Holiday Break

If you been looking for the November-December updates and reports, they're not there because I've been on holiday break for the first months of winter, in part because it's winter and there's less interest in Mt. Rainier NP, and in part because I've been struggling with reoccurring colds and a persistent bacteria infection.

Without going into details, the infection has been an intermittent, but persistent, one since January, and for reasons I don't understand I keep coming down with colds or cold-like symptoms weekly. This hasn't hampered my daily 6 mile walks (5-6 days a week) very much, but has hampered doing much else.

Anyway, I want to wish everyone a good holiday season and a happy new year. I expect I'll be back with the Mt. Rainier NP photo guide early in January. Enjoy the winter and holidays.

Bailey Willis Essay

In the early 1880's Bailey Willis was a geologist with the Northern Pacific Railroad (NPR) assigned to conduct reconnaissance of the coal and iron ore resouces in several northern states and territories, one area being the Washington territory and more specifically the Carbon River areas near and in the Mt Rainier National Park.

During some of his expeditions in the area he guided dignitaries, some of whom, along with Willis, advocated Mt Rainier be designated a national park similar to Yellowstone in 1872. That effort wouldn't begin until about 1893 and succeed in 1899.

As part of his work with the NPR he established and supervised the construction of trails into the upper Carbon River and Mowich Lake area, parts of which are part of the present day Carbon River road and Mowich Lake road (highway 165), and parts of which are parts of the modern day trails in the NP.

And as described in the essay, he often travelled to areas in the NP long before there were trails, again where there are trails today. He likely was the one of the few, if not the first, to see some of the places now accessed by established trails.

Bailey and others would convince the NPR to promote tourism in the northwest area, in part because of the ready access to it from Seattle and Tacoma, and the beauty of that part of the NP. The effort would fade because effort was put into the southwest area with the establishment of the Longmire resort and the popularity of the Paradise Valley.

From his travels in the area Bailey wrote a personal essay, "Among the Cliffs of the Northwest Spur", referring to the upper Carbon River and Mowich Lake area in present day Mt Rainier NP. The essay was never published and tucked away into his papers at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles.

I have transcribed the essay out of interest in his thoughts and experience. Clearly he was awed by the scenery. You can find the essay here which has a link to a PDF version. Some of the names of places in the essay have changed and some places were misidentified from later work to name places in the NP. I have inserted the current names in brackets in the essay.

1896 geology field notes

Update.--The links to the original field notes and transcriptio of the field notes have been updated since the original post in April 6, 2009. Original post below.

During the 1896 expedition geologist George Otis Smith took rock samples and field notes while he, Bailey Willis, Israel C. Russell and George Landes explored the geology of Mount Rainier. Willis explored the north side of Mt. Rainier in the early 1880s' working for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Smith also explored the Mt. Rainier during the previous summers before the expedtion as part of the overall exploration of the geology of the western side of the Cascade Mountains, and specifically in the Mt. Rainier area in August 1895.

Doing the research for the expedition I discovered the USGS had the original 1895 and 1896 field books in the archives, and they provided copies of them. I have transcribed the 1896 field book to work with the report narrative for their travels on the expedition, listed below.

Original Field Book
Transcribed Field Book

The files are in PDF format and will either open in your browser window or dowload to your computer. I'm still in the process of transcribing the field book to the expedition timelime for dates and places so people know where the samples were taken, but it's likely most places won't be excactly known. They didn't have maps then to determine locations, only their own descriptions.

Anyway, it's interesting reading if only for historical purposes. I was notified later that my transcription of the field book is now part of the USGS archive with the orginal field book, so future readers have both.

Walk Through

Wandering around the Website I noticed quite a few Web pages have errors or broken links, or are need of updating for better organization, information, etc. This is been accumulating for some time now for a number of reasons.

So, over the winter I plan to take the sets of Web pages for each topic in the photo guide and update them to a newer standard with updated information. And with so many sets of Web pages, this won't be a short or easy task, but something I'll do over the next 6 month or so.

If you have problems with, or questions or suggestions for the Web pages, please let me know. If you see wrong or bad information, broken links or other obvious issuse, please let me know. It's hard to tell what people want with the Web pages if they don't say something.

The longterm goal is to work on the sets of Web pages into more detailed ones and eventually a book, but there's so much left to do and to add, a book on the wish list for now, but recent publications have prompted me to start thinking if not working on it.

Anyway, that's it, just a short note of work I'll be doing on top of new sets of Web pages for publications, topic, interests, history, etc. It's like my office, piles of ideas (documents, outlines, research notes, books, maps, reports, etc.) where I've lost track of what's where, which is why have the Web page for plans.

Photo Places Update

I have updated the Web page for photo places in Mt Rainier NP with a second map from a set of pamphlets with two maps by photographer Tom Haseltine, dividing the NP into southern and northern halves.

The places on the maps in the pamphlets different somewhat from the places in the chapter on the NP by Greg Vaughn in his book Photographing Washington but more often overlap with respect to the common areas and places photographers go in the NP.

The problem is that there is just too much to photograph in the NP and too many places to go so photographers have to ration their time for the few places they have time in the NP. Very few photographers have the access to return frequently enough to photograph in more places.

And fewer photographers wander more than a 1/4 to 1/2 mile from the road, into the backcountry, often for days at a time. Even I limited myself to long day hikes for personal reasons but still managed to get 5-6 miles into the backcountry, short considering the size of the NP.

Anyway, the Web pages are there for visitors and photographers. I highly recommend the book, especially if you're visiting Washington State and the NP is one of the places you want to visit and photograph.

And I recommend the pamphlets because they're full of places with a good map to know where you can go. But remember the NP has seasons and not everywhere is open outside of summer, so you need to take the time of your visit into account.