Old School: High Prairie to Lookout Mountain - August 1983

[Jesse]

Great stuff. Keep the old school pics coming. This is about 15 years before I ever even set foot on a hiking trail ( I wasn't even born yet as a matter of fact).

Just one note. The large amount of snow left at higher elevations in the Summer of 1983 wasn't because of an El Nino. We, in fact, experienced a very cool Summer in the Pacific Northwest that year (an infamous "green tomato" summer) despite the strong El Nino. Nino's usually bring meager winter snowpack to the mountains the winter before, so most Nino Summers do not have late-lingering snow in the Cascades.

The reason the Summer of 1983 bucked the trend was most likely due to a short term episode of global cooling caused by the large eruption of Mexico's El Chichon volcano the previous year.

The most common type of Summer to have a large late-season Cascade snowpack is during or directly after a La Nina, as this Summer will be. Will be interesting to see if there are snowbanks up there again this August!

[Splintercat]

I worked up there from 1978 through 1984, Allison -- so probably met your husband! I even rode on the horse trek in 1981, I believe. Of course, we had about 400 kids per week rolling through camp, so it helps to have been one of the "notable" kids that I periodically drove down to The Dalles with a broken arm, semi-severed finger, fell in a yellowjacket nest, etc...

Jim, I will proudly admit that when I bought a new backpack a couple years ago, I RETURNED to an external frame (yes, they still make them, and NO, they're not made with canvas over oak frames...). I really didn't care for the internal frame style -- very hot on my back, all my stuff is a giant jumble inside, and that's just not me: I want POCKETS, POCKETS, POCKETS! So, now I've got 'em. I'm way more Felix than Oscar when it comes to a sense of order. As they say back in the old country, "there's a pocket for everything, and everything goes in a pocket... with a zipper..!"

But you gotta have a strong sense of personal identity to hit the trails with an external frame pack these days -- lots of snotty youngsters out there looking like they've never seen one before (a frame pack that is, not the old guy carrying one...)

So... there's my darkest secret. On the plus side, it's not bright orange! (see other thread)

[Splintercat]

Oops -- posted on top of you there, Jesse. Good weather trivia! It was a truly crappy summer in Portland that year, but not so bad on the slopes of Lookout Mountain. Cool, but clear most of the time. We must have had a series of wet winters during that period, because in 1984, my wife and I were doing a road trip to the southwest, and there was an incredible amount of water in the otherwise dry valleys of Southeast Oregon and across Nevada -- plus, as I recall, that was the year the Glen Canyon Dam had to run at full tilt with the bypass tunnels just to keep pace with the runoff. Maybe that was volcano-caused climate stuff, too?

Tom

[markesc]

Nice to see these! Lookout Mt. was one of my first hikes in the Mt. Hood area!

Recently I too began scanning slides...def, a very time consuming and often disapointing results. I borrowed "peder"s Nikon CoolScan 5000. Works great, however the Nikon scanning software is worthless unless you're running and old OS. I've had a lot of luck with the Vuescan software (and found a workaround to avoid paying)

I did however have zero luck scanning kodachromes....they just look awful compared to the Velvia stuff from Fuji...

Do you have any slides of the ladd/coe glaciers from Barret Spur, the lower viewpoint?

Keep up the good work! You may wish to try the Vuescan software as that may help with the dust issues.

Lastly, no worries about the external frame! I was sporting a camp trails "ranger" pack up until last year!!! I've always loved hiking as it removes most all socio-economic barriers and everyone is out there is equal and at the mercy of nature

Chris

[Splintercat]

But Chris... I bought a NEW external frame pack! I think that makes me a bit of a hopeless traditionalist, at least on that front...

I'll try the Vuescan software. I found an old link to a Photoshop plugin from Polaroid (oddly enough) that helps deal with dust, and is Kodachrome-friendly. But so far, it has loaded with CS3, so I'll have to give it a run with an older version of Photoshop. Not sure if that's worth monkeying around with.

Let's see, north side slides? Well, not sure -- but hopefully I'll run across some! I used to think I remembered every shot I'd taken, and while I definitely remember most of them, I'm stumbling across whole trips that I'd forgotten about. Sigh... a mind is a terrible thing to waste...

-Tom

[ErinL]

Great post!

I was just a small child in 1983. However, my dad was such a cheapskate that we used his equipment from the 70's and 80's well into the 1990's (and 2000's...cough). In fact, I still use his old mess-kit purely for nostalgia purposes. Every couple of years, we pull out and set up his old A-frame tent with my favorite feature of all tents: the snow sphincter.

The sierra cup though? Dang. I hate that thing. I burned my mouth and hands so bad on it once because I was so impatient for hot chocolate. I don't think I've ever regretted not listening to my father's wise words as much as ignoring his, "I really wouldn't use that cup for a hot drink."

[Splintercat]

"Snow sphincter"..? That's a new one to me, Erin!

But yeah, my introduction to backpacking (via my own economy-minded dad) was a canvas pack and canvas pup tent from Andy & Bax (to Serene Lake, to be specific). It turns out that the little fabric strap ties on the flaps of a canvas tent leave JUST enough room for about 10,000 mosquitos per night to invade your tent..! Oh, and our pup tent had no floor... minor detail!

-Tom

[Jesse]

Oops -- posted on top of you there, Jesse. Good weather trivia! It was a truly crappy summer in Portland that year, but not so bad on the slopes of Lookout Mountain. Cool, but clear most of the time. We must have had a series of wet winters during that period, because in 1984, my wife and I were doing a road trip to the southwest, and there was an incredible amount of water in the otherwise dry valleys of Southeast Oregon and across Nevada -- plus, as I recall, that was the year the Glen Canyon Dam had to run at full tilt with the bypass tunnels just to keep pace with the runoff. Maybe that was volcano-caused climate stuff, too?

Tom

Interesting. I didn't know about that wet period in the SW. It could have very well been partially due to the eruption.

Got any more old slides coming up?

[Splintercat]

Yep, definitely more coming... the scanning is a slow process, however! Ugh.

Back to Glen Canyon, I checked Wikipedia, and the damaging event was in 1983, though it was at a dangerous flood stage in both 1983 and 1984. This photo from Wikipedia was take in 1984, at almost the exact time when we drove over the bridge:



It was quite scary to look down on, and especially in retrospect, when I read about the damage caused by the floods to the dam bypass tunnels. The white structure on the west (left) end of the bridge is the visitors center, and the windows overlooking the dam were literally shaking from the force of the river bursting out of the bypass tunnels. When we were there, the jets of water were hitting the far wall of the canyon, below the visitors center. Yikes! I first read about the near-catastrophe in the excellent book "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner.