgotten about it.

After an hour of fishing and no bites I headed back for the lookout. About a mile from the lake I noticed some tracks in the trail. I looked closely and could see they were cougar tracks. Not only that, they were superimposed over my foot prints. The cat had followed me for about a mile as I was hiking to the lake. I picked up a good sized stick and watched my back trail all the way back to the lookout. I now know there is something to the feeling of being watched by a cougar and years later I had another experience along the same line (more about that in another chapter).

We had nearly finished our summer at the lookout when a lightening storm moved into our area. It was after dark and the lightening was close. It would light up our lookout with brilliant flashes. We had the stove going because it had gotten cold from the approaching storm. The lightning began to hit close. We had been told that the warm chimney from our stove would attract lightening so we poured water on the fire to put it out. We then took positions on our stools with the insulated legs I mentioned earlier. The insulators were there to prevent us from being grounded and thus vulerable to the lightening strikes. Soon everything in the lookout was glowing blue and it sounded like we were in a frying pan as the lights sizzled. This is called St. Elmo’s Fire. It was the first and last time I ever experienced it. Finally the storm moved on.

The next day we were looking for any fires that might have been started by the storm. (This is how a Fire Finder helps locate a fire: There is a map of the area around the lookout with the lookout's position in the center. A small view finder is centered over the Lookout position and by turning it 360 degrees we can see everything for many miles around us.

We spot any suspicious fire with the view finder and read map coordinates for the angle to the fire from the lookout. We than determine the distance by looking at various topographic features on the map. When we spot a fire or smoke we can then call the Ranger Station with an approximate location.)

I noticed an orange glow coming from a snag that had been broken. It was about two miles away along Quartz Creek and not far from the Cascade Crest trail. Forrest took the binoculars that came with the lookout, and studied the glow. He agreed it looked like a fire. We could not see any smoke, but there were patches of steam or fog in the area where lightening could have hit. We decided we should call the Ranger Station and report it as a fire.

The fire crews had very little action that summer so they were eager to fight fire. The District Fire Control Officer gathered a crew and started the long hike into the fire. After a few hours they were near the area where we had seen the fire. Now we no longer saw fire but we could still see the snag. We had marked our fire finder with its location so we could find it again. The crew could not see a fire or any smoke. Using the two way radio we gave them direction right to the snag. We could see them and the snag clearly with the binoculars. We told them they were right on the spot. The Fire Control Officer called and said there was a beautiful red scar with pitch on the snag and that the sun shining on it and the mist in the air must have made it look like a fire. He was being very generous in his choice of words. If it had been a normal summer with lots of fires I am sure he would have been upset. We were forgiven however since that was the only call they had gotten out of the storm and it had given them a chance to get into the mountains and earn a little overtime. That incident also ended our summer on Summit Prairie lookout since the fire season had come to a close.

Thanks Forrest for a neat summer!

Summit Prairie Lookout memories by Phil Lee