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Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 16

October 18th, 2011

Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log: June 14-September 14, 1971 by Ardis Hyde

(Ardis, David and Philip Hyde in Their Camper. Continued from the blog post, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 15.”)

Part Sixteen: The Alaska Highway, Mile 1337 to Fairbanks, Alaska

Fall Tundra Near Brushkana Creek, Denali Highway, Alaska Range In The Distance, Alaska, copyright 1976 Philip Hyde.

(See the photograph larger, “Fall Tundra Near Brushkana Creek, Denali Highway, Alaska Highway In Distance, Alaska.”)

Monday, July 12, 1971:  We awoke at 6:00 a.m. to rain showers, but the visibility improved and the sun even came out between showers. We spent the morning right at our camp while Philip photographed the swallows. We also did office chores, each took showers and I baked bread. We ate lunch also before leaving. The Alaska Range was clear of the clouds with sunshine on all the peaks. After leaving at 12:10 p.m., we made some picture stops for flowers with the 35 mm camera. We stopped at Mile 1377 for yellow poppies and wild aster. At Mile 1379 we stopped for Larkspur where a scenic turnout, several campers and two tour buses brought out a swarm of people. We also stopped at Johnson Road Bridge for Philip to make photographs upstream. Mile 1381 presented a roadside cut bank for a flower garden with poppies in white, yellow, coral, orange, pale and deep pinks. A stunning sight that Philip photographed in 35 mm and 4X5 view camera. Some wind, but not enough to spoil the picture show. I gathered seeds as plants had everything from flower buds to ripe and dry fruit pads on them. It grew cloudier now, almost solid overcast. At the Big Gerstle River Bridge, Mile 1392.8, we descended by gravel road out onto the gravel river bed for the view and a 4X5 photograph back at the Alaska Range, rising in height now and showing some glacier laden peaks. David played with the spread of stream pebbles. Philip was pleased with the photographs he made of the Alaska Range here. We stopped at Delta Junction for gas. We found an overlook of the Tanana River flats, but the mountains were cloud-veiled so we at dinner and waited. Philip exposed a 4X5 color transparency, but had to retreat before he could get a black and white negative because of rain. It was very humid. We have started seeing Arctic Larch trees. The Arctic Larch are about the same size as the Spruce here, but with lighter, feathery foliage. After dinner we continued North with David in bed. Soon we were coming into birch stands. It was wonderful to see a native forest of birch trees. We arrived at Harding Lake Campground and decided to spend the night as it was now raining harder. The fee was $2.00 for Harding Lake because it was a new state campground. We used the dumping facilities. Philip had to change the right front tire for the second time. It was one we had repaired in Juneau. The surroundings consisted of a mixed birch and spruce forest with a moss carpet. Douglas squirrels and snowshoe rabbits were common. It was a warm, though wet night, only getting down to 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tuesday, July 13, 1971:  We woke up at 6:00 a.m. to rain and left Harding Lake Campground about 8:30 am. We drove through the big campground and along Harding Lake, then out to the Alaska Highway. Intermittent houses and businesses appeared along the highway all the way into Fairbanks. The dirt Alaska Highway would soon be replaced by a freeway that was under construction from Eielson Air Force Base into Fairbanks. We stopped along the runway to watch a B-52 Jet Bomber taxi out to the runway. We waited but they didn’t take off. We headed on into Fairbanks by 10:00 a.m. Our first destination was a service station to get the tire fixed. I shopped next door at Traveland. Then we drove on to the parking area next to the China River Restaurant where we ate lunch. We crossed the Eagle River over a bridge to the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce located in a sod roofed log house. Then we headed out to the College and the University of Alaska Museum, the Student Union, bookstore and so on. Drove over to Malcolm Lockwood’s home where we met Jean and her daughter Elisha. In the evening I went with Malcolm’s mother to look at Eskimo made objects. I bought a group for Christmas presents. Philip looked at prints of the University of Alaska’s Museum staff photographer Barry McWayne.

