H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest Site Visit Group Oral History Interview - Part 2, September 22, 1997

(Road noise on main highway up to dam above Blue River, in route to H.J. Andrews 00:01:00H.Q. site.)

Max Geier: Did they have peacocks up here when you were here? Last time I came up this road, there were peacocks running up and down it.

Roy Silen: Is that right? No. One time late in the fall, we were coming out 00:02:00after working in here [the HJA] all day, and there was a slide that had taken 50 feet or more of the road right out, and there's where I left my pickup, the panel truck, for the rest of the winter.

Ted Dyrness: No kidding.

Silen: Yeah. I unhooked the battery, went back in there the next spring, and I'll be danged, hooked up the battery, and it started right up.

Geier: Looks like the water is getting down kind of low [Reservoir behind Blue 00:03:00River Dam].

Al Levno: It's getting really high for this time of year.

Silen: Don't they darn near empty this when they get near to winter?

Levno: Yeah, they do. By the beginning of winter, there won't be any water in here. Another slide was here, where the lower part of the road slid into the reservoir.

Dyrness: Is this about the place where that camp was?

Levno: No, it's back. [In the forest]

Dyrness: It's that way? Well Lucky Boy Cabin was --

Levno: -- Right by Lucky Boy swimming hole. I'm surprised you don't remember that. (Laughter)

Dyrness: Because I ruined my knee there, I should remember.

Levno: They continued for a long time after that, and they had a swimming pool 00:05:00there, the only one in Blue River. Closed it up.

Silen: (On access road to HJA HQ site). I'm lost [Likely referring to how much 00:06:00things changed].

[Conversation at the HJA HQ site after arrival as group looked around.]

Silen: That stand [pointing to ridge NW of headquarters site], when I started working in it, was a 400-year-old stand, but it looked almost young. The trees 00:07:00all had intact tops. Now, lots of them are snag tops. Happened in 50 years.

Geier: Hmm. Wonder what would cause that?

Silen: Well, trees die from the top down. They're on their way out. This is the last century that they're going to live. Most of them broke off. There was a lot of mortality already, when you stop to think, there were 1,000 trees per acre at one time.

Geier: Yeah.

Silen: Now, it's down to 20 trees per acre.

Geier: You said this was the first clear-cut here?

Silen: This was one of the early clear-cuts. No, I don't think it was [first timber sale/clear-cut]. This was not the earliest, because we worked on that side of the drainage for the first sale. To get at this clear-cut, they put a log bridge across the river at this point, for just this unit alone.

Geier: Oh, really? Well, it's growing pretty good. Is that natural reseeding?

Silen: I don't remember. I remember that I set them all up for natural reseeding, and the district came along and planted them. [Combination of natural seeding and planting used at HJA over time.]

Geier: Okay.

Dyrness: [Discussion on who installed first flumes for watershed studies] Was it Marvin Hoover?

Silen: I can't remember Marvin Hoover being involved. No.

Dyrness: See, he was doing it.

Silen: Actually, I had the contract, let the contract for work, and he brought equipment down and put it in. [Flume and basic infrastructure, planned and built, early 1950s.]

Dyrness: Somebody knew what they were doing, because it would have been bad to 00:09:00put in weirs, as you needed flumes to pass the debris that would come down some of these courses.

Levno: This is the only place that this exists.

Dyrness: What's that?

Levno: Here's a map with the new unit numbers, all the L101, but then, on this map, this sheet that we drew, all the unit numbers. But the old timers never used those unit numbers.

Geier: When were those unit numbers put on there?

Levno: Let's see, they changed a couple of times. Was it in [mumbling dates]? I'll leave that with you guys.

[Unintelligible/construction noise-work on new HJA conference center behind the 00:10:00HQ site]

Silen: By '55, I don't know what we did, but we had got [pause/unintelligible 00:12:0000:11:00discussion with several people talking on different topics] the sale layouts done.

