useless.

Et comme il est beau, il est vraiment utile.

('And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful.')

Another member of North Cascades Conservation Council board sent out a link to a New York Times Op-Ed piece written by Richard Conniff the other day about the uselessness of earth's creatures.

I found it brilliant.

And it reminded me of that line above from Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince, how - perhaps - if we could just see beauty - we might understand all things are useful.

freezing temperatures guaranteed.

 F R E E Z I N G   T E M P E R A T U R E S   G U A R A N T E E D .

Today, as I sat quietly while my computer chirred at some image processes, I leaned in a bit and read for the first time the bit of type on the little kitschy postcard reproduction of a Rocky Mountain National Park postcard that's been sitting on my desk for years.

It boldly touts the now-long-defunct, what-was a fourteen-by-eighteen foot cabin nestled among a field of boulders at thirteen-thousand feet on the approach to climb Longs Peak. 'No modern conviences,' says the first bullet. 'No trees to spoil the view.' Well, okay. 'Guests arrive on foot or horseback (no autos).' 'Freezing temperatures guaranteed every night.' And lastly, 'Water carried from snowbanks a few feet from the door.'

These, what must have been enticing claims back in the nineteen thirties, strike me as fascinating today for precisely two reasons.

First, the Boulderfield Cabin was itself completely unusual in the United States. Huts like this abound by the hundreds in the Alps, where they're staffed with a chef and crew to provide five-star accommodations in otherwise seemingly inhospitable mountain places. But here, in the country of John Muir's wilderness, devoid of the imprint of human beings… they do not. So this one, unique in its very existence, was even more so because of its lack of any modern conviences, or the ability to step off a tram and walk in the front door. You actually had to walk (well, or ride a horse). And the fact that this poster was advertising what amounted to a near-Muir wilderness experience in a cabin at thirteen-thousand feet, is fascinating.

It seems nowadays, this poster would read very differently. Quite the opposite, in fact. It would tout free wi-fi, air-conditioning (since someone may still require that to be comfortable even at thirteen thousand feet), cable television, RV hookups, and the like. Etc. etc. etc., for nowadays we cannot possibly be made to be uncomfortable. It could claim the view, but not without the wi-fi. The pure, snowmelt water, but not without the steak and lobster entrees.

So that was one reason.

The second then, this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Wilderness Act. I will probably write a bit about that over the course of the year–about its significance. About how, maybe in the most pure and selfless way, we lazy, fat, greedy Americans got it right. Got it right in such a grand way as to provide a ray of hope for the very future of our periled civilization. About how, even with its claims of uncomfort, how strange it is still, our idea of wilderness, and the reasons for why we must continue to lay claim to the last vestiges of wild places.

This poster got it right. The stuff it advertises, that's the stuff stories are made of. From which adventure is born. John Muir, that grandfather of the idea of limitless wilderness, may have best written about his experiences in wilderness as such -

These beautiful days must enrich all my life. They do not exist as mere pictures–maps hung upon the walls of memory to brighten at times when touched by association or will, only to sink again like a landscape in the dark; but they saturate themselves into every part of the body and live always.

petty things slip away in the silent high places.

Given the time frame in which the following was written (it was first published in April of 1918 - the North Cascades National Park would not be created for another half century) ... I found it grandly profound. Even without that frame I found her writing - all of it - quite profound. Hilarious at times. Poetic. She flips from storytelling to sentiment - wit to wisdom - in a sentence. She talks about snow and ice and silence being everywhere. About it always being good to do a difficult thing. About the impossible becoming possible. About how - without expecting it - they happened on adventure.



And here - near the end of it all - she writes of their experience going up and over Cascade Pass ...

The pass is too wonderful not to be visited. Some day, when this magnificent region becomes a National Park, and there is something more than a dollar a mile to be spent on trails, a thousand dollars or so invested in trail-work will put this roof of the world within reach of any one. And those who go there will be the better for the going. Petty things slip away in the silent high places. It is easy to believe in God there. And the stars and heaven seem very close.

~ Mary Roberts Rinehart
From Tenting To-night: A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the Cascade Mountains

darwin’s god.

Monday July twenty-second.




