The Fire Lookouts of Glacier National Park

1910 was one of the worst forest fire years in the history of the Pacific Northwest. Wildfires torched more than three million acres of virgin forest in Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and in the process, destroyed enough timber to fill a freight train 2,400-miles long! 1910 also happened to be the year that Glacier National Park was established. It would literally be a baptism of fire for our eighth national park. More than 100,000 acres burned in Glacier, including a 23,000-acre blaze near Kintla Creek. The situation in the park that year would be exacerbated by the lack of an organized firefighting infrastructure, very little equipment, few trails, and practically no roads.

As a result of that infamous year, Glacier Park would find itself on the leading edge of fire management throughout the first half of the 20th Century. According to Mitch Burgard's Fire Blog, which was once published on the park website, Glacier achieved several firsts:

• Glacier was the first National Park to have a dedicated fire crew (prior to this time the Army/Calvary and, later, the National Forest Service were solely responsible for fighting forest fires).

• In the early 1920’s, Glacier was the first National Park to bring the new technology of ‘portable’ (horse drawn) pumps into the United States from Canada.

• Glacier established the first fire management plan in the National Park Service. In 1929, a newly appointed “fire control expert” at the national office used Glacier’s plan as a benchmark. It would become the model in which other plans were measured against for the next decade.

• In 1946, Glacier became the first National Park to utilize Smokejumpers.

The park was also quick to build fire lookout towers. Although most of Glacier’s lookouts were built in the 1930s, two were already constructed by 1923, both of which had phone line connections.

Most of the lookouts in the park had the same basic design; a two story wooden structure with a windowless dirt floor storage area, topped by a 14 x 14 foot ‘cab’ in which the fire lookouts worked and lived.

There were two notable exceptions to this basic design, however. One was the Red Eagle Lookout, a 60-foot steel tower that was built in 1960, but destroyed in 1986. The other, Swiftcurrent Lookout, which still stands today atop Swiftcurrent Mountain, has a stone foundation, and a gable roof made with heavy timber framing and a flagstone and mortar roof surface. The park opted for a much sturdier design in order to protect the lookout from the harsh weather and strong winds that buffet the 8436-foot peak.

I would assume this to be true for all the towers in Glacier, but according to Fire Lookouts of the Northwest, by Ray Kresek, the Numa Ridge Lookout has a heavy wooden panel with 200 spikes driven through it. With its sharp points sticking out three inches, the panel is dropped in place on the stairway each night as a security measure against grizzly bears!

Glacier still staffs four fire lookouts each season. Traditionally these have been Huckleberry Mountain, Numa Ridge, Scalplock Mountain and Swiftcurrent Mountain. However, in 2009, and for the first time in more than 30 years, the park also staffed Loneman Lookout in the Middle Fork area.

Lookout work is mostly a solitary job with limited amenities and long shifts where firewatchers work at least 10 straight days during the summer fire season.

In his book, Kresek published several journal entries from lookouts that worked at Numa Ridge over the years. There were many complaints about having to do chores. They seemed to come out of boredom, rather than the physical work itself. Apparently there were other hazards that lookouts had to deal with that weren’t in the job description. On September 12, 1950, firewatcher Scotty Beaton made this entry:

Found mud in water barrel; put there by kid from McFarland’s dude ranch; same kid busted crosshairs on firefinder, bent nails on bear board, and ruined my binoculars on the hot stove.

Speaking of Numa Ridge, Edward Abbey, author of the Monkey Wrench Gang, once spent a summer in 1975 manning this lookout. In A Lookout’s Journal, Abbey summed-up his experience with this quote: “Bears, beans, bores and bugs: Numa Ridge Lookout.”

As we move forward into the 21st Century it will be interesting to see if Glacier continues to stay on the cutting edge with the latest technologies in fire management. For example, unmanned drones are now being used to detect and monitor wildfires, and may even be used to suppress fires in the future.

Of the 17 fire lookouts that once stood in the park, nine still remain, all of which can be reached by trail. Here’s a list of lookouts in Glacier, present and past:

Apgar Lookout / Built: 1929 (see photo above)
Access: 3.6 mile hike on the Apgar Lookout Trail near Apgar

Huckleberry Lookout / Built: Original in 1923 (see photo below), rebuilt in 1933
Access: 6 mile hike along the Huckleberry Lookout Trail near Apgar

Loneman Lookout / Built: 1930 and rehabed in 2003
Access: 7 mile hike on Loneman Lookout Trail off Highway 2 near Middle Fork

Numa Ridge Lookout / Built: 1934
Access: 5.6 mile hike on the Numa Ridge Lookout Trail at Bowman Lake

Porcupine Ridge Lookout / Built: 1939
Access: Porcupine Lookout Trail via Waterton Valley Trail out of Goat Haunt

Mount Brown Lookout / Built: 1928
Access: 5.4 mile hike from Lake McDonald Lodge

The Mt. Brown Lookout was threatened by the Sprague Fire in 2017. In order to protect the historic building, firefighters wrapped it in fire-resistant foil (see photo on right).

