Fire Lookout Friday

One of Washington's most remote fire lookouts has a blowdowns-per-mile problem

Monument 83 sits on the US-Canada border on a summit called Holdover Peak, and it might just be the most remote fire lookout in Washington State. Getting there requires navigating miles of beetle-killed blowdown so legendary it has spawned its own trail metric: blowdowns per mile (BdpM). This is the story of my first two attempts—and why Monument 83 was fully prepared to make me wait.

Buck Mountain is where this whole journey started. A low-snow January, a map, and a phone call with my dad. But what I didn't know was how much history was packed into that one small DNR tower above Loup Loup Pass. Or how close it came to being lost forever.

Nobody staffs this fire lookout to read books. Most people imagine staffing a fire lookout as a quiet summer spent reading books and watching sunsets. Goat Peak is not that lookout. This is the story of one of Washington’s busiest remaining staffed fire lookouts, and what it’s actually like to spend a summer alone on a mountaintop with a radio, endless visitors, lightning storms, wildfires, and a cattle dog named Hudson.

After visiting all 93 of Washington State's remaining historic fire lookouts, the question I get asked most is: which one was the hardest to reach? This is the story of the most physically demanding day I've ever had in the mountains, and the century-old fire lookout waiting at the top.

Fire Lookout Friday: The Beginning

The journey to visit Washington’s last standing fire lookouts

In January 2014, a low-snow winter, a map, and a phone call with my dad set off a chain of events I never could have predicted.

This is where it all started. The story of how I ended up visiting all 93 of Washington State’s remaining historic fire lookouts and some of what happened along the way.

Fire Lookout Friday is a weekly podcast and newsletter about Washington’s historic fire lookouts—their stories, their history, and the ridiculous things that happen when you decide to visit all of them. And then staff one.

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