Forty feet to go. Twenty. I let J catch up out of breath persistent as ever clambering up the rocks below a feeling in me impossible to write. A pride beyond belief exploding. I let him pass as I always do so he could lead to the top. Struggling now I could tell with his own will to make the last few steps to the col. I snapped a photo of him. Then followed behind. At the top at last there was the sign: ENTERING KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK LAMARK COL. Someone had scratched in the metal the elevation: 12,880. And then beyond there was the view. So epic it took me by surprise. Startled. There was the whole granite rampart of the Sierra spread out in front of us peak upon peak upon peak. Darwin and Mendel leapt forth from the canvas that had up until this point only existed in my mind. Now here tactile enough to touch as if a chiaroscuro painting heavy handed unfolding. Light and dark. I turned and pointed south in an exclamation of all that was real in that linear moment toward streams of sunlight bursting forth from the literal hands of God. A complete painting of Darwin Canyon unfolded awash in focused pale light. Brushstrokes of cadmium and bromine. The lakes still a thousand feet below shimmered effervescent. Scraped dirty ice of glaciers tens of thousands of years old. The granite millions and millions. And J. Above me on top of the rocks now silhouetted against the chromatic blue sky fading. I felt alight in the dim instinct of the mountains. Afire. The stone and ice and water and light and fear and joy and myself were one. There I wept. And now I stare at this journal here trying to etch the sense of that moment knowing I cannot. Hanging on the molecules of air were droplets of water like tiny prisms scattered somehow in four dimensions. The iridescent light over it all.

*  *  *

A little over an hour earlier we were huddled under a rock overhanging while the storm at last died down. Rippling off in the distant west and north. We had been there almost three hours cowered while lightning flashed and hail dumped from blackened skies to cover the mountains as if from a fresh dusting of snow. At one point tucked in a ball with Stanley and George as his pillow J fell asleep all the while the hail fell and thunder exploded. I shivered. We were facing north and could see the way back from where we had come down to all the lakes we had passed. Upper and lower Lamarck. Grass. And North Lake even where the trail began splitting from the other heading over Piute Pass further to the north. Out even beyond then the outskirts of the dusty eastern Sierra town of Bishop and across the Owens Valley and White Mountains stark. More rain. Hail. The bolts of lightning seemed not to stop. Thunder shook the granite. But eventually it all began to quiet. The thunder more distant. Subtle flashes of lightning replaced sheer strikes still northwest over Mount Emerson and Humphreys and the red rock of the Piute Crags. North over Owens Valley. At last sunlight illuminated Bishop. The hail gave up. We had to decide at that hour whether to continue on to the col still another thousand feet above or retreat down to treeline and a small snowmelt stream. We decided for the col. Grabbed our packs. As we climbed the skies eased more and as we crested the final plateau and snowfield below the col the sun found us while dark clouds still clung to peaks west. J valiantly kept up and I stopped every so often to look back and see him soldiering on his legs unwilling to quit. The group of three we had met earlier at the start of the climb had given up and decided to pitch camp near the tarn below the col. We greeted them again as we made our way past up through the talus a giant mess of boulders to the snow and then the last hundred feet crumbly sand and rocks.

*  *  *

The descent down to the lakes seemed to stretch onward to infinity. Both of us drained from the storm nervous and frightening. Steep and no real path. I’d pick up the hint of a trail through the talus and gravel benches but lose it in an instant. The lakes and patches of green dotting their shores beckoned in the fading day. There after such exaltation I felt the rush of an impending low. Crawling over talus along the second lake inching our way over to a flat area just further beyond. More storm clouds approaching. How did J do it? How was he so strong when I felt on the edge of such collapse straining to keep leading us on? Struggling with every pore of my being for the strength. I saw my own transience. Tried to understand the meaningless of the mountains. How they simply exist. How I do not. Here this place so wild and desolate as to overwhelm. Mythic. Unchanging and changing. Above all the sky. We arrived and let our packs thud heavy on the granite. Rushing against what little light was left in the canyon I lit the stove (always such a welcome and comforting sound!) and while our food cooked rushed about setting up our tent and preparing camp here on a small perch nestled against a wall of rock. The light melted to pink. The granite glowed radiant with the hue of stormy Sierra summers. In all of my desperations to get us settled for the night I managed to stop only a few moments before fetching water and inflating air mattresses and unstuffing down bags. To absorb the spectacle of the light falling and filling against the stone the ice the water. Everything around us. Flicked on the lantern in the tent glowing a pale soft green against the dark sullen blues and greys and blacks of night. We engulfed our hot meal. J literally fell backwards muffled into his bag exhausted. Me - I braved the night to quick as I could do dishes and fetch water. Finally crawled into mine soft and warm. I could feel the storms descending like a dense heavy blanket. Spectacular.




Monday July twenty-third.





Awoke to hail beating down. Five o'clock. Just getting light. The sound of thunder clapping rebounding scattered off the walls surrounding us and returning as an echo of itself. Lightning flashes through the walls of the tent. Rain. Hail. Rain. Then slowly the dawn. A grey glow. The storm ravaged outside around us and I scurried deeper into my bag all the while J slept. Eventually both of us awake and around eleven finally a calmness settled. Slowly. At last I could peek out and eye the clouds south towards Evolution. They were breaking up. Hints of blue skies propelled me to break camp after together a quick hot breakfast. Shouldering our packs we headed off through the trail-less canyon picking our way along and around each of the lakes following at last an outlet stream as it spilled itself onto Darwin Bench epic below before branching out to bring life to tens of tarns and smaller streams all combining to crash a mile south far down into Evolution Valley. We scampered along the eastern edge of the bench to find the 'good use trail' (as Roper described it ... ) that would take us down to the John Muir Trail and onward to Evolution Lake. Followed it to the top of the final switchback climbing up from McClure Meadow far below. Then at last to Evolution. Cloud shadows. The immensities of Mounts Mendel and Darwin. And finally Mount Spencer ahead as we came upon the lake. Found a spot on which to toss our tent. Now to wander. Explore. Try to put to good use a view camera carried all this way over mountains. Find a photograph to make that possibly captures the grand scale of it all. Witness water from the outlet of Evolution crash and carve its way over disappearing falls to a creek far below winding through endless meadows illuminated. Shadows lengthen. The setting sun.