Jerry Franklin (Just arriving by car from the Eugene airport). Roy, it's been years! Christ Almighty! (Unintelligible comments by Tarrant, laughter) That's 00:13:00right! (Background noise, unintelligible, discussion about logistics, where Fred 00:14:00Swanson and Mike Kerrick will later join the group, several people talking, discussion about the weather, which was sunny.)

Levno: Hey! Jerry made it.

Franklin: Yeah, I'm right on schedule. When I say I'm gonna be there -

Levno: -- You're gonna be there. Great.

Dyrness: Have you seen Art? Should we take off?

Levno: I haven't seen him.

Franklin: That was the area where Roy Johnson did a study of sampling methods, wasn't it?

Silen: Yeah, the road sort of stopped there, and we walked. They built the access road up to where the - (unintelligible conversation about roads)

Franklin: That was the piece of road that was built by the federal highway funds?

Silen: That was the access roads program, for building roads financed separately from the Forest Service.

Franklin: Yeah, and that was about, what, 3/8 of a mile to that?

Silen: Well, they had a plan to build a road to Watershed 3?

Franklin: All the way? Oh, that would have been lovely. (Laughter)

Dyrness: No kidding.

Silen: I was involved with watershed management at the time, and I could see that all you'd do is (loud noises, unintelligible voices) and I came back into their location just above the bridge (unintelligible, several people talking at 00:17:00once as group prepares to leave in the van).

Franklin: [Discussing his pen, which he got as a wedding present from his wife, in exchange for a flute that he gave her]. We already had our rings, so she bought me a pen, and I bought her a flute. She has a $6,000 flute, but she didn't like to take it with her out in the woods, so I got ahold of a musician, and I had him explain what kinds of flutes you could get, and I got her one that 00:18:00was okay for taking -- [Into the outdoors].

Bob Tarrant: '55, that would have been about when I -

Dyrness: Yeah, because that's what my recollection about where we were. And I just wondered whether my recollection was right.

Tarrant: Did you live down here?

Dyrness: In the summertime. And what we did was live in this trailer above the ranger station. But most often, it was just Jack [Rothacher], Al [Levno], Dick Fredriksen, and I, and every once in a while, guys like Jerry would come 00:19:00through. Then, at the beginning of the IBP, it all changed, and that's when Jerry shifted a lot of his emphasis. We've got it pretty good now. But back then, we also came down to the Andrews in winter. When we wanted to get away to write, we'd come up here, and stay in the trailer and write.

Silen: Do you [Geier] have any material on Andrews [Horace J. Andrews] himself?

Geier: I've got some material on him.

Silen: I can't help thinking that he was special, and what was so important at the time was that he was tabbed to be Chief of the Forest Service. [Chief Forester-Region 6, up for top USFS position.]

Geier: Yeah, you mentioned that.

Silen: That was why he was in Washington, D.C. [auto accident while looking for home in D.C.].

Dyrness: I remember when we were doing that, one of these vegetation plots on 00:20:00Watershed 10.

Silen: Well, he [Horace J. Andrews, Region 6 Chief Forester, 1943-51] was coming into the Forest Service at the time when the big shift was underway - from protection, well, not protection, to timber management, and he was involved in that.

Dyrness: What we [work crews in 1950s] did was get up there before daylight, and get up in the stands here, just as it was getting light, and then we'd work until about 1, come back to the trailer, and of course, by then, the trailer was hot, when we got back. (Laughter)

Silen: There was this shift from where the Northwest was just another part of the National Forest system, to where the Northwest was producing the biggest cut. Predominantly, the money that was coming into the U.S. Treasury was from the Northwest forests. And up to World War II, there hadn't been any appreciable cutting on National Forest lands, because industry didn't want it, for one thing. And so that changed, and he [H.J. Andrews] was a very fine man. He really 00:21:00had a lot of leadership capability. He was picked to lead Region 6 over other parts of the country, and it [the Pacific Northwest] was to be important, and they wanted somebody who would be familiar with it.

Dyrness: Okay. Then we'd have fires here, too.

