Book Club

In the Tracks of an Avalanche

We drove through the fog to get there. Our biggest book club group yet (!) met at the trailhead of the Iron Goat Trail near Stevens Pass. It was a chilly October morning and we were bundled in our wooly hats and puffy coats. Before we hit the trail I pointed out that we were standing at the location of the old town of Scenic. There was once a hotel there in the early 1900’s and a hot spring. And it was a crucial location for the recovery effort of the terribly tragedy that happened on the Great Northern Railway, just three miles from where we stood.

In February 1910, a formidable blizzard tore through Stevens Pass and ravaged the railway. Slides blocked the tracks in several places along the steep-walled corridor that had been exposed in a recent wildfire. Two trains, one full of passengers and the other full of mail and crew, were trapped on both sides by slides. The trains were moved next to each other on opposing tracks near the Wellington station. With the whole area prone to slides, the train’s location was considered the safest place for them. The snowplow crews tirelessly worked to clear the tracks as the snow continued to pile up and every time they cleared a slide, another would occur.

The passengers and crew, concerned about their safety and health, were trapped on the trains for five days. A few of them decided to walk out to the town of Scenic and subsequently wired a message to report their horrific walk through the blizzard conditions and recommended that the rest of the group stay put and wait for help. But help didn’t come, and as conditions seemed to mildly improve, they made a decision to evacuate as many as they could the following day. That night, the snow turned to rain and the lightning flashed in the sky. There was a deafening CRACK and a slab of snow released from the heights of Windy Mountain tumbled down onto the trains. The train cars toppled down the steep slope, some disintegrating on impact and others perfectly intact. The unharmed survivors pulled others from the snow and rushed them down to Scenic. Many were rescued but still nearly 100 died in the accident in what is still the deadliest avalanche in American history.

All that remained in the ravine afterward, strewn among rocks and ravaged trees, were a few twisted metal pipes, a ruptured firebox door, a woman’s torn, high-buttoned shoe.

From the trailhead at Scenic, our group climbed 700 feet up steep switchbacks to get to the now defunct railway. I reminded the group that the survivors and rescuers had to get down this steep embankment and in the snow, a seemingly impossible and terrifying task. We reached the railroad grade and explored the ghosts of the railway’s era. We first discovered a large, dark tunnel. A trail led inside to an interpretive sign and a warning of “extreme danger” if one was to continue through the tunnel. We returned the way we came and continued on the trail as it skirted the outside of the tunnel.

A massive concrete wall, probably 30 feet high, follows the trail. Rusty rebar pokes out in places, water spills over the edges, and roots meander their way through the structure, buckling and crumbling, as nature reclaims its rightful place. Towering yellow alders sprouted from the top of the wall and shined brightly against the blue sky in protest of the man-made feat of engineering. We passed the remnants of a wooden snowshed that once protected the tracks. The decaying wood was flattened into waves as it followed the curvature of the embankment that reclaimed it.

Finally, as we neared the old townsite of Wellington (renamed Tye after the disaster), we entered the main attraction of the trail, a towering concrete snowshed built in response to the avalanche disaster of 1910. The structure is mostly intact with the exception of one end that is falling down. Concrete clings to falling rebar in what we all decided could be an art installation displayed in any modern art museum. We followed a short boardwalk to interpretive signs explaining what happened here over 100 years ago. We ate lunch there and discussed our thoughts about the month’s book choice, The White Cascade, a historical recount of the events leading up to the avalanche and the aftermath.

Many in our group grew up in Washington and I was surprised to learn that they had never heard of the deadly avalanche at Wellington before we read the book. Without the efforts of many volunteers over the years who worked hard to conserve this historical area and its trails, we may have lost this story all together. Stories like this bring us closer to understanding what our ancestors and predecessors endured in the harsh land of the west. It also reminds us that nature is a formidable force and that sometimes it is better to just leave it wild.

 

For no matter what the railway propagandists might say to the contrary, there were indeed places in the country too wild to be tamed by the technology of the railroad – and Stevens Pass might be one of them.

 

The White Cascade by Gary Krist

 

Book Ends

 

Outdoor Life

Hiking History: Lake Crescent

Legend has it Lake Crescent is haunted. In 1940, some fisherman found a mass floating in the water that ended up being a body. It was perfectly intact, preserved by the near freezing temps of this deep glacially carved lake. The woman’s dead flesh was described eerily as “Ivory Soap” caused by a chemical reaction between the minerals in the lake and the fats in her body.

