Three Fingers Fire Lookout: History of an Impossible Dream
Schedule
Tue Mar 14 2023 at 07:30 pm
Location
Backcountry Essentials | Bellingham, WA
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Please join us for the final Bellingham Mountaineers Speaker Series event of 2023! Malcolm Bates, author of THE book on the history of Three Fingers fire lookout will be sharing stories, photos, and even rare video footage of the construction, restoration, and the humans who lived there.In September of 1929, Harold Engles and Harry Bedal left a trail crew in the woods near Tupso Pass, put sandwiches in their back pockets and headed out to explore the summit of Three Fingers. But late afternoon, the pair stood just below the summit of the south peak. It had begun snowing and they were loathe to chance the last few feet. Both judged the peak a perfect spot for a fire lookout cabin. Rather than retrace their steps, they dropped off the mountain into the Squire Creek basin, hiked out in the dark, often wading along the creek, returning to Darrington by midnight. The next day Harold and Harry returned to Tupso Pass describing what they had found. Three years later a Forest Service crew had built a trail, some of it blasted out of sheer cliffs, leveled the summit of the south finger, winched materials to the summit and built a cabin. For a decade it was manned by four lookouts before it was shuttered for the final time in 1943.
The cabin has weathered wind, ice, snow and earthquake and remains standing thanks to the efforts of scores of volunteers, who have, over the last 50 years made sure that the cabin, an impossibility made possible, will greet hikers for decades to come.
Malcolm Bates has spent most of his life exploring the Cascades. His love of the range led him to write two books: Three Fingers, the Men, the Mountain and the Lookout; and Cascade Voices, Conversations with Washington Mountaineers. Bates retired from teaching after 47 years in education, the last 28 teaching. He is currently at work on an updated edition of Three Fingers, when he is not out rambling in the Cascades.
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Where is it happening?
Backcountry Essentials, 214 W Holly St,Bellingham,WA,United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