Levno: He [Art] said he's ready to leave, so go ahead and get ready to go. (Noise of people preparing to leave in van to go up to Carpenter Lookout, 00:22:00unintelligible conversations)

Franklin: [Mostly unintelligible conversation while climbing into van, Franklin 00:23:00seems to be asked by Dyrness about his career start and path.]

Franklin: To start with, my real major interest was in management. I'm on the advisory body.

Geier: [Draws Franklin's attention to document explaining the HJA history study, 00:24:00conversation unintelligible, background conversations, noise of people climbing 00:25:00into the van, getting settled.]

Silen: [Discussing merits of aging] What I'm looking forward to, is they say 00:27:00that when you pass 80, you can get away with anything. It doesn't matter what you do when you're 80. (Laughter)

Franklin: That's incredible. You just don't look that at all. Well, I was thinking just this summer about you relating the solar eclipse, when you went in there on..... (Muffled conversation)

Geier: Here it is Roy. It was Carl Berntsen [author of 1959 Guide to the H.J. Andrews EF].

Levno: Yep, this is it [in HJA guidebook]. The entrance to the Andrews sign is right here, and I think there's a plaque over here.

Tarrant: A memorial?

Levno: Yeah.

Franklin: It was dedicated in 1956.

Dyrness: '57.

Franklin:'57. Fall of '57.

Levno: We have some pictures of the old stand that was here. Oh, it was a beautiful stand.

Franklin: A great stand.

Silen: I used to get European visitors, I would give them a 100-foot tape and an abney, and ask, "How high do you think that tree is?" They'd say, "50 meters." (Laughter) And so, I'd go back a hundred feet, and they'd take the abney [surveying instrument] back and it would go run off the scale, and I'd say, "go back another hundred feet," and we'd go back another 100 feet, and it would go off the scale. It was the third hundred feet before they would be able to measure it.

Tarrant: Flabbergasted, huh?

Silen: Oh, yeah. And it was impressive.

Levno: This is Jerry's paved road.

Franklin: Yeah, I sure arm-wrestled with them. I wanted this thing paved all the way to the concrete bridge [on Lookout Creek].

Levno: Yeah.

Dyrness: Who paved it?

Franklin: That was the ranger before the "experimental ranger." [Steve Eubanks-"exp. Ranger"]

Levno: Oh, [unintelligible name - likely Jim Caswell]?

Franklin: No. No. I don't remember the ranger's name.

Levno: Well, it [Lookout Creek] ate out here [bridge during '64 flood]. It just about came in here.

Franklin: There'd be real holes in here.

Levno: I tried to figure out where this ribbon of mud was coming from. There was 00:30:00one big ribbon coming out of here, and the biggest ribbon was coming out of Watershed 3. No, this is Watershed 2. This washed out in '64, the sediment basin, and then in '96, we built this wall of boulders here to prevent damage to the reference area on the bench above. Now, there's the Watershed 3 canyon, and the flume up there, and we're going to put a new sediment basin right in here.

Franklin: Is that the original flume?

Levno: Yeah.

Dyrness: That's been dug up twice.

Levno: And this new sediment basin will be on top of the two others. The first 00:31:00one, Jerry, did you build that first one?

Franklin: The first what?

Levno: Sediment basin.

Franklin: No, but I was involved in the first re-measurement of it.

Dyrness: Now what about the sediment basin in [Muffled - likely Watershed 1 or 2]?

Levno: Yeah, well that's down, too. (Laughs) Another sediment basin on top of it, and we're going to put one right in there where the orange ribbon is.

Franklin: Do you ever get an estimate as to the amount of material, the tonnage of rock, that comes down?

Levno: Well, we made an estimate of the canyon, but never used it. It all went down into the creek [Lookout Creek]. I think we had 500 thousand cubic yards trapped in this sediment basin. We've got a problem up here now, the Watershed 3 stream has changed directions, and it makes a sharp turn just before the flume. It didn't used to be that way. And then there's a slide that broke loose above it, so I don't know if we'll be able to fix that or not. The thought was, if we 00:32:00have to take it out, we'll put it farther over here where this gravel road is, and let it shoot straighter into it.