Tuesday July twenty-fourth.





I love Sierra mornings. Not like yesterday morning the thunderstorms on again off again hail. But these like today where I watched from inside the tent shadows created by the sun. Moving. Spilling. Falling. Our little camp goes from shadow to full sun in an instant. Brewed some coffee. Now sitting on granite wrapped in my sleeping bag the sound of Evolution Lake lapping at the shore nearby. A light breeze. Spectacularly quiet. No clouds though today. A group of hikers sets off around the far side of the lake east through this Evolution Basin. Over the Goddard Divide and Muir Pass east. Down into LeConte Canyon and further onward. The light last night was brief. It turned quickly from pinks to greys and then lost to dusk. Today under harsh unforgiving skies we climb point 11576 on the map above the western edge of Evolution Lake. To see south toward the divide and Sapphire and Wanda Lakes and a realm of rock barren jumbled and forsaken. Return to break camp and head back up to Darwin Bench for the night. J is up and moving now. Soon we'll be off.




Wednesday July twenty-fifth.





Morning of the fourth day. Sitting on granite with sun and breeze looking out over Darwin Bench. Clouds materializing off in the west distant horizons it seems as if over the ocean! Listening to The Violent Bear It Away. Goosebumps. A Godsend the wind. For some inexplicable reason I realize how I am drawn to this view now here of a faint trail far off beyond that leads into a clump of gnarled whitebark pine disappearing off toward the edge of the bench. Beyond the drop to the chasm of McClure and Evolution Valleys. And beyond that the massive wall of Sierra granite peaks immense. The Hermit looms. I am mesmerized with that trail. I know where it goes because we found it - followed it - two days earlier onward to Evolution. But if I did not know - and even that I do - it disappearing off to somewhere that cannot be seen pulls me forward like gravity and reminds me of how I know but do not know. A mad-crazy wild. A treeless waste. Moby crescendos and tears well up in my eyes all of this exploding right now in this absolute moment unbearable. The secret of mountains. How they and we are the same. How we are both made up of the same elements. How we are both alone mountains and men. I here on Darwin Bench. Mendel beside me. Everyone everywhere spinning through the universe. Surrounded by these peaks in this immensity of silence is awesome. I am alone. I feel the onset of something more grand and frightening than of which I can speak. I break down in the instant. Walls crumble. I expect nothing. I am nothing. I aim to go forward lightly from now on without hesitation or thought of attainment. Ruined and at the same time reborn under the glistening sky. These experiences. This solitude. The complete and desperate loneliness. But just the same in utter contrast and harmony the sharing of these moments. How they parallel each pushing and pulling the other. The ones alone like this right now with the ones of J and I together. The immense pride a father himself weak of his son who under his own little power crested the mighty Sierra Nevada thirteen thousand feet above the sea then followed his father himself lost flailing inwardly down miles and miles. Always following without question. Without hesitation. Only trust. An absolute and complete trust that frightens me whole but also gives me an unbearable strength. An unbelievable responsibility to bear for which I am never certain I can truly fulfill but cherish the crushing weight of it perhaps more than anything else this life has so far brought. It is in these places looking off into infinities endless where I can find some resemblance of peace. Let my insecurities and failings and weaknesses disintegrate into the atoms of the air. I exhale. It is okay to feel alone at times. Vulnerable. Scared. Petrified even as I do now a sinking feeling deep within. To cower under granite and let the hail and lightning and thunder crash down and shatter the still silence and security of everything that once was now surely soon to be lost. The very frightful torment to realize the weight of everything every moment I have ever lived and have ever rejoiced and have ever regretted. To pick a way through a treeless canyon under towering granite and glaciers where I know storms have raged and ravaged raw the stone and waters pure then let revealed again the sounds of meadows and of waterfalls and of streams all finding their way endless to the ocean towards the omniscient sun. Clouds paint broad strokes across a calm sky. Tonight we plan to camp at the lake just below the col on the other side of civilization. Will have to watch the weather. It can approach fast and I do not want us stuck on this side of the crest. Should be going soon. From here it seems an impossibly long climb to the col and I relish this delicious moment made complete with the realizations of all I am. Of all I am not. I could sit here in the sun warm on granite forever. Just lie down. Rejoice in the sun and the storms and the skies. The soft trails that show the way. The sharp talus that does not. The shade and the water of streams. Listen. Feel. Push on. This wildness is in me now. I take it with me. Inside me. When I am back over on the other side of the crest I reassure myself now I will always have this moment. And the moment suspended at the col with J. Music washes over me like the imperial sun flowing through me and becoming part of everything that is here now real. I can touch it all. But time to let the silence now fill me. Time to go back. Find J (I see him looking for me now!) Skip rocks together in the tarn near camp. See if I can beat his six skips (the record so far!) Be his dad. Be strong for him. Lead him once more up and over these mountains. Reveal everything. Hide nothing. Climb. Laugh. Play. The present here and now.