The woman was identified as Hallie Latham Illingworth, a Kentucky native and waitress at the Lake Crescent Tavern. Three years earlier she had disappeared just before Christmas. She was married to a local man who was well known for his womanizing and who had regularly beat her. It is said that she showed up to work with black eyes and bruises on her neck and arms. Her husband was eventually arrested for her murder, which occurred after a particular fight got too violent and he ended up strangling her to death. Her body was weighed down by weights and thrown into the depths of the lake. She became known as The Lady of the Lake and is still said to haunt the lake that entombed her after her horrific death.

The reason this lake perfectly preserved Hallie’s body and has such frigid temperatures is because of its depth. It is the second deepest lake in Washington after Lake Chelan with a max measured depth of 624 feet, although some unofficial measurements boast depths of over 1000 feet. According to the local native people’s history, Mount Storm King, the mountain that looms over Lake Crescent, was formed because of a battle between two tribes, the Quileute and the Klallam. The Mountain Storm King became angry at the fighting and threw a big boulder at the men. The boulder blocked the river and formed Lake Crescent, killing all of the warriors. Geological history backs up this native story. There is evidence of a landslide occurring that would have been big enough to raise the level of an older smaller lake, into the lake it is today.

The Spruce Railroad Trail, ambling along the northern shore of the lake, is a great place to get to know this lake. The trail has its own history. It was built in 1918 to move highly sought after spruce trees to be used in airplane construction for World War I bi-planes. The war ended before the trees could be used for their intended purpose, but the line remained open for logging until it was abandoned in 1951.

The trail is flat with peek-a-boo views of the sapphire colored water of the lake. The highlights of the trail include a quaint wooden bridge over a crystal clear pool known as the punchbowl, a popular swimming and diving spot. There are also some remnants of former railroad tunnels and even one that has been restored that you can walk through. It is just long and curved enough to get very dark inside for a brief time. I walked through it alone without a headlamp and definitely felt out of my comfort zone in the pitch dark for a minute or two. But I held onto a handrail, scooted a little quicker, and survived to claim a small victory.

Another area to explore is the Storm King ranger station on the western side of the lake. The ranger station made a home of an old settler’s cabin that has been restored over the years. From here there is lake access and a dock, where on a crisp autumn morning, I sat alone for a long while watching fog form and cling to Mount Storm King and Pyramid Peak and disappear. Interestingly, Pyramid Peak once hosted a lookout built in 1942 that was used as a spotter station to spy any possible approaching Japanese aircraft during World War II.

 

There are a few trails that start from the rangers station, including one that heads south across the highway to Mount Storm King and Marymere Falls. The trail crosses Barnes Creek and Falls Creek in deep woods that makes you feel miles from the highway. I had a particularly magical moment watching a young deer on this section of trail that will stick with me for a long time.

After a short distance, the 90 foot high Marymere Falls ribbons down through rock and forest and flows down to a placid creek, punctuated by yellow and orange leaves in the fall. The lovely name was bestowed to the falls by Charles Barnes, a homesteader and member of the Press Expedition through the Olympic Mountains, in honor of his sister Mary Alice Barnes.

 

     

Outdoor Life

Hiking History: Franklin Falls

Winter is a great time to visit this popular waterfall. The snow gives everything charm, especially the cabins along the creek topped with a thick layer of icing-like snow. The normally two mile hike is extended down the forest road about a mile making it more of a worthwhile destination for the day. It is, however, still as popular as ever in the winter so get there early to avoid the crowds.

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The trail climbs gently through old growth along Denny Creek. In the summertime, you can walk along the Wagon Road Trail adjacent to the falls trail and see the remnants of the original road that climbed over Snoqualmie Pass. The old wagon road was built in 1867 to promote trade between Seattle and Ellensburg. There were frequent cattle drives on the steep road over the pass and maintenance was understandably difficult. Hiking along here, imagine what it would  have been like traveling in a wagon…

The wagon road continued to be the main passage through the mountains for cattle and goods until the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed in 1887. The railroad provided a much easier way to transport freight and the road fell into disrepair. David Denny, brother of Arthur Denny who is one of the founders of Seattle, took it upon himself to save the road. He repaired the road, laid corduroy, and built bridges. In 1905 the first automobiles would cross over the pass on the road that Denny built.