Dyrness: Yeah, yeah.

Levno: But, it's still there!! (Laughter) Anytime anybody wants to stop [the van], let me know.

Franklin: I think that looks great. If you haven't thought about it already, Dick Waring. [While handing back copy of book prospectus to historian/interviewer Geier.]

Geier: Yeah. In fact, Ted and I were just talking about that the other day, and he mentioned that.

Franklin: Especially for the IBP days, and also to talk to him about why people left the group.

Dyrness: Yeah. He would be a good example of that.

Franklin: So, I'm not sure it would be a good example, it would probably be a unique example. (Laughter). But, yeah.

Dyrness: But, you know, I - (unintelligible exchange with Franklin due to 00:33:00traffic noise)

Geier: Why did he leave?

Franklin: Why did he leave? Oh, I think because the program was not congruent with his own direction, career-wise, and experimental interests.

Geier: Oh, I see. So, the long-term aspect wouldn't be that attractive to him?

Franklin: No, no. Not at all. In fact, his attitude was that, if you're going to do research, it should be experimental research. Hey, okay, here we come to the 00:34:00edge of 1-B.

Levno: This is 1-B?

Franklin: This is the oldest cut on the Andrews. [1950]

Dyrness: This is the oldest one? Well, I'll be.

Silen: Then, after it was already well-stocked, the district came in and planted it. (Laughter)

Franklin: Well, they just had to make sure, Roy! (Laughter)

Levno: Yeah, what went on in here? Wasn't there a fertilizer study?

Franklin: There was a little landing over here that Jack Rothacher and I put in 00:35:00a little fertilizer pellet study.

Silen: Yeah, and then Morris had a plot in 1-C. Bill Morris had a plot for burning, and he had a lot of regeneration info on these studies.

Dyrness: Yeah, Bob, I think that's where we went in in '55. Up through there.

Tarrant: Okay.

Dyrness: Yeah. That field trip.

Tarrant: That's when we came back from California and came up this way?

Dyrness: Yeah. Yeah.

Tarrant: With the guy from South Africa.

Dyrness: Yeah. What was his name?

Tarrant: I don't remember it. I think he rode with us for several days. He looked at our dog and he said, "You're fortunate." Where he came from, he can't 00:36:00keep a dog, and he said the [wild animals] always get it.

Franklin: This is the culvert that washed out in the first flood. [1964 Christmas flood]

Levno: And out in '96, also.

Silen: And out in '53 or '54.

Dyrness: Oh, is that right?

Silen: Yeah, this went out in '54.

Dyrness: Well, I don't think so.

Franklin: It went out a couple of other times.

Silen: I didn't know much about these sort of things, and Savelich [Mike-logger] 00:37:00talked me into putting in 2- and 3-foot culverts. Maybe they were 4-foot culverts. Anyway, he put them in side-by-side, and didn't pack the material very well in-between them, and they didn't hold. (Laughter) We had culverts in the bottom of Lookout Creek. I don't know, maybe they're still down there.

Franklin: We're coming up on one of my favorite trees right here. I always wanted to bring the road in at least this far, so we could have a little trail down in there. Hey, Roy! Remember Corrugated Metal and Copper Pipe? CMCP? 00:38:00Christine [McPhay]?

Silen: I remember Christine McPhay. (Laughter)

Franklin: Remember the joking about the CMCP and all those [unintelligible/road noise]. She always used those initials, didn't she?

Silen: Oh, yeah.

Geier: Did you get help from the district on the slash burning?

Silen: Oh, they did it.

Geier: Oh.

Silen: I did help, but they did it. (Unintelligible/road noise)

Levno: In the '64 flood, there was a river running around that side, and the river on this side, so the bridge was right here in the middle of the river. (Laughter). They did a whole bunch of cat work to try to get that channel straight, and now, you see the channel has moved over to the side.

Silen: There was a hole in this stream down here that the [U.S.] Fish and Wildlife people sampled, and that's the one that had 1,100 fish in it.

Dyrness: Is that right?