Thursday July twenty-sixth.





Last morning. Had breakfast then coffee (coffee is infinitely more delicious out of beat up metal mugs!) Now sitting again on granite. Always. There will be time later for couches and cushions. For now there is sun and breeze a kind of summer Sierra perfection. Even the bugs have kept away. I am staring south to Mount Lamarck and the monolithic Sierra crest rugged stretching like a craggy spine along the topaz sky. Remnants of glaciers nearly melted forever now scrape hold to rock. Clinging. Grasping on with all their might. We were on the other side of all this just yesterday. Removed from everything else. From the impending tragedy that has me here now myself clutching to the past. To the present. Fearing the future. The arriving. The leaving. On the other side of the crest there was nothing but ourselves and light and stone. The elemental space found in these places where only God is as the Buddha described everywhere and in everything the sun and the stars and the time and the space in between it all. We were at the cosmic center of the universe. Nothing else mattered. I could forget all that had happened. All that had not and would still. Shortly we pack up for North Lake and Spencer and showers and swimming pools and real food and cotton. I try to hold on to this moment. Desperate. We even might try to see a movie in Bishop tonight to complete our reintroduction frighteningly abrupt and sudden back into civilization. For certain the Bishop town pool will do the trick swarming with California kids in bikinis and smiles skin darkened under months of the Owens Valley sun. But I will try when we've returned to keep this center. I must. No matter what. To not lose hold of the moment atop the col now centuries ago it seems the light shimmering everything else God it seemed even the universe holding its breath standing still for us. Allowing the pause. I face the crest now intentionally. To my back the view north to Bishop and the valley. An old gentleman khaki-clad daypack had passed us earlier as we stirred around camp. Seemed a bit lost looking to find the way to the col for the day. Silliness. Doesn't he know as Muir once said that to truly experience wilderness one must spend the night out in it? Under it. Surrounded by it. Where we can be boundless. Where our imagination makes us infinite as he once wrote. But I pointed the man in the right direction nonetheless. Just no sight of him yet across to the steep ridge switchbacked up onward to talus (he should be climbing it by now?) Maybe he turned back. We just have to pack. Easy hike out all downhill. A few miles. Crazy I think now the geology of mountains. How they all rise and rise and rise ever higher to a crest then fall away on all sides in every direction determining in their very essence which way the rivers spill to the oceans. Summits splinter the space above. To themselves fall away over time. Eons. And on the other side such wildness. Such incredible breaking beauty. How far one can go with only a pack placing one foot in front of the other. Thousands and thousands of feet up and down. Miles and miles and miles. J plays and swats at flies nearby. I must finish writing this. The sounds of the stream below the upper and lower lakes the only thing that breaks the silence now in between. The blue polarized sky cloudless. The grey granite looming.

ansel.

People wonder why I don't express more interest in traveling around the world. The fact is, I really haven't completed explorations of my backyard! Two-dimensionally, I am jealous as Hell over your flying by the Himalayas! JEZUZ!!! But - after all - the other day I walked by some fresh green moss in my garden; this is a terrible confession for an old grizzled mountaineer to say - but that moss looked mighty impressive to me!

From a letter to Dorothea Lange, February 22, 1959

give a mile. or four. or five.

The scene was sort of sad. Sort of picturesque. Quiet.

Moss-covered logs once vehicle curbs. Sword fern and huckleberry where once cars parked. Pavement cracked and covered seemingly ancient. The sound of the river off in the distance nearby. J clambering up on a lichen-covered rock at the head of the Sulphur Mountain trail. Making goofy faces. K down wandering silently off somewhere. The Suiattle #784 trail sign almost eerily unupdated a tattered map of the Glacier Peak Wilderness stapled front and center. Laminated hiding under plastic. No cars though today. No one actually. Just us.

A mile or two back we had met one guy coming down on bicycle (we too were on bikes). Climber. Had an ice ax strapped to his pack so we just assumed. Seemed out of it. Told us he had been twelve miles deep earlier that day. Not sure from where but we bid him safe journey as he took off downroad. We hung around for a bit. Planned to be back to head up Miners Ridge. Image Lake. Or Sulphur Mountain.