Later, during the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expedition, an auto race over the pass popularized the route. The state planned to build an official highway called the Sunset Highway that would run from North Bend east to the Idaho border. At its opening in 1915, the highway was hailed as “the first passable route between east and west sides of the mountains.” The new highway replaced the steep wagon road grade with switchbacks and hairpin turns that are now part of the forest road 58. The forest road parallels the trail and crisscrosses the original wagon road trail.

The trail to Franklin Falls has much to offer. It’s got old forest, a babbling creek, history and of course, the beautiful 70-foot falls. My favorite part of our winter trek was the impressive icicles guarding the falls on both sides, hanging from the rock like stalagmites. We walked the forest road down to make it a loop and threw snowballs into the deep snow for Nali to chase. She slept the whole way home. It was a perfect winter day.

More info about the Wagon Road

Hikes featured in this post:
Franklin Falls

Outdoor Life

Hiking History: Iron Goat Trail

A few weeks ago when a friend asked me to take her on a spooky hike, I knew exactly where to go. The Iron Goat trail is by far the creepiest trail I’ve been on. Not only does it have train tunnels and collapsing snowsheds, but the trail leads to the site of a horrific tragedy. In 1910 the worst avalanche in American history swept two trains off their tracks and killed 96 people at Wellington.

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The Iron Goat trail follows the old Great Northern Railroad route that switchbacks high above the valley floor on its way to Stevens Pass. This high route perched on the steep slopes of Windy Mountain was an impressive feat of engineering, but it also received 20-30 feet of snow in the winter. This in combination with recently burnt exposed slopes above the tracks made the stretch from Scenic to Wellington a dangerous one. Efforts were made to hold the heavy and wet Northwest snow by building giant concrete walls, snowsheds and tunnels. But ultimately nature won the battle with the railroads and a tunnel was built in 1929 to avoid the switchbacks to the pass all together.

We started our hike at the Scenic trailhead, the midpoint of the trail, and headed up steep switchbacks to the old railroad grade. From here we headed east on the easy grade toward Wellington, the site of the avalanche. It was a foggy fall day, perfectly setting the mood for this macabre hike. We soon approached Windy Point, a tight turn that required the train to slow to a crawl before a tunnel was built in 1913. We then followed a tall concrete wall along a slope so steep that you must walk along a narrow concrete base carpeted in moss to the end of the tunnel.

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We explored the tunnel, but not too much. The western end of the tunnel is collapsed making the tunnel dark as could be and not a place for lingering. We shivered and continued on through the foggy trees. The snowshed wall continues along this part of the trail, looming. But nature is slowly reclaiming the walls. Water cascades over them in places and full grown trees tower up from the ledges. We heard the echos of the modern day train tooting its whistle in the valley below and I got goosebumps.

As we rounded a corner I caught a glimpse of the snow shed at Wellington. I told my friend that we were getting to the creepiest part of the trail, muuuhahahahaha. And then we both jumped and squeaked. Two other hikers emerged from the bushes and scared the crap out of us. We scared them too. We neared the snowshed and marveled at the collapsing concrete clinging to twisted rebar like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. The rest of the snowshed is intact and complete with a boardwalk. We made our way to an overlook, halfway through the shed for a lunch break.

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In the winter of 1910 an unprecedented snow storm hit western Washington.  Thick, wet snow piled on the tracks at a rate of a foot an hour and the snow blasting plow engines could not keep up. This was not unusual for this area that receives up to 35 feet of snow in some years. But what was unusual was the length of the storm. It lasted for nine days and the snow never let up. Two trains traveling to Seattle from Spokane, one a passenger train and the other a mail train, were trapped by slides at Wellington. Rescue efforts were thwarted by the ever-piling snow.