Silen: One hole. We were helping them sample. You would clip a fin when you'd get a fish and throw it back in, and the next time through, you'd look and see if it had a clipped fin, and if it did, you didn't count it, you'd only count the ones [without clipped fins]. That's the way we got a very accurate figure.

Levno: Is that where those pictures were taken, of the seining?

Silen: And they found 400 in a deep hole in Mack Creek, over 400. I fished in 00:41:00here before people came up.

Tarrant: Stopped in there a couple of times in the evening. We'd go out down there with a fly rod, we'd move it back and forth and they'd strike.

Silen: Yeah that's right.

Tarrant: Caught a nice one about a foot long, and an otter had taken a bite out of it?

Silen: Yeah.

Tarrant: The next day, we caught him again. Bullhead. [Road noise obscures 00:42:00conversation about Steve Eubanks]

[Muffled conversation, likely about HJA, areas cut or not cut, regenerated, etc.)

Franklin: The thought was that we didn't have hardly any units on the Andrews that hadn't been burned. There were only two. We thought, we'd better regenerate a couple units naturally, we better do it now, before the pollen cloud from nearby plantation trees becomes overwhelming.

Silen: There were all of these strips we were cutting that were naturally regenerating.

Franklin: Well. In that case, they ended up planting them.

Dyrness: Yeah, what did you find, 500 or so trees per acre already?

Franklin: I remember, Bob Ruth had had the Boy Scouts plant, I think, one of these, maybe two, of these strips.

Silen: Who?

Franklin: Bob Ruth.

Silen: Bob Ruth had nothing to do with that.

Franklin: Well, he did for a little while. Basically, when you went back to school, he was in charge of a lot of research. He and Carl [Bernsten] were. (Unintelligible/road noise) I don't know, but I think they were looking for someplace to build [roads?] (Unintelligible/road noise). They didn't plant the east-west strips because there were so dang many trees.

Silen: And I was kind of surprised at the regeneration numbers, because I thought--(unintelligible)

Franklin: I think the only large unit on the Andrews that never was planted was 5-B, which was the big unit in that cutting. And it's still understocked by today's standards. [Road noise obscures conversation with Silen concerning the 00:48:0000:47:0000:46:0000:45:00original layout of the strip-cutting units.]

Silen: [Discussing original road location for main road van was on.] Mike 00:49:00Savelich decided he had found a better way [on that portion of road], so when the other road was built, and the road came up the other side, he put up a temporary bridge in that unit, that went up from that point to that last unit, and then, when Savelich was done logging, he put in this last section [of main road].

Franklin: Well, we used that route for many, many years.

Dyrness: Yeah, that was the shortest way home.

Silen: It turned out that was a bit of a problem. But I've got to tell you this story. When we first started building roads, a lot of people tried to figure out a way to get around it [difficult task], but the last thing, though, was that we were on the trail with [unintelligible], he said, "This road here, if it were done a little differently, we'd save a little money," and Mike says, "Damn you, every time we change Roy's location, we lose money."

Franklin: This is also the one where Jack used the pictures that we had how much debris down the drainage.

Dyrness: Oh, is that right?

Franklin: That was right out of this fill that washed out.

Levno: Oh, yeah.

Franklin: Memorable curve for me over there. I was coming down from Carpenter one night about 6 o'clock, and I was thinking, there was nobody on the road, I came around this curve, I was hanging to the inside, and here was this log truck coming along. (Laughing) Ohhh! We thought fast the same way; passed each other on the right. It's just a damn good thing neither of us tried to correct ourselves, man. The guy who was sitting on my passenger side, just really, wow! (Laughter/road noise/unintelligible conversation.)

Silen: [Road noise obscures Roy's recollection of an accident down near Blue River dam.]

Franklin: Here's your 50-foot-wide east-west strip coming up here, Roy.

Levno: What's the story of this unit here? I never?

Silen: Shelterwood. Yeah. Let's see, is this the shade-tree, shelterwood area?