Scalplock Lookout / Built: 1931
Access: 4.7 mile hike on Scalplock Trail in Walton

Swiftcurrent Lookout / Built: 1936
Access: 6.2 mile hike from The Loop, 7.8 miles from Many Glacier, or 9.9 miles from Logan Pass

Bear Mountain Point Lookout / Built: 1935 / Destroyed: 1965

Curly Bear Lookout / Built: 1934 / Destroyed: 1963

Elk Mountain Lookout / Built: 1930 / Destroyed: 1963

Heaven's Peak Lookout / Built: 1945 / Building is still standing after being abandoned in 1953, and was scheduled to be stabilized in 2012 in order to preserve it.

Heaven's Peak South Lookout / Built: 1943 / Destroyed: 1963

Red Eagle Lookout / Built: 1960 / Destroyed: 1986

Reynolds Ridge Lookout / Built: 1931 / Destroyed: 1963

Riverview Mountain Lookout / Built: 1923 / Abandoned: 1930s

Waterton Lake Lookout / Built: 1930s / Abandoned 1940s

For more information on the lookouts you can visit the Fire Lookout website and the National Park Service’s List of Classified Structures.

I’ll sign-off today with this lookout journal entry from September 3, 1980:

Autumn is in the air. A pair of golden eagles are hovering in the thermals around the station. The western sky is gorgeous, pink with crimson ruffles. CFCN Radio is playing the Hugo Winterhalter Orchestra’s Canadian Sunset. It’s time to bring in the flag. God Bless America!

                *******************************************************************************

Glacier National Park preserves more than a million acres of some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth. With more than 740 miles of trails meandering throughout this vast park, how will you find and choose the most scenic and rewarding hikes?

Exploring Glacier National Park takes all the guesswork out by focusing on the most amazing hikes, and provides you with handpicked recommendations that will allow you to make the most of your trip to Glacier:

Is the Smokey Bear Ad Campaign Effective?

So I was listening to late night radio the other night when I heard the latest Smokey Bear PSA for the umpteenth time. For some reason the tagline phrase at the end of the commercial, “9 out of 10 wildfires are started by humans”, stood out for me this time. We’ve all heard that statistic a million times, but have you ever considered that this is basically the same stat that’s been cited since the launch of the Smokey Bear campaign?

In 1944 the Smokey Bear campaign was launched with the mission of creating and maintaining public awareness of wild fires. The campaign's original catch phrase, "Smokey Says – Care Will Prevent 9 out of 10 Forest Fires", was proclaimed on the very first campaign poster (seen on the right). According to the Smokey Bear website, “Fire prevention was a real concern since 9 out of 10 wildfires were human caused during the period 1946 to 1950.”

However, that same statistic continues to be cited today in current Smokey Bear commercials, as well as on the NPS Fire and Aviation Management website, the Insurance Information Institute website, and various national forest websites. According to a graph published by EcoWest, using data from the National Interagency Fire Center, the percent of human-caused wildfires has remained fairly constant between the years 2001 and 2012 (red line):


So the question that came to mind while lying in bed that night was how is it, or why haven’t we seen a significant decrease in the number of human-caused wildfires since the Smokey Bear campaign was launched more than 70 years ago? No doubt the campaign has been highly successful in raising awareness of the issue over the years. According to the Ad Council (which runs the Smokey Bear campaign), “96 percent of U.S. adults recognize him, and 70 percent are able to recall his message without prompting.” That's an incredible statistic – one that every marketer in the world wishes they could claim! But why haven’t we seen an improvement in the number of human-caused wildfires over the last 70 years?

In defense of the Ad Council, they also state on their website that “Most importantly, the average number of acres lost annually to wildfire has decreased from 22 million in 1944 to an average of 6.7 million today.“ A quick glance at annual wildfire data published by the National Interagency Fire Center would seem to confirm this claim. However, at the bottom of that report, it notes that annual wildland fire statistics

“is provided through Situation Reports, which have been in use for several decades. Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures above prior to 1983 shouldn’t be compared to later data.”

Interestingly, the number of fires reported before 1983 is far greater than the years that follow, though the number of acres burned is comparatively constant (the data only goes back to 1960). From my point of view, the claim from the Ad Council appears to be an “apples to oranges” comparison, and therefore isn’t valid. Moreover, it appears the Ad Council is comparing one year – 1944 – to the most recent 12-year average, which isn’t a statistically valid way of comparing the two time periods. As you can see in the chart below (published by the Insurance Information Institute), the total number of acres burned each year fluctuates widely (graph shows number of acres in millions from 1980 to 2014):

It’s very possible that 1944 was an outlier year. An average from that time period, with valid data using the same collection methods and from same sources as used today would be the only correct way to measure this claim. Which brings me back to my original question: why haven’t we seen an improvement in the number of human-caused wildfires over the last 70 years?

Is it possible that our collective conservationist ethic hasn’t improved, or is less now than in years past? It would seem unlikely, but I don’t have any data to support or refute this assertion.

Is it a generational phenomenon? In other words, is it a lesson, or an awareness issue, that each generation has to learn as they come of age? A review of the statistics on the ages of all the human-caused wildfires over the last 70 years would prove (or disprove) that theory. Unfortunately I don’t have access to those statistics, but they would be interesting to see, and would be the only logical reason why we haven’t seen an improvement in this problem over the last several decades. Indeed, it does appear that the Ad Council tries to target younger people, especially when you consider the campaign tactics that have been used over the years. However, can you really say that the campaign has been successful when the needle hasn’t moved in 70 years?

What are your thoughts? Is there another reason for the problem that I'm overlooking? Is there a more effective way of dealing with the issue? Is the Ad Council wasting our federal tax dollars on a problem it hasn’t fixed?



Jeff
HikinginGlacier.com
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RockyMountainHikingTrails.com
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The Largest Wildfires in U.S. History

Several major wildfires raging across the west have grabbed headlines around the world in recent weeks. So far this year more than 39,000 wildfires have burned nearly 6.4 million acres in the United States. The number of wildfires this year represents about 80% of the ten-year average. However, the number of current acres burned represents a roughly 38% increase over the ten-year average at this point in the year. At more than 330,000 acres, the largest wildfire currently burning in the U.S. is in central Alaska. There are three other significant wildfires of note, the Soda Fire in Idaho, the Comet-Windy Ridge Fire in Oregon, and the Chelan Complex in Washington, which are currently burning more than 283,000, 103,000, and 69,000 acres, respectively.

As a result, the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group increased the National Fire Preparedness Level to its highest point last week.

Having looked at the current situation, I wanted to see where these fires stood when compared to the largest wildfires in U.S. history. The following are the top 10 largest wildfires in U.S. history, none of which include any of the fires currently burning:

1) The Great Fire of 1910: 3,000,000 acres - Killed 86 people, including 78 firefighters in Idaho, Montana and Washington. The fire destroyed enough timber to fill a freight train 2,400 miles long.

2) The Great Michigan Fire (1871): 2,500,000 acres - The Great Michigan Fire was a series of simultaneous forest fires that were possibly caused (or at least reinforced) by the same winds that fanned the Great Chicago Fire. Several cities, towns and villages, including Holland, Manistee, and Port Huron suffered serious damage or were lost.

3) Taylor Complex Fire (2004): 1,305,592 acres - The Taylor Complex Fire near Tok, Alaska was the largest wildfire by acreage during the 1997–2007 time period.

4) Peshtigo Fire (1871): 1,200,000 acres - The Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin killed over 1,700 people and has the distinction of causing the most deaths by fire in United States history.

5) Silverton Fire (1865): 1,000,000 acres - Oregon's worst recorded fire.

6) Thumb Fire (1881): 1,000,000 acres - Killed more than 200 people in Michigan.

7) Yellowstone (1988): 793,880 acres - The Yellowstone fires of 1988 in Wyoming and Montana were never controlled by firefighters. They only burned out when a snowstorm hit in early September. A whopping 36% of the park was affected by the wildfires.

8) Long Draw Fire and Miller Homestead Fire (2012): 719,694 acres - Oregon's largest fire in the last 150 years.

9) Murphy Complex Fire (2007): 653,100 acres - The fire was a combination of six wildfires caused by lightning in south-central Idaho and north-central Nevada that started on July 16–17, 2007.

10) Siege of 1987 (1987): 650,000 acres - These fires were started by a large lightning storm in late August, burning valuable timber primarily in the Klamath and Stanislaus National Forests in California.



Jeff
HikinginGlacier.com
TetonHikingTrails.com
RockyMountainHikingTrails.com
HikingintheSmokys.com

Glacier Park Responds to Two Small Wildland Fires

Glacier National Park firefighters have responded to two very small wildland fires in the park started by lightning.

On Sunday, July 29, smoke was reported on Mount Brown, located approximately three miles east of the Lake McDonald Lodge. The fire was estimated at less than 1/10th of an acre. On Tuesday, the fire was declared out.

Park firefighters responded to the Fish Lake Wildland Fire on Tuesday, July 31. The fire is estimated to be approximately ¼ of an acre and located near Fish Lake, about two miles east of Sprague Creek Campground. Smoke is visible from Lake McDonald and Sperry Chalet. The Flathead National Forest assisted in management of the fire through aviation support. Containment of this wildland fire is anticipated today.