Weather moving in from the west. Time to go.



-----



A couple hours earlier I found myself sun fighting through the approaching cloud layer chumming with a group of men all old enough to be my dad slumped in the grass of Green Mountain Pasture. A light breeze. Them lamenting on the good ol' days all with stories to tell but not enough time to get to them all. Of the Ptarmigan Traverse namely since only a few miles east Downey Creek empties into the Suiattle where most climbers plunge out of alder thickets to wrap it up crazy-exhausted relieved ecstatic.

Listening to them meander about days gone by made me wonder though were they all just grumpy and griping about why things couldn't just be the same? Should I have told them to get over it? Things change. Ethics change. Rivers change. Sandstone and granite. The ebb and flow of it all.

But then it hit me. Pretty hard actually and something clicked.

Isn't more or less the essence of the Wilderness Act (we were sitting smackdab in the middle of Glacier Peak Wilderness after all) to—well—prevent things from changing? Cos if this sort of stuff always changed—roads and boundaries and use and such—from one generation to the next then—well—just a few down the line and what will be left? How much will have changed?



A mile here. A mile there. Who's counting anyway?



So taking off from the meadow the three of us up towards the bridge over Downey I thought to myself it seems these candid and kindhearted old men of which whose company I had to remind myself I had been in and for what we should be thanking them might just be on to something. 'I'm old school wilderness' one of them had huffed to me with a partial twinkle in his eye as he prefaced a reply to my question of why not just pave the last four miles of the road? I rather like a river walk he spoke without answering hinting at a gesture to shush and listen to the quiet still air surrounding us.

Admittedly though despite my age I suppose so am I.

There are plenty of unwild places left it seems. Not enough wilderness. Some may argue that but hardly radical. And the debate has heated up through quick searches of the interwebs as the deadline for public comments draws to a close the end of this week. Alt B or C? Fix the whole road all twenty-three miles back up to the Sulphur Mountain trailhead and campground next to the creek or leave the last four or five miles from Green Mountain Road for foot and bikes and packs? What's four or five more miles anyway?



A mile here. A mile there. Who's counting anyway?



-----



The ride uproad was enjoyable. A barely-perceptible up. The last four or five miles from Green Mountain to Sulphur Mountain maybe four hundred feet or so. Quiet. The cedars dripping with moss. A grove of birch near the riverbed. Leaves shuttering. Had to stop my bike even to really appreciate it the sound of knobby tires on rocky roadbed half overgrown drowning out the essence of the river and silence of forest and air. A good sort of eerie.

It didn't necessarily or really make sense to me why at that point in between reality and sublime all the rage all the fuss all the back and forth over four or five miles? Why must we feel I guess that 'access' can only mean vehicle access? Why must we drive so much? Always be in such a hurry? It seems when all the arguments are made for or against B or C or this or that what it all everything comes down to is something simple ... that essence of dew clinging to a fern not coated with dust from a road or fumes.

Of course it would be easier to drive the road to its end. Park. Stretch some before heading off down the Suiattle River trail. It's not like I don't take advantage of roads. Hennegan Pass. Cascade Pass. The cross-state North Cascades highway-turned-eyesore. So for me then I guess I could stand to walk four or five extra miles if I wanted. A couple hours on foot. Quicker on bicycle. Maybe the campground at Sulphur Creek would be more special. Maybe a little tougher to get to than all the others sprawled beside or tucked off pavements. Maybe I just sound like an old curmudgeon.



-----



We get back to the truck parked off the road just outside the gate at milepost twelve. I walk past a pile of garbage spilling cascading down the hillside toward the river. Ugh. Close my eyes for a second to forget that. Go back to the lichen and the moss and the ferns and cedars at the end of the disintegrating road the quiet pristine. Still the sound of the Suiattle. Try to picture all of this not now not today but when it's finished and the debates have died down and the construction dust has settled. Fifty years from now. A hundred. More.

Which is the better scene?












To send in a comment to the USFS use this address ... wfl.suiattleriverroad@dot.gov

wilderness clichéd.

So during our trip to the Bugaboos a week or so ago and a few other Canadian provincial and national parks (Banff and Jasper and Kootenay) I gained some perspective on what seems to be an entirely American notion of 'wilderness.' In addition last night a trip to Half Price Books yielded a find of a large-format book of Ansel Adams' called The American Wilderness.

In time I plan on writing up my thoughts in particular to wilderness from what I gleaned as being the Canadian approach to such and now of some thoughts on the Adams' book, but for this post went back to a journal entry I've up until now left unpublished (if you can call blogging about it 'publishing'). Coincidentally, it was from another annual autumn trip of mine and Jeff's (we do this every autumn - take a trip somewhere and do some backpacking and sightseeing and have visited places from Yosemite to the San Rafael Swell and points in between from the Rockies and Sierras to the southwest and now the Canadian Rockies).

