Mountain Meals

As we turn our thoughts and efforts to holiday meals and time with friends and family, I reminisce about those other holidays, the ones we share in the mountains. After all, any time in the mountains is a holiday, and it’s always better with friends and hearty camp cuisine. In the opening photo, Peter Hickner sautés marinated steak as Mark Valdez anticipates the meal ahead, transfixed by the intoxicating fragrance of sizzling juices and tender garlic. The magnificent granite spires of Dragontail and Colchuck Peaks watch over us.

On that day, five of us from our old tribe gathered at Colchuck Lake on September 25^th, ready for a new moon and a chance to see the Galactic Core of the Milky Way arc over Colchuck Peak. And in our plans for our five-night rendezvous, each of us was to be a master chef for a day as we vied to create our vision of mouth-watering outdoor cuisine on our designated night. We were inspired on this trip to celebrate and please each other.

And on our first night, we savored Peter’s tasty dinner, which I subsequently named ‘Marinated Steak Argentina.’ His savory creation was served with sauteed bell pepper and green beans atop a toasted tortilla, and of course, accompanied with a well-balanced Malbec, and later, the smooth bourbon of Basil Hayden. A fine opening meal indeed.

The next evening, Mark made his signature ramen and smoked turkey sausage stew with celery and carrots. It was a meal he introduced me to on another Milky Way galaxy quest, just two months earlier as we bivouacked among the boulders at Granite Mountain Lookout. So tasty at dinner, we had it again for breakfast as the sun crept over the eastern ridges.

We did not dine on freeze-dried meals. Those recent scratch-made meals reminded me of those we made so many years ago when we ventured into distant mountain ranges for days on end. Seattle’s Pike Place Market served as our meal provisions commissary for the specialty items in our larder. While we could get various powdered drinks, Kool-Aid type fruit drinks, iced tea, and Milkman just about anywhere, the same could not be said of the food items that provided the substantial fuel and sustenance for lengthy mountain journeys. 

Fortunately, my early mountain companions were well experienced at this kind of sourcing, procuring links of landjeager sausage (a German-style smoked semi-dried pork & beef sausage) and beef jerky at Don and Joe’s Meats. And from the next stall over at Pike Place Fish (where they are famous for throwing large salmon from the iced displays to the sales counter) lengthy strips of amazing smoked salmon jerky. With ingredients like these, we did not lack flavor.

The various dried fruits and fruit leathers all came from other small specialty shops in the market. We also packed dried ramen noodles, tomato paste, tins of sardines, and smoked mussels in olive oil, instant oatmeal, Wasa Brod crackers, Sailor Crackers, a fruit, nut, and candy gorp. The trick was to keep meals and snacks simple, nutritious, and reasonably interesting for however long we traveled, sometimes up to two weeks.

Meal making with our little blowtorches, the MSR Model 9 gas-fired stoves, could be a sometimes-frustrating experience, but we made do, even finding ways to fry up fillets of mountain lake trout, breaded with cornmeal and herbs. And when the newer WhisperLite model arrived, with a burner more suited to simmering, everything got even easier.

The mountains make each meal unique, the time of day, the expansive, starkly beautiful venues, the ever-changing weather, and treasured hardy companions. The unifying theme is that we’re all so glad to be together, sharing a meal in those special places, dining on the rocks in the halls of granite mountain kings.

The Lookouts

For me, there is something completely magical about visiting a historic fire lookout. Although some are not too difficult to hike to, many require driving up terrible forest roads and hiking arduous miles up, up, and up to reach their summit perches. The effort however is all worth it because the destinations deliver stunning views that will take your breath away. And being there is a reminder of a more romantic past that represents an era before modern technology when solitary human beings dutifully scanned for signs of developing wildfires from austere glass-walled cabins perched on rocky mountain summits throughout the Pacific Northwest. 

“It was a great life. You woke up to the greatest views of all. You breathed the freshest air in the world. You ate and did the chores when the spirit moved you. You had the whole mountain to call your own. And the government even paid you to be there! That’s how it was back in the 1930s when forestry agencies were working frantically to put a firewatcher on every mountaintop. Eight thousand men and women in the U.S. would spend each summer as an official government lookout during the three decades that followed.” Ray Kresek, Heaven’s Gate Lookout, Idaho.

In the early 1900s private fire watchers began to oversee the expansive white pine forests of Idaho. The arrival of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 and subsequent historic wildfires launched the building and staffing government lookouts to protect America’s half-billion acres of national forests.

Early lookouts were non-standard, freelanced affairs that ranged from small tents to spacious log cabins.  By 1915 the U.S. Forest Service had established standards for cabin construction with a 12’ x 12’ D-6 ‘cupola design’ with a glassed-in second story observatory. Nearly 200 were constructed in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. By 1929 lookout designs had evolved to the L-4 model, a 14’ x 14’ frame cabin with gable shingle or hip roof and heavy shutters which were opened above the perimeter windows to provide shade in the summer. The original L-4 cost was $500 from Spokane, WA, or Portland, OR. This cabin was produced in kits for hauling by mule trains to their rugged mountain sites where they could be assembled on rock or cinder block foundations or timber towers. Other versions followed but the L-4 was the most ubiquitous with over 1,000 put into service. If you hike to many historic fire lookouts, chances are high that you visit an L-4.

“At the zenith of the lookout era, there were more than 8,000 across America. Montana had 639. In Washington, there were 656. Oregon had 849. Only in Idaho, there were more, with a whopping 989 plus a hundred more “patrol” points visited each day! Only a few hundred are still manned, a few dozen by volunteers. The government rents some to would-be fire watchers to man a summit for a day or week. Others are even being restored by individuals at their own expense under special agreements with various agencies. Some of the cabins have become national historic monuments. Hundreds have survived only in tattered old photographs.” Ray Kresek, Historic Lookout Project, Spokane, WA.

According to recent records, only 92 of the 656 lookouts in Washington State survive today, and there will likely be fewer in the future. Fire lookout hikes are among my favorites and I plan to visit as many as I can as weather and time permits.

I have taken 45 virtual reality spherical panoramic photos of and near several historic fire lookouts in Washington State. All have amazing vistas. Here are five examples that can be viewed from 360cities.net. Be sure to click the full-screen icon as you roll over the upper right of the photo for best viewing. To view them all, search at 360.Cities.net with: Fire Lookouts, Washington, Bill Edwards.

Park Butte Lookout: https://www.360cities.net/image/park-butte-lookout-north-cascades-wa-state-usa-2

Hidden Lake Lookout: https://www.360cities.net/image/hidden-lake-lookout-north-cascades-national-park-wa-state

Tolmie Peak Lookout: https://www.360cities.net/image/tolmie-peak-summit-mt-rainier-national-park-washington-state

Granite Mountain Lookout: https://www.360cities.net/image/granite-mountain-fire-lookout-cabin-alpine-lakes-wilderness-washington-state

Goat Peak Lookout: https://www.360cities.net/image/goat-peak-lookout-okanogan-wenatchee-national-forest-wa-state