Lookout posts earn new respect
Jim Henterly looked again, squinting harder and going for his binoculars. The cloud was copper, stacking up higher and higher. He reached for the radio, his voice crackling through the scanner: "We got a fire up here!"
An hour later, while firefighters rappelled near the Entiat River to douse the blaze, Henterly was cooking dinner on the propane stove at his home/office: a square room perched at an elevation of 6,237 feet, overlooking the mountains and Ponderosa pines of the Wenatchee National Forest.
He is among a few dozen active fire spotters who work atop ridges in Washington state during fire season, which typically begins in June and sometimes lasts into mid-October.
This year, it's estimated to last another couple of weeks for most lookouts. Once considered anachronistic, lookout posts are earning new respect with the U.S. Forest Service as being cheaper and more efficient than aerial patrols and other technology for spotting fires in their infancy.
In a strong show of support, the Forest Service is considering or making plans this year to upgrade many of the 30 towers still operating in the state, where more than 600 have been shut down over the past five decades.
The renewed interest in lookouts — as revered here as lighthouses are in America's Northeast — excites many fire-tower historians and enthusiasts trying to preserve a rich tradition.
Writers Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen were fire spotters here.
One of the West Coast's most famous, Ralph William Austin, better known as "Lightning Bill," is a fire spotter in the Methow Valley.
The lure of lookouts draws many outdoorsmen, poets and artists seeking solitude, literary inspiration or closeness with nature.
From a bygone era
Once, the United States had 8,350 lookouts, about 40 percent of them in the Northwest, built largely by the Civilian Conservation Corps from the Depression era to World War II.
Washington had 656 lookouts, third only to Idaho and Oregon, according to a Virginia-based preservation society, the U.S. Forest Fire Lookout Association.
After World War II, most were boarded up or torn down, largely replaced by aerial patrols and other technology, said Ray Kresek, author of "Fire Lookouts of the Northwest."
Weather satellites and heat sensors help track fires. The biggest advance came from aircraft that could pinpoint fires with a Global Positioning System. But they are expensive, and many Forest Service districts have come to realize that staffing a one-man lookout — at about $11 an hour in salary — is cheaper than frequent flyovers.
With more cabins and homes edging closer to the forest, firefighters needed a constant vigil.
Fire spotters "are up there 24 hours a day. They can [serve] as an early-warning system," said Lewis Southard, branch chief of fire prevention for the Forest Service in Washington, D.C.
"They are going in the right direction," Spokane-based lookout historian Kresek said of the Forest Service. "Lookouts still have a useful purpose. They are undoubtedly the most efficient means at detecting fires. A lookout is in a fixed position. They can keep an eye on the area. An airplane just flies over once or twice a day."
During this busy fire season, Forest Service administrators also praised lookout staffers for being able to guide firefighters to a blaze or help them escape one in a hurry.
Austin spots fires at the Goat Peak Lookout in the Methow Valley, where he has worked the past nine years.
He said ground crews can "see smoke coming, but they do not know which direction the smoke is coming from. I can tell them which way the smoke is drifting."
Austin earned his sobriquet from the numerous lightning strikes that hit his lookout every season. He has never been hurt.
This year, more than 1,500 hikers have made the difficult 2.5-mile trek up to his tower, many just to meet him.
An eccentric, Austin fancies himself a poet of the peaks, reciting his work to hikers who visit him. He hopes to be immortalized like Beat writer Kerouac, who worked at a lookout in the North Cascades in the summer of 1956.
If fire towers do become extinct, Austin said, he wants to work on the last one. "I just love being the eyes, ears and nose of the valley."
Few job openings
With a limited number of lookouts in operation, there aren't many job openings.
When one came up at Alpine Lookout near Leavenworth this summer, Henterly grabbed it. His wife, Ann Marie Henterly, 46, stayed behind to tend their farm in Whatcom County.
During the 1980s, the couple worked eight summers together in lookouts in Oregon. They raised a daughter in lookouts and had some of their best years up there, they said.
Now he spots fires two weeks at a time, takes a few days off to return to the farm, then travels back and hikes the four miles up to the tower, carrying an 85-pound backpack. The Forest Service flies in water and canned goods.
"I love it so much," he said. "Glacier Peak is to my north. Mount Stewart is to my south. Lake Wenatchee is below. And I can see the top of Mount Rainier. It's amazing how many dramatic views you can get from one spot."
This is as close to nature as anyone can get these days, he said as five mountain goats trotted by. A cougar recently killed a kid goat 5 feet from where he slept. But he shrugged it off as part of the wilderness experience.
Though lookouts are Spartan — no electricity or running water — his is as comfortable as an old sneaker. A children's book illustrator, Henterly also reads, hikes or just contemplates during his free time on the peak. "I love sitting up here."
Bronzed and handsome, he is 50 but looks 15 years younger, a picture of tranquility — until sunrise. That's when he arises and hurries from corner to corner in the tower, peering out into ridges from behind his amber-tinted sunglasses. He checks every mountain every 10 minutes.
"It's an extreme adrenaline rush," he said. "You can spend endless hours looking at the same landscape and — bingo! — there is a smoke."
Fires are easier to put out when caught in their early stages, and Henterly spotted 15 this season, all of them caused by lightning.
He can tell when nature might strike. His radio gets staticky. The thunder that wakes him in the night also foreshadows the day ahead. That's what clued him to the recent fire behind North Spectacle Butte.
The fire spread to nearly an acre before backcountry firefighters controlled it. Wenatchee Valley rappeller Jason Emhoff, who worked the blaze, said, "If it wasn't for that lookout, no one would have known about that fire."
Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com