Wednesday, July 14, 1971:  We spent the overcast and partly rainy day mainly visiting with Malcolm Lockwood’s family. David and Elisha played very well together. Philip and Malcolm Lockwood were in conversations about photography or out on a short field trip in the afternoon to a birch grove with Barry McWayne. I wrote letters, baked cookies and baked bread. About dinnertime the sun began to come out, but most of the day had been grey with rain off and on.

Continued in the blog post, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 17.”

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New Portfolio Added: Grand Canyon National Park

October 13th, 2011

New Portfolio Of Philip Hyde’s Vintage Black And White Prints Of The Grand Canyon

(See the photograph large: Marble Gorge Near Nankoweap Creek, Grand Canyon National Park.)

Marble Gorge Near Nankoweap Creek, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, copyright by Philip Hyde.

Time and the River Flowing: Grand Canyon by Francois Leydet, in the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, came out in 1964 in response to two proposed dams, one just above and one just below Grand Canyon National Park. Time and The River Flowing formed out of a river trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, planned for that creative purpose. The river trip headed by David Brower, Executive Director of the Sierra Club and head of the Sierra Club books publishing program, and led on the river by lead boatman Martin Litton, has become legendary for including passengers who were the who’s who of landscape photography, conservation and the natural sciences of the time.

The illustrators of Time and The River Flowing were Katie Lee with one photograph, Joseph Wood Krutch and Eliot Porter each with two images, Daniel B. Luten with three, P. T. Reilly with four, Ansel Adams contributed five color photographs, Richard Norgaard six, Joseph C. Hall and Martin Litton, using the name Clyde Thomas, each provided nine photographs, David Brower had 10, Clyde Childress made 19 of the images and Philip Hyde supplied 31 of the book’s illustrations.

Published only two years after the introduction of color to Sierra Club Books, Time and the River Flowing contained only color photographs, even by Ansel Adams. As a result many of the best black and white photographs of the Grand Canyon by the artists above never received the same level of recognition, even though they were in some cases stronger images.

Now Philip Hyde’s black and white photographs of the Grand Canyon can potentially be more widely seen. See the new portfolio added to Philip Hyde Photography of Grand Canyon National Park original black and white prints. See also several more of Philip Hyde’s best black and white photographs of the Grand Canyon by visiting the portfolios “Black and White Vintage & Digital Prints 1,” “Black and White Vintage & Digital Prints 2” and “Vintage Black and White Prints & Raw Scans.”

For more information on the making of Philip Hyde’s original darkroom black and white prints see, “About Vintage Black and White Prints.”

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Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 2

October 7th, 2011

Martin Litton: Environmentalist, Conservationist, Sierra Club Director, Bush Pilot, River Guide, Hiker, Writer, Journalist, Visionary and Landscape Photographer

Continued from the blog post, “Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 1.”

Chiaroscurro, Sun Through Fog, Avenue Of The Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California, copyright 1964 by Philip Hyde. First published in "The Last Redwoods: Photographs And Story Of A Vanishing Scenic Resource," by Francois Leydet with photographs by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton, in the Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series.

See the photograph larger here: “Avenue Of The Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California.”

After seeing Martin Litton’s feature articles in The Los Angeles Times protesting proposed dams in Dinosaur National Monument, David Brower recruited the young journalist to join the Sierra Club and continue the fight against dam building and other wilderness degradation in earnest.

Martin Litton and Philip Hyde made the landscape photographs of Dinosaur National Monument that became the Sierra Club book, This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country And Its Magic Rivers with introduction and chapter one by Pulitzer Prize novelist Wallace Stegner. The controversy over the dams in Dinosaur National Monument, along with the first quality images of the area brought home by Philip Hyde and eloquent arguments by Martin Litton in Sierra Club Board Meetings, prodded the Sierra Club Board of Directors to decide to expand the interests of the Sierra Club beyond California and the Sierra Nevada.

The battle over Dinosaur not only made the Sierra Club a national organization, but also brought the cause of conservation national recognition. A number of conservation groups including the Wilderness Society and others formed a coalition of organizations opposing the Dinosaur National Monument dams. The conservation ideals exemplified by visionaries such as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir, were combined with new lobbying efforts, grassroots on location campaigning, full-page ads in national newspapers and other methods that became modern environmentalism.