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Some of the passengers braved the weather and hiked out the 3 miles to Scenic while others waiting to be rescued, their supplies dwindling. Then on March 10, 1910 a rare thunderstorm came through and the heavy rain loosened a mass of snow from Windy Mountain above. The snow smashed into the trains, toppling them off the rails like toys. The scene was chaos and the few surviving passengers rushed to dig out others, but it was not long before many of the buried suffocated and died. The last to be rescued was Ida Starett. She muffled out a scream when she regained consciousness and found herself face down buried in snow with a large object pinning her down and her dead infant pressed against her belly. Rescuers heard her cries and dug her out of the snow. Earlier her son, 7 year-old Raymond, was recovered with a 30 inch splinter in his forehead. His rescuer, a doctor, removed it with a shaving razor.

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In all, 23 passengers survived and the bodies of the dead were put on Alaskan sleds and taken down the steep avalanche slopes to Scenic. Other bodies weren’t recovered until the snow melted in the following July. The news of the avalanche took the country by storm and the town of Wellington was renamed to Tye soon after so that weary passengers did not have to pass through the doomed Wellington. The concrete snowshed that still stands was built in response to the deadly avalanche, but it was not long before the route was rerouted all together to the modern Cascade tunnel. In the 1990’s the trail was built by Outdoor Washington with boardwalks and interpretive signs making the site accessible and preserving the history for future hikers.

More info about the Iron Goat trail:
Outdoor Washington’s Iron Goat Trail website

 

The White Cascade by Gary Krist

This gripping account of the 1910 avalanche and the days leading up to it is a must read for fans of the Iron Goat trail. Krist compiled the narrative from events recounted in letters, diaries, memoirs and court documents. It brings together the stories of the passengers, workers, rescuers and the turmoil that plagued the leaders and decision makers of the Great Northern Railway during those days into a complete package that is impossible to put down.

 

 

 

 

 

See also: Hiking Washington’s History by Judy Bentley

 

Outdoor Life

Hiking History: Mount Pilchuck

If you ask a Seattlelite what their first mountain summit was, they will most likely say Mt Pilchuck. The road to the trailhead is just across the National Forest boundary about an hour from Seattle and the drive to the trailhead gets most of the pesky elevation out of the way making for a short and sweet hike with great views of the North Cascades.

Mt Pilchuck was first climbed in 1897 from the Monte Cristo railroad by a USGS employee. In 1918 a trail was built when the mountain was chosen as one of the first lookout sites in the area. Building the lookout was quite a feat in those days, twelve feet were blasted off the top of the mountain and materials were hand-winched up the craggy boulders. The lookout was replaced a few times throughout the years and finally abandoned in the 1960’s. The lookout was restored in 1990 by the Mountaineers. 105 people spent an astonishing 10,000 hours restoring the lookout.

We can thank an ambitious ski endeavor for the road that goes most of the way up the mountain. In 1957, Mt Pilchuck was turned into a ski area. The single chair lift loaded skiers at the parking lot (in the same place it’s located today) and carried them high on the mountain for only a few dollars a day. In 1980, the ski area closed due to lack of favorable snow conditions. You can still see remnants of the mountain’s ski era on the trail today.

In late August 2007 I took a day off work and my husband and I climbed to the lookout. It was our first summit in the Washington Cascades and will always have a special place in our hearts. I remember climbing the metal-runged ladder the last bit to the lookout building and signing the register with the exclamation “1st summit!” following our names. Nowadays I love taking my friends and new hikers to this gem of a hike right in our backyard.

More Info About Mt Pilchuck (with photos of the old ski area):
Fifty Years Ago at Mt. Pilchuck on Sun Breaks Blog
Lost Ski Areas of Washington: Mt Pilchuck

Hikes Featured in this Post:
Mt Pilchuck

Outdoor Life

Hiking History: Tatoosh

In 1943 the Packwood district forest service, located just south of Mt Rainier National Park, assigned their first lady lookout to Tatoosh Ridge.  A Seattle school teacher named Martha Hardy spent that summer in the lookout watching for fires, keeping the lookout fixed up and tidy and befriending a ground squirrel. Back then they couldn’t leave the lookout without permission for the entire summer. She asked to go run a new telephone wire to the pole outside so that she could frolic in the avalanche lilies just a little bit. She wrote a book about her summer as a lookout and doesn’t shy away from sharing her fears, mistakes and loneliness during her time on Tatoosh. In fact, the first fire that she called in ended up being just a waterfall. She was horrified, but she eventually became friendly with the receptionists and the forest service men below and her mistake turned into a cherished and funny memory.