In this entry below I recount our trip last year where we detoured a bit south to the Maroon Bells (on my request to be fair) and my thoughts on having hiked a couple easy miles up to Crater Lake beneath the pair of impressive north and south peaks ...



-----



25 september 2010.

Maroon Bells. Sitting here at Crater Lake after a two-mile hike with a throng of others. Found a spot above the lake nestled in the quaking aspens listening to the sound of the wind through the leaves over the sound of people yapping down by the lake. The view is astounding. And the aspens have turned their brilliant autumn yellow. There is a dusting of fresh snow. The weather is about as perfect as one could ask for. All ingredients mixed together begs the question can wilderness be a cliché? And in asking that in fact seems to me to be asking the bigger question that I think of often climbing and backpacking the mountains of Washington brutal and honest in their indifference weeding out the throngs of tourists the trails from foggy valley bottom to craggy peaks thousands and thousands of feet high steep ... is clichéd wilderness good or bad? That hordes of people stomp along the the two-mile trail to Crater Lake under the Maroon Bells to eat their fruit and brownies and take their photos under cloudless bluebird skies. Do they really truly walk away with a respect and awe for our natural world having been mesmerized by the sound of the wind through the aspens of the smell of air evergreen forest of the sight of these imposing peaks? Or just a postcard photo of themselves and another place they can tick off a list? Like Delicate Arch the other night. We didn't take the three-mile hike instead opting in the little light there was left for the shorter viewpoint just to see it if only from a distance. Got there right as the sun dipped below the horizon to see - literally - a hundred people lined up shoulder to shoulder tripods and all along the ridge west of the arch perched precariously on a canyon edge. Did they leave with an Abbey-esque reverence for the place or just another stupid photograph of an arch at sunset photographed by millions? Does accessibility like this do more harm than good? Or maybe more accurately simply does it do any good at all? Surely not everyone can have the respect for nature as Abbey and Ruess and their deserts or Muir and Adams and Manning and their mountains. So they just take their photos. Maybe they think twice about sustainability. Of the idea of the seventh generation. Of preserving wilderness rather than exploiting it. Or maybe they just sigh cos they had to take a bus up here to the Bells in an effort to reduce the pollution instead of driving their car cos thirty years ago even then it was obvious all the autos were wreaking havoc on the mountain air and the meadows. Maybe all they take away is a photo of them under blue skies and a kind of place I think is often misunderstood if not at least underappreciated so no harm done but no good either? People tossing water bottles and such on the ground. A kid carving something in the pristine bark of an aspen his mother standing nearby not noticing or saying anything. In the end do the throngs of tourists to these places help or hurt? Maybe I sound cynical or maybe I have turned elitist or into some old curmudgeon. Talked to some climbers headed down the trail behind us they had a go on Pyramid but turned back a hundred feet shy of the summit finding themselves on a bit of ice while their crampons and axes were tucked safely back in their trunk. Oops. But they get it I'm certain. How many now did we pass on the trail who also get it versus how many who did not? Just up there for their scrapbook photo from the lake a hundred feet from the bus stop only to turn around to head back home. Maybe that sounds elitist. Maybe not. I think of the trips I have planned that I hope to make before the snow starts to fall in earnest back home. Kool-Aid Lake in the North Cascades. I'll leave the same throngs of tourists behind lollygagging at Cascade Pass and head up the daunting if not slightly intimidating climbers' path carved into the side of Mixup Peak and then up to Cache Col to drop down on the other side under Mixup and Formidable and Spider to pitch a tent or toss my bag at the shores of Kool-Aid. The other trip of course to the Enchantments like I do every year a grueling ten-mile approach up six-thousand feet in itself weeding out the tourists and the ones who don't really care or don't get it leaving only those that do and who enjoy the solitude of one of the greatest little corners on Earth. Not like the Maroon Bells. Not like Delicate Arch. Bumping elbows with a hundred other photographers all with their tripods and expensive cameras just to take a photo that has already been taken a billion times. Manning writes -


'Wilderness - genuine wilderness - is the sum of many processes of life and death, growth and decay.'


Such places are the last of our primeval landscapes. The few surviving samples of a natural world to walk and rest in to see to listen to feel to comprehend and understand. To care about. There isn't much of it left. What there is (and this is key) is all that all of us will ever have. And all of our children. And so on. It is only as safe as people - knowing about it - want it to be. But do enough people know? So I come back to that question. Are the mothers and fathers with the strollers scrambling off the bus to get a view of the Maroon Bells in fact spreading the good word to their children that this wilderness is here and is finite? Is not safe and needs to be preserved? Maybe they will not take up mountaineering. Or head up and over Buckskin Pass to peer to peaks beyond. Maybe they will never again step into wilderness. But they will have had a glimpse. And is that enough?