The Dam Builders Reach For The Grand Canyon

“Post-War industrialists in league with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation found their high water mark when they reached for the Grand Canyon,” Philip Hyde explained in a 2004 interview. “World wide citizen action prevented Big Dam Foolishness from getting a foothold in the Grand Canyon. Dam builder’s influence declined from then on.” Today, there is a world-wide movement to remove dams on major rivers, but in the 1950s and 1960s, conservation groups did not yet have much power. David Brower, leader of the new environmental movement and Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and Martin Litton hatched a plan to stop the Grand Canyon dams. They organized a river trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park. The river trip participants included the who’s who of the day in landscape photography, geology, ecology and other sciences and disciplines. Martin Litton acted as lead boatman, Francois Leydet joined the trip as a writer, Eliot Porter and Philip Hyde as photographers, David Brower as filmmaker, to mention only a few. Their creative efforts and scientific observations became the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series book, Time And The River Flowing: Grand Canyon. The book went out to every member of Congress and with other written material circled the globe and caused a worldwide outpouring of support for saving the Grand Canyon.

Also on Martin Litton’s list of conservation successes was the making of Redwood National Park. The centerpiece of the redwoods campaign, the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series book The Last Redwoods: Photographs And Story Of A Vanishing Scenic Resource with text by Francois Leydet and photographs again by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton, helped the Sierra Club establish its argument for a Redwood National Park between the California state parks along Redwood Creek where the largest redwoods remained rather than a Redwood National Park proposed by Save The Redwoods League that merely combined existing state parks. Read more on the Redwoods campaign and the making of The Last Redwoods with Martin Litton and Philip Hyde in future blog posts.

Martin Litton was the 185th known person to float down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1955 and founded the company Grand Canyon Dories in 1971. He ran commercial river trips using small oar-powered wooden boats originally used for fishing in Oregon and known as drift boats, but adapted by Martin Litton for use in whitewater and renamed Grand Canyon Dories. Martin Litton wrote the introduction to a number of noted books on the Grand Canyon and other environmentally sensitive wilderness areas and national parks, as well as working as managing editor for Sunset Magazine. During his work for Sunset Magazine, Martin Litton used various made up names in print for his photo credits because Sunset Magazine did not want him to actively participate in controversial environmental campaigns.

At Age 94 Martin Litton Is Still Fighting For Redwoods

Though history has not given Martin Litton as much credit as others, at the present age of 94 he continues to work on various environmental campaigns and fly his Cessna 195. He even rowed a Dory through the Grand Canyon at age 90. Martin Litton held a seat on the Sierra Club Board of Directors from 1964 to 1973. He helped found the American Land Conservancy and served on its executive committee for 10 years. In 2005 he ran as a write-in candidate for the Sierra Club Board of Directors, but he did not win the election. His current focus is preventing the logging of Giant Sequoia Redwood Trees in Sequoia National Monument. See an excerpt from the recent film on Martin Litton. He still speaks regularly on conservation, often with outrage at the logging of the Giant Sequoia Trees:

The mission of the Forest Service is to get rid of all the nation’s forests so they can start over. Under the guise of removing hazardous trees, they are taking out all the dead trees that are serving as homes for woodpeckers and owls. Their credo is to remove trees that are dead, dying, or in danger of dying. That’s every tree in the world… I feel sorry for my grandchildren. The only true optimist is a pessimist. You have to realize how bad things are before you can improve them.

Stay tuned for excerpts from my fiery interview of Martin Litton in the next blog post in this series, “Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 3.” Also in future blog posts read more stories of Philip Hyde and Martin Litton working or traveling together: a river trip up the Klamath River, down the Colorado river, flying over the California Coastal Redwoods, through Grand Canyon National Park.

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Was Edward Abbey A Mystic?

September 12th, 2011

Jack Loeffler And Edward Abbey Discuss Mysticism While Camped At The Strait Of Hell On The West Coast Of Sonora, Mexico

White Herons, Playa, Baja California, Mexico, copyright 1981 by Philip Hyde.