Franklin: No, we cut those two a long time ago, Roy. We figured we needed to have a couple of samples there for people to look at. Two of these strips have been cut, so -- [road noise obscures conversation with Silen about natural regeneration] Here's the next strip. Yeah, a little bit of snow damage there.

Levno: Yeah, we had a lot of snow damage. Year before last.

Franklin: Yeah. [Road noise obscures conversation with Silen] We used to talk about the [fire?] in '58. There's an age range in it, but fundamentally, that's it. Sometime around the late 1400s, 1490, somewhere in there. (Road noise obscures Silen's comments). I've been watching the Andrews as I fly back-and-forth between Seattle and Sacramento, and it's really greened up a lot.

Levno: Yup.

Franklin: And the units are beginning to merge into the matrix [of the forest], you can really see that. Roy, here's your quarter-acre right here on the left. And the half-acre and the one acre is just back up a little spur in there. I was going to say -

Silen: -- They're too darn dense.

Franklin: Well, they're super-dense, yeah. The one-acre unit was right off here, you told me not to bother with it, because a tree had fallen across it.

Silen: Has it been very windy?

Levno: (Conversation obscured by road noise)

Silen: We were very conscious of the possibilities of movement. Yeah. We had quite a bit of help from the engineers. [USFS Region 6]

Franklin: What would you do differently, Roy?

Silen: About what? You mean the Andrews?

Franklin: Well, in terms of road layout, sale layout, harvest units?

Silen: I don't know, but probably, I don't know if it was ever a strong possibility, but one of the Harvard people, he says he looked over this Lookout Creek drainage, and thought, what they should have done is to have come through the saddle above the three small watersheds drainage, put a road at about that elevation, right around the drainage.

Franklin: Long-line? (Laughing)

Silen: Long-line the whole thing out. That's right. (Laughter)

Franklin: That sounds like - [Unintelligible name]

Silen: Yeah, it is.

Levno: (Stopped van-looking out.) This, we've determined, is the median-elevation slope aspect to the Andrews. So, back up this road just a little ways, we built a hellacious big weather station, and it telemeters data, wind speed, rainfall, and we actually have a rain gauge that will melt the snow when it hits it. Telemeter that stuff back to the ranger station, or to the headquarters site, and then we can pick it up in Corvallis, within the hour. And, we come up this road every three weeks now with a snow-cat to service it. A little cabin up there. Quite an impressive site.

Franklin: This is the seed-tree unit, right here and on the left.

Levno: Is that right?

Franklin: Cut the seed trees right here. I'm really sorry we didn't leave those trees, but that's not what we thought about in those days.

Levno: From a regeneration standpoint -- [Unintelligible/road noise]

Franklin: Well didn't manage that. They really screwed it up. (Laughs)

Silen: Well, I had to move up to [Unintelligible/road noise/how to fall trees correctly].

Franklin: In the end, this timber sale administrator let them take 'em out, helter-skelter, with a 'cat.

Silen: I know the intention was that they'd take them out with a 'cat, but it would be one line.

[Tape Break]

Franklin: Well, Roy, this is the one that goes to the top of 5-B. There went your road, right there. Your road went over the top of 5-B. Now, you're on the Carpenter Saddle road. You undoubtedly laid out the location for this one, too. [Talking while looking at road layout/direction].

Silen: I think so.

Franklin: Never saw it built.

Levno: It would take a good part of the day, just to hike in here.

Silen: Yeah, we wouldn't hike in, in a day. We would hike in on Monday and stay for a week. Yeah. [Road noise obscures Silen's discussion of pack trip] One time Carl Bernsten and I, first year he was here, we camped out just down the stream from Mack Creek. We were sleeping in our sleeping bags, and we could hear this storm moving up the valley, thunder and lightning flashes, and I remember counting, it was 40 or something [seconds], to begin with, and then it was 30, and 20, and 15, and 10, and finally, it was just flashing right around us, and trees started to fall, and one of them dropped, oh, about 100 feet from us, and you can imagine the ruckus of one of these bringing down everything that was around it, and I wondered whether we were going to come out of that. I remember, Carl Bernsten, immediately afterwards, he had to urinate. (Laughter)

Franklin: That was this trail that went up this mid-rib [ridge]. I remember that trail, there was one along the outside, but there was one on the divide down Lookout Creek. And there was a trail that followed the divide, followed this mid-rib up the divide.