-----



It is interesting to read my thoughts from last year given the perspective gleaned from this last trip to Canadian 'wilderness' in the Bugs and a trip into dare I say more traditional wilderness a couple weeks ago up to Whatcom Pass in North Cascades National Park. I feel I have gained a bit more insight into the idea and essence of wilderness since jotting down those thoughts sitting next to Crater Lake amidst all the others who had made the quick trip there, but that still - even back then - perhaps reveals the path I am headed - elitest or not - in my view of wilderness.

Not to jump too much ahead of myself, but pulling a quote from the Adams' book to close seems to sum my thoughts and direction perfectly and as succinctly as possible ~

'We either have wild places or we don't. We admit the spiritual-emotional validity of wild beautiful places or we don't. We have a philosophy of simplicity of experience in these wild places or we don't. We admit an almost religious devotion to the clean exposition of the wild, natural earth, or we don't.'

a glimpse.

Sixteen miles in. Six-and-a-half hours from shouldering my pack twenty pounds or so back at the Hannegan Pass trailhead earlier that morning. It was just about four in the afternoon. Another mile to go Whatcom. I had to command my legs to move up over the overgrown trail hot in the three-p-m sun. And then just below the pass I hit the sub-alpine zone. A beautiful scene of Brush Creek meandering and cascading through open heather meadows sprinkled with pinks and purples contrasted by greens and greys. It smelled amazing. A certain alpine freshness. I found the campground and a spot on which to toss my pack before heading up the last couple hundred feet and quarter-mile through heather to the pass for a bit of a break. Crested it with views east into the Little Beaver valley and Whatcom enormous rising from the rocky ridge that led south. Challenger was blocked from view. I'd have to climb higher before I could see it which I would in a bit. And then Luna from even higher. Right now writing this in my tent by headlamp Moby on headphones is mixing with the sounds of the chirping outside. The moon is bathing this alpine basin around the Tapto Lakes above Whatcom Pass washing out all but the Big Dipper. Cassiopea. Tired. Long day. Wandered around the basin away from where I set up my small camp to check the place out after dinner while the sun set behind Shuksan and Ruth to the west seemingly very very far away. I had passed by Ruth earlier that morning on the way over Hannegan. Am looking forward to sleep. Have on my Sacred Socks cozy-warm wool but it's crazy-warm outside. I don't think it's even supposed to dip much below sixty tonight. 9:23. I'll probably try to sleep and write more tomorrow. Have all day to myself up here before I head back the eighteen-plus miles to Spencer. Hoping for clouds or some beautiful light like we had on Sourdough two weeks ago or Cache Col two weeks before that but no such luck tonight and not really expecting it for tomorrow. This trip is just for a glimpse. A glimpse east into the crazy-wild Little Beaver valley. A glimpse of the crazy-remote Challenger. And Easy Ridge. And Whatcom. The Pickets. Finally. Morning now. The sun was late in getting to me camped here under this ridge to the east. But now it is here and I have already finished my essential morning cup of coffee the sound of a snowmelt stream nearby. Sitting on granite warm in the sun. Can tell it's going to be a warm day even at six-thousand feet. Already had the thought of swimming in one of the lakes crazy for September. A slight breeze feels heavenly. I can see Shuksan towering over everything to the west. And Ruth in front of it. Whatcom of course and the whole of Easy Ridge spread out to the south. Had some lunch and then climbed back over the ridge holding the Tapto basin for an absolutely incredible view of Challenger and the Little Beaver valley. I sit down now on some lichen-stained rock and pause to listen. The monumental cascades of waterfalls coursing down deep into the valley make a constant muted roar miles away. I can see pockets of glacier remnants clinging to life on the ice-scoured north side of Challenger. There's a lake even tucked under the sheer shadowed wall where the Challenger glacier stops abruptly somehow seemingly to defy gravity. As far east through the valley that I can see the landscape mellows. Ross Lake is hidden from view but I wonder if I can see Desolation Peak? I'll have to check a map when I get back. The breeze has mostly disappeared and I am reminded of how out here only the elemental matters. A breeze to ward off both the last of the bugs before the Autumn chill drapes itself over the mountains and the heat of the sun. No sound but that distant roar of waterfalls. Complete peace. I think back to the hike yesterday to get here. And about wilderness like this in general I guess. There are two other tents back down among the Tapto Lakes. I saw one guy head out on his way this morning. Then another. Not sure to where. Then silence. And still ... silence. What if there was a car ferry up Ross Lake to the Little Beaver valley? Or worse a road around it maybe turning the wild lake empty of any motorized boats into another place of a Lake Tahoe sort. Then say a road up Little Beaver smack up to where the insane geography of it finally impeded civilized travel. Then a parking lot there. And from that spot once crazy-wild wilderness maybe an Alps-like tram up here to Whatcom Pass. So that everyone can see this wild silent splendor that is this place buried deep in one of the wildest spots in the lower forty-eight. Except then it wouldn't be silent. It would certainly be more accessible. The seventeen miles in from Hannegan was probably a breeze compared to the eighteen mile easterly approach up the Little Beaver. Granted it doesn't need to be done in seven hours but regardless. It's a very long haul to heave pack up and over two passes. The ferry-slash-car-slash-tram option would be so much easier this place today would instead be thronged with people all clambering for the view. Afterall it is mindblowingly-spectacular.








But no ... thankfully. That other option is not yet an option.







And so I sit here on this ridge in shorts and shirtsleeves and flip flops where trees give way to rock a slight breeze completely by myself. The shadows on Challenger lengthen and swallow up the tiny lake I spied earlier. The folds in the snow on the glacier become more apparent. The light softens. And all of this to only that distant sound of cascades soon to silence with the coming of winter. I am enthralled by silence. In awe of this glimpse into such a wild place. And grateful to those who maybe sat here at this same spot and saw a wilderness worth preserving. I realize that in my staunch defense of wilderness preservation I also know not everyone can sit here and gaze and gasp at the sight of the Challenger glacier or immerse themselves in this sort of quiet. And searching for an answer or maybe more a justification I decide or maybe even know that is what makes it special. That those people who just drive the cross-state highway and pull off at the Diablo Lake overlook maybe only do so to stretch tired legs and point and say 'look at that mountain!' ('that mountain' being the six-thousand-foot relief of the north face of Colonial - a fantastically-wild climb). Take a photo of Diablo's glacial-silted turquoise waters and continue on their way. Sure they've seen something but I tend to think (or again justify) that they have not connected. There is no effort. Just a photo op. So with no effort it can be argued ultimately has any benefit been gained? Will they rush home and phone their legislators to support and save wild lands? Maybe. Not likely though I'd be willing to bet. But the one who treks up the mountain passes through fields of heather and wildflowers and granite far-removed with everything they need on their back grueling at times blisters maybe sore muscles for sure to finally arrive seventeen miles and hours and hours even maybe days away later to throw down pack. Sit. Stare. And take note of the silence of wilderness. Glimpse into its core. Spend a night or two or three or more sleeping out under the Milky Way. Open a tent fly up to the sheer vastness of trees or meadows or mountains or skies. Watch an icefall crash on a glacier across a valley as old as time. What can they learn? Take away? Much likely more than the passerby numb down there just winding around the bends of a highway as it contours the same landscape those who hike can feel inching across it by boot. Going now to scout some tarns or streams or rocks looking for a good foreground to strike against the incredibleness of Challenger. Not sure what the evening will bring but know it will be spectacular. I'll be dying to be done as I crawl back up Hannegan on my way out tomorrow. Then down. Down down down to the trailhead. But still grateful to have been here. Still in awe at such a place. Still reminded this was just a glimpse and I will most definitely - most definitely - be back.







Trip stats -

:: 17 miles one-way to Whatcom Pass (2000' gain to Hannegan, 2600' loss down to the Chilliwack crossing, 3000' gain back up to Whatcom Pass); another 1.5 miles to Tapto Lakes with an additional 1000' gain/300' loss; total time from trailhead to Tapto Lakes = 7 hours

:: The ranger back in Glacier apparently thought I was insane for attempting Tapto Lakes in a day confessing she normally takes three and subsequently actually would not give me a permit to Tapto for both nights instead suggesting I stay the first night at Whatcom Pass before heading up the rest of the way and still smug at thinking I wouldn't-slash-couldn't make it which of course did not stop me from, well, camping at Tapto Lakes both nights. Stupid rangers.

:: The cable car crossing of the Chilliwack was awesome despite hearing that there is a log draped over the river downstream at the ford.

:: There are lots of fly-infested camps along the Chilliwack buried in old-growth forest (not that there's anything wrong with that) for those less-inclined to attempt the entire trip in one day (umm, not that there's anything wrong with that either).

:: There were signs of bears at Whatcom and down below at Graybeal camps but I never actually saw one.

:: I may have become slightly delirious on the way back down the Hennegan trail through the Ruth Creek valley long-ago clearcut by the good ol' troopers of the US Forest Service so that all hikers now unfortunate to come down (or even more unfortunate to go up) in the afternoon get blasted by the sun no relief from what should have been a pristine old-growth forest hike but now just endless clumps of maple and other such brush and thus I may have been yelling at a fly that was pestering me once I finally reached the trailhead and was just desperately trying to get in my car and leave and there may have been a family or two having a nice lunch in the picnic shelter wondering what was wrong with that dude yelling at a fly and flailing his arms around.

:: The north fork of the Nooksack River makes a prime spot in which to dunk head, arms and feet after enduring the God-forsaken Hennegan trail which nearly quite literally never ends and for which even an attempt to drown the mundaneness of it out with Placebo's 'Battle of the Sun' proved futile.

:: Regardless ... this trip is utterly incredible. No, really. Utterly. I will be back.