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More North Cascades trivia


Lowell_Skoog

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Name the ranger who figured out that he could propagate sedge seeds by first freezing them. This inveterate experimenter advanced greenhouse propagation of alpine plants for revegetation of alpine meadows as well as experimenting with composting toilets in the subalpine zone. (He also once painted a white stripe on the side of a bear in the Enchanted Valley, Oly NP.)

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Name the ranger who figured out that he could propagate sedge seeds by first freezing them. This inveterate experimenter advanced greenhouse propagation of alpine plants for revegetation of alpine meadows as well as experimenting with composting toilets in the subalpine zone. (He also once painted a white stripe on the side of a bear in the Enchanted Valley, Oly NP.)

 

Bill Lester, right?

 

What's the story with the bear? Some kind of no-pass zone? wink.gif

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Geordie is disqualified from answering any of my questions. Bill Lester was directed to paint the bear by his supervisor. I think the bear was later shot. He was a backcountry ranger in the Enchanted Valley, and also served as the Lake Ozette Ranger before he moved to NOCA. The cabin is just above the road before one passes through the gate below the hairpin. A toilet vault is a fiberglass box with a hole in the top. It sits inside a wooden toilet box and collects waste until it is full, then it is dumped into a compost bin. Sometimes the vault is too full, and then it is difficult to dump (think splatters...), which once led John Dittli to have to shave his mustache off. The Sulphide toilet is probably higher than the Sahale Glacier box. Fact-checkers?

That leaves the other name of the Hidden Lake Lookout?

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  • 4 weeks later...
OK. No one on the other name for Hidden Lake Lookout?

 

I think - "Lois Webster Memorial Shelter".

Am I right?

Bingo. bigdrink.gif
I am reading through "Poets on the Peaks" right now and apparently another whimsical name for this lookout was the "Hidden Lake Hilton" apparently because of its "modest" accomodations. This was mentioned in Chapter 1, page 4. Perhaps the author Suiter will elaborate more later.
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  • 3 weeks later...

I *think* it said in the beginning of the book that Gary Snyder did peyote. So the poetry and the peyote went hand-in-hand with him. Snyder had a strong interest in Native American culture.

The book has been pretty good so far. A lot of good North Cascades history (place names and characters).

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Snyder was just in Bellingham recently for a reading. I missed him, but received an autographed copy of his new book for Christmas. He's a nice fellow. I e-mailed him a question about one of his poems when I was teaching a unit on Poets of the North Cascades to my high school students. Snyder answered the question, then recommended me to Philip Whalen's recently published (or re-published?) poetry. One thing I really like about Snyder was that he wasn't just an intellectual ...rather he liked hard physical work ...trail maintenance and such. He was described as quite capable in that way. I like Snyder's writing about being in the outdoors. The Cold Mountain-style descriptive stuff. William Stafford is another poet that wrote about the North Cascades. He wrote a series of poems for the Forest Service on commission: The Methow River poems. They're level 3 stuff: obtuse and provocative. Kinda scary...

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