In his biography of Edward Abbey, Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey, Jack Loeffler described traveling, friendship and working with Edward Abbey on various environmental campaigns. In one chapter Jack Loeffler told a story about exploring and car camping with the “Thoreau of the West” and his wife Clarke Cartwright Abbey on the west coast of Mainland Old Mexico. “On a dirt road that extended from El Desemboque to Kino Bay,” Jack Loeffler and Edward Abbey made camp.

They dubbed their camp “Osprey Bay” because they could see “no fewer than five inhabited osprey nests…” and during the day they could see osprey aloft nearly all the time. To get to the camp they had traveled several hundred miles from the U. S. border. Their camp was across Estrecho Infiernillo, or the Strait of Hell, from Baja California with Tiburon Island and Shark Island a few miles out in the Sea of Cortez or Gulf of California. Nineteenth century explorers called the narrow passage between Mexico and Baja California the Strait of Hell because during high tide and low tide, in some conditions, treacherous currents and sand bars tended to obstruct navigation and still do today. “There we remained for the better part of two weeks, hiking, floating in the rubber raft, avoiding stingrays, eating, drinking cold beer and warm beer, and even considering thinking about working.”

Edward Abbey made forays for firewood. Jack Loeffler and Edward Abbey dug a fire pit and lined it with large rocks in which they put a giant stuffed Turkey that Clarke Abbey had wrapped frozen before the trip. In the evening after their first Turkey feast when “the sound of the surf lulled them into a collective reverie,” Edward Abbey and Jack Loeffler set out on a walk east toward the mountains a few miles away:

The moon was bright. The air was warm. There was no wind. The conditions were ideal for a nighttime stroll near the Straight of Hell. We spoke very little for the first mile or so. We finally crossed the main north-south road and followed a trail continuing east. We were able to walk abreast and listen to the night sounds.

“Jack.”

“Ed.”

“Do you consider yourself a mystic?”

“Wow, I have to think about that for a minute. Do you?”

“Consider you a mystic? Yes.”

Consider yourself a mystic.”

“I asked you first.”

We stumbled along the trail for a bit.

“Probably no more than you do,” I replied vaguely. “Is there any vestigial Presbyterianism left in you?”

“Oh maybe a remnant or two left over from my childhood… But I was asking if you were a mystic?”

“It’s ironic, when I was in college, I was one of the two professed atheists on the campus. It took me years to realize that my sense of atheism was mostly the result of semantics. I certainly didn’t and don’t believe in an anthropomorphic god in any biblical sense. It seems that somehow I’ve intuited the presence of some principle or urge that the English language, at least, isn’t prepared to define. I suppose any religious feelings I have stem from the way I feel about the Earth and about consciousness. I’ve suspected for a long time that the planet is the living organism and that life is the way the planet perceives. We’re just a step along the way. Humans, I mean. We’re really not all that important when you think about it.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Ed. “But what about a sense of purpose? I wonder if we have any purpose in a higher sense. It seems like you spend years trying to absolve yourself from your childhood biases. If you’re really interested, that is.”

“What about you, Ed? Have you ever had a sense of the mystical?”

“Well, as you know, I’ve always tried to follow the truth no matter where it leads. And intellectually, I’ve tried to come to terms with reality by examining the evidence of my own five good bodily senses that I was born with, using my mind to the best of my ability. But there was a time back in Death Valley where I had what I guess was as close to a mystical experience as I’ve ever had. That was years ago. I was a young man. I’ve never had anything quite like it since. As close as I’ve come is after I’ve been out camping somewhere for at least two weeks. It takes at least that long for me to really get into it and leave all the baggage behind.”

“Can you describe what happened back then?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not something that’s easy to remember intellectually. It was more the way I felt. As I recall, I felt like I wasn’t separated from anything else. I was by myself at the time. It was as if I could almost perceive some fundamental activity taking place all around me. Everything was alive, even the rocks. I was part of it. Not separate from it at all. I wept for joy or something akin to joy that I can’t really describe. It was a long time ago. It’s not something that can be remembered in the normal way, or at least normal for me. The only time I can get close to it is out camping. I don’t get to do that enough. Not nearly enough.”