Jeff
Hikes in Glacier National Park

US Forest Service announces strategy to replace large airtankers for wildfire efforts

The U.S. Forest Service announced this week a strategy, developed with input from the Department of the Interior, to replace the fleet of aging airtankers used to battle wildfires with a next generation of newer, faster, more cost-effective large airtankers.

“We need a core fleet of the next generation large airtankers to supplement our boots-on-the-ground firefighters for what we know will be longer and more severe wildfire seasons in years to come,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “Not only will these newer, more effective airtankers help us keep fires contained and communities safe, they will also protect our brave men and women on the fireline.”

Although no large airtanker has been built specifically for firefighting, several aircraft were designed to handle similar stresses. Recommendations for the next generation of airtankers include:

• Capabilities of carrying a minimum of 1,800 gallons of mixed retardant with more than 3,000 gallons preferred.

• A minimum cruise speed of 345 mph for quick fire response over long distance.

• Powering by turbine engines, which are more reliable, more fuel efficient, and require less maintenance than older aircraft piston engines.

• Capabilities of operating from most federal airtanker bases.

• Forest Service contract structural integrity program requirements must be met.

“The effectiveness of airtankers on a wildfire is directly proportional to its speed and load capacity,” Tidwell said. “Large airtankers can be effective in thick forest canopies and areas of dense brush or timber. A larger load capacity also allows large airtankers to split their retardant loads to support different parts of a fire without delay of returning to base.”

The best mix of tools for wildland firefighting includes ground and air resources. However, retardant applied from large airtankers may slow the progress of a wildfire so firefighters on the ground can safely construct a fireline to contain it.

Tidwell noted that as airtankers age, maintenance costs and safety risks rise. The Forest Service’s current large airtanker fleet is at least 50 years old and more than half of the aircraft face mandatory retirement within the next 10 years. The fleet has decreased in size from 43 in 2000 to only 11 under contract today.

Currently all large air tankers are owned and operated under contract by private companies.

The fleet of aircraft that are used for wildland fire suppression also includes water scoopers, single engine airtankers, very large airtankers and helicopters.


Jeff
Hiking in Glacier.com

Forest Service Chief signs record of decision for aerial fire retardant application

Earlier in the month U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell signed a record of decision establishing new direction for the use of fire retardant applied from aircraft to manage wildfires.

The new direction, initiated as a result of litigation in Montana, will help the Forest Service better protect water resources and certain plant and wildlife species on National Forest System lands when fighting wildfires. It will allow the Forest service to aggressively fight fire with the use of airtankers while protecting aquatic ecosystems.

Working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries), the Forest Service identified and mapped waterways and habitat for certain threatened, endangered, and sensitive species in order to avoid applying retardant in those areas.

To decide when or where to drop fire retardant, fire managers now have roughly 12,000 maps identifying avoidance areas on 98 National Forest System units that identify locations of waterways and areas for hundreds of plant and animal species.

When fire managers determine retardant is the right tool to use on a wildfire, they will direct pilots to avoid applying fire retardant in the newly-mapped areas. All other firefighting tactics will be available in the avoidance areas.

The Forest Service has avoided the use of fire retardant in waterways since 2000. Guidelines used since 2000 provided three exceptions that allowed fire managers to drop retardant within 300 feet of waterways. The new direction allows one exception: when human life or public safety is threatened. However, this represents little change with how the agency fights wildfires.

“These new guidelines strike a balance between the need to supplement our boots-on-the-ground approach to fighting wildfires while protecting our waterways and important plant and animal species at the same time,” Tidwell said. “Our new approach will benefit communities, ecosystems and our fire crews.”

Forest Service research has demonstrated that fire retardant, used since the 1950s, is twice as effective as water at reducing fire intensity. The agency continues to work with industry to develop more environmentally friendly fire retardants.

In July 2010, in response to a lawsuit, the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana ordered the Forest Service to fully comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and to re-consult with USFWS and NOAA Fisheries to comply with the Endangered Species Act.

The Forest Service involved the public in the development of the new direction, including hosting five community listening sessions, several stakeholder webinars, three technical listening sessions, a science panel discussion, and several Tribal engagement events.

The new direction includes procedures for monitoring and reinitiating consultation with USFWS and NOAA Fisheries if aerially-applied fire retardant impacts certain species or habitat. The direction also provides greater protection for cultural resources including historic properties, traditional cultural resources, and sacred sites through closer coordination with states and Tribes.

Tidwell issued the decision after reviewing the analysis of three alternatives in the October 2011 Final Environmental Impact Statement and the results of the consultation with USFWS and NOAA Fisheries.


Jeff
Hiking in Glacier.com