For those of you interested, a new historical document has been uploaded. It is an article written by a former lookout staffer, Bud Unruh - "The way it was - as I remember it". Kind of an interesting article I think. It also has an interesting note on where the Bull of the Woods lookout got its water. I'm curious if that source still exists.....
The document is on the historical items page if you are interested in reading it.
Thanks for posting this, very interesting. Now they just have to open the area up so we can go find that water and a tunnel up there?
Bill
The article was sent to me. I love seeing stuff like this and if anyone else has things like this, we would be glad to post them.
I'm kind of getting the feeling that BOTW won't be open for a while.....I hope I'm wrong. It is kind of weird since they had all this extra help from the stimulus money you would think it would be a lot easier to go in and fix the trails and snags instead of doing some of the scheduled trail maintenance....But then again, I think in simple terms.
Hopefully it will open before the snow comes, which isn't going to be too long. I just saw a report that Mt Hood was going to get its first snow of the season at about 6000'. It probably won't last too long, but winter is coming quickly.
The earliest I've been cross-country skiing was at Summit on Mount Hood (under 4000') on October 29th several years back. Then there was no snow for more than a month.
Also have been hiking at Mount Hood Meadows in January with nary a scrap of snow in sight.
So it goes to show you just never can tell.
The damaged trails and leaning snags in Bull won't be fixed with stimulus money. Thats already been allocated and much of it spent on other projects. It will be fixed with rehab money that follows the fire. Fixing damaged resources is part of the costs of forest fire fighting, and is well funded, unlike much else like routine maintenance of trails and forest roads. One would think they could at least open up the undamaged areas of the wilderness, like the lookout trail and Pansy Basin. I think they assume once people get close to the fire area they will go go a little further and take a look. So they arn't letting people get close enough to be tempted.
Glad folks are enjoying the article. Bud Unruh was inspired to write down these memories from seeing some publicity for a hike to Bull of the Woods lookout that I was going to lead for the Clackamas River Basin Council. I am going to ask staff at the Basin Council if they can find his email to send him a thank you note.