“Without my willing it or knowing how it came about, I was a rock with the rocks, a bee with the bees, a flower with the flowers. My ears drank in the murmur of the wind, my skin the sunshine, my eyes the flutter of a small blue butterfly over a mat of lavender phlox. I was part of all I saw and heard and felt.” – Martha Hardy

So naturally, after reading about this spunky local trailblazer, I had to go follow in her footsteps. I enlisted a hiking buddy and last weekend we headed to Tatoosh. The lookout itself is long gone and the trail is listed as “endangered” in the hiking guide book with little foot traffic these days. We knew the road was washed out before the trailhead too so we were ready for a bit of an adventurous day. We parked at the washout, headed up the last bit of road and found the trail abruptly rising through the forest. We strangely but happily snacked on ripened huckleberries and blueberries along the trail, which is usually a late August luxury, and finally broke out into the high meadows. Radiant fireweed painted the hillsides a deep magenta and we stopped to marvel at the variety of wildflowers on the trail although they were a bit past their prime already.

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Once we were high on the ridge we started looking for a trail heading up to our left and found one after a short time. We made a last push on a fading trail to the summit on a small landing overlooking Tatoosh Lakes below. We were blown away by the views of Mt Rainier. I wandered around looking for any traces of the lookout (their weren’t any) and we celebrated with some gingerbread that I made in honor of Martha Hardy. When she had guests at the lookout she would get so excited that she would cook a massive amount of food for them like spaghetti and meatballs, chicken soup, biscuits and gingerbread. I found an old war time recipe that I thought may be similar to what she made. It was pretty good, but we made a list of ingredients that we thought would make it better like dried fruit, raisins and chunks of ginger. After a long time imagining what it would have been like spending every day right at this spot we got out the map to identify the surrounding peaks. Then we figured out we were on the wrong mountain.

In retrospect it was quite obvious that we were in the wrong place. The first thing I said at the top was, “huh, I wonder why they didn’t put the lookout on that bigger ridge over there,” while pointing to the actual lookout spot. And my trail buddy was wondering why we couldn’t see the smaller lakes we knew were below the lookout site. Also, it didn’t seem like we hiked far enough to be there already. After a closer look at the map we determined we had about another mile and a half to go. We laughed in disbelief and then decided to go for it the rest of the way over to the real lookout site. We hustled along the mostly flat trail while I kept exclaiming, “After all that, I can’t believe we went to the wrong mountain! Ahh!” The tread worsened along the steep ridge and after we turned a corner we found we were still pretty far away and significantly lower than the top of the ridge. We checked our water and energy levels and decided both were pretty low. We reluctantly decided to save it for another time. I was sad that my master plan was thwarted but as we hiked down the steep trail we came up with a plan for an improved return trip. We would come back when the wildflowers are in full bloom and with a new and enhanced version of gingerbread.

After what seemed like forever we were back at the car. On the way home we talked about how beautiful the little-used trail was and we were already looking forward to returning. We now knew what we were getting into and would not make the same mistake again. But like Martha mistaking a waterfall for a wildfire, our misguided effort turned into a great story, one that we will not soon forget. It was still an incredible hike and I will just have to dream about Martha Hardy’s little slice of paradise for another year. Next summer I’ll re-read the book while perfecting my gingerbread recipe in anticipation. And sometimes the anticipation is the best part.

Gingerbread Recipe:

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2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 cup sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup molasses
1 cup boiling water
2 eggs

1. Sift flour, measure; sift again with baking soda, salt and spices.

2. In a separate bowl, combine sugar, vegetable oil and molasses; add boiling water; stir until well mixed. Add dry ingredients gradually, beating well after each addition.

3. Add well-beaten eggs.

4. Bake in well-greased 8 x 8 square pan at 350˚F for 40 minutes or until gingerbread is done.

tatooshTatoosh by Martha Hardy

Martha Hardy’s writing really makes you feel like you are there on the lookout back in 1943. This book is so different from the lookout accounts I featured in the Camp Reads: Lookout Edition. Being a lookout in the 1940’2 was hard work. She was one tough lady to do what she did back then, but she didn’t think that she was different than her male counterparts and just did her best to perform her duties. Her story is funny, real and incredibly entertaining. It now has a special place on my bookshelf.

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