Silen: It was a trail that I had no record of. Did you see where the survey people had come across it and marked it?

Franklin: Nooo! I do remember that there was a sign up on the ridge that said ["groundhopper's"] sheep camp. One of the old, enamel signs.

Silen: [Road noise obscures discussion about old Indian artifacts, obsidian arrowheads].

Franklin: They could have been digging camas, too, couldn't they? I remember, but do you remember, Ted, whether camas is up here?

Dyrness: I don't remember if it is.

Franklin: I know camas is.

Levno: I know those sheepherders were running sheep up here.

Franklin: This is where some of the oldest trees on the Andrews were. They were down in that unit, about 800, 900-year-old, right down in there, 800 to 900-year-old trees. [Near Carpenter Saddle]. I've forgotten the number of the unit, but it should be right about in here. [Discussion about a high elevation study unit.] This unit is a pretty good example of what happened with these high units. They never regenerated. The north-slope regenerated, but that south-slope was cut 33 to 35 years ago. Anyway, maybe 5, 6 high-elevation clear-cuts, are up here on the Andrews.

[Van arrives at Carpenter Saddle. People getting lunch out of van, preparing for hike up to Carpenter Mountain Lookout from Carpenter Saddle. Discussion of photography efforts by Al Levno. Group poses for photo. Overlapping conversations. Art McKee arrives in separate car. Group begins hiking up the trail to Carpenter Lookout. Trail noises obscure background conversations on tape for about 30 minutes, until the group stops at the Lookout]

(Group arrives at the Lookout Tower on top of Carpenter Mountain)

Geier: I brought the panorama pictures from 1935. [Taken from Carpenter lookout locale.]

Franklin: You did?

Geier: I've got the one from 1993 also.

Franklin: Oh, man.

Geier: Maybe we should go inside [the lookout tower].

Franklin: Yup, here we go. Alright. Does it always look like this?

Lookout: Have you all been up here before? This is probably the prettiest day of the summer.

Franklin: Even better than yesterday?

Lookout: Oh, I don't know, that was a toss-up. Yesterday was awfully good too.

Franklin: Yeah, you can see how clear [Mt] Hood is, looking at it here. Like a diamond. And you can see [Mt.] Shasta to the south, depending on the visibility.

Lookout: Yeah.

Tarrant: That is Mary's Peak?

Lookout: Yes, it is. And that's Wolf Rock [foreground to north]. I guess you knew that.

Dyrness: Yep. (Unintelligible conversation)

Lookout: And that's Tidbits [Mountain] that you're looking at [to west].

Dyrness: Not much chance of fire now, is there?

Lookout: [Discusses conditions contributing to fire concerns during hunting season.]

Silen: [Background conversation becoming audible - story about early days]...and we were supposed to meet at that slide, way down in the basin, about 5:30. [Co-worker Hank Gratkowski did not show up on time] You can imagine what I was going through, thinking that Hank probably was injured. Now, I retraced what I thought would be his route quite a ways back, and then came back, because I didn't know quite what happened. I finally decided about quarter to seven, that the best thing I could do would be to get help. I climbed out of that basin and up the ridge, and I had just about gone down the trail, and I thought, well, I'll give one more yell, and then, you know, I heard him [Hank], way down in the bottom.

Dyrness: Oh, my gosh!

Silen: What happened was, the first picture point was on the spur ridge from the Lookout, from Lookout Mountain. I mean, I put him on the wrong ridge.

Dyrness: Oh-oh. (Laughs)

Silen: He couldn't find the first picture point. He tried and tried to figure it out, and finally decided that it was another place, and figured that this put him almost 2 hours behind. When you walked off the trail, you couldn't see [anything].

Franklin: How'd you do it?

Silen: Well, you could see it, you could feel a little-- [Tape Ends]