See a video of Jack Loeffler on the role of artists in environmental activism… Or, read more about Edward Abbey and how he met and wrote Slickrock with Philip Hyde in the blog post, “Who Was Edward Abbey?“

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New Portfolio: Yosemite And Sierra Black And White Prints

August 30th, 2011

New Portfolio Added To PhilipHyde.com: Yosemite, Kings Canyon And Sierra Nevada Vintage Black and White Prints

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.  –John Muir

McClure Meadow, Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 1970 by Philip Hyde. Deardorff 5X7 Large Format Camera. Widely exhibited and published including in "The Range of Light" with quotes by John Muir. Still available as an original vintage darkroom black and white print. Three 8X10 vintage prints left available for sale at this time. Other original vintage black and white prints in the "Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sierra Portfolio" also available in limited quantities. Please inquire for details.

(See the photograph larger: “McClure Meadow, Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon.”)

In his preface to The Range of Light, with Selections from the Writings of John Muir, my father pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde wrote about choosing photographs and John Muir quotes for his book. To read more about The Range of Light see the blog post, “Philip Hyde’s Tribute To John Muir.” Philip Hyde described his process in the Preface to The Range of Light:

It was a labor of love rereading John Muir some fifty years after my first reading. In searching for quotations to use with my photographs, I found the same inspiration and delight I recall feeling in the past—more, really, since my love for the mountains has only increased with the familiarity experience has given me… I wanted to go out again, to go in further, to explore all the places I had missed, and I wanted to improve on the pictures I had made to illustrate the heightened savor I was finding in his words. In nearly a lifetime of returning again and again, I began to feel I had barely scratched the surface. But over the life of the project, my view began to shift from unfulfilled desire to gratitude. I was coming to see that I would never satisfy my thirst for wildness and mountains. I could never make all the definitive photographs of them. But hadn’t I already had more than most men’s share of them? In general, the matching of quotations with pictures should be understood as equivalents—some descriptive, some expressing an experience of feeling that seems to parallel in some way one which John Muir describes. Others are visual equivalents of the words in less direct, more personal ways. There was a basic purpose in all this: my hope to somehow discharge a little of my debt to John Muir for his keen observation that informed and sharpened my own; for his words that amplified my feeling and experience, and colored them both brighter; for his boundless enthusiasm for Nature; for his clear vision that it would not be enough, living in an exploitive culture just to love Nature, but essential for Nature’s continued existence unimpaired, that one work to carry those “good tidings” to others who would, in their turn, work to protect Nature.

In 1938, just before he turned 17, Philip Hyde first visited Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada. On that trip he made his first photographs with a Kodak Readyset 120 camera that he borrowed from his sister. He brought the camera along thinking he would photograph his Boy Scout friends, but when he had the film developed, he discovered that most of the photographs were of nature rather than people, a tendency that stayed with him throughout his career. For more on Philip Hyde’s early trips to Yosemite National Park, see the blog post, “Lake Tenaya And Yosemite National Park.” His wilderness photographs participated in more environmental campaigns than any other photographer of his time and helped to establish the genre of landscape photography as a recognized art form while his photographs served as the backbone of the groundbreaking Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series. The Exhibit Format Series, invented by Ansel Adams, David Brower and Nancy Newhall, became known for popularizing the coffee table photography book and helping to establish many national parks and wilderness areas of the Western U. S. Beginning with participation in the first book in the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, This Is The American Earth, Philip Hyde went on to publish more photographs in more volumes in the series than any of the other photographers, including Eliot Porter, who was known for illustrating the best selling book of the series, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World with quotes by Henry David Thoreau. To read more about these photographers and the development of the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series see the blog post, “How Color Came To Landscape Photography.”

Though the various book projects influenced a generation of photographers and brought his work acclaim, Philip Hyde himself said, “I didn’t want to be distracted by fame.” He was more apt to spend his time working on any of many local environmental campaigns around the West, rather than talking to photography galleries, museum curators or photography agents. Although the best art museums and collectors did take interest in his work, often through recommendations from mentors such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Minor White; Philip Hyde, until recently has been less well-known than some other leading landscape photographers. Now for the first time in more than a decade, Philip Hyde’s vintage black and white prints, as well as his original dye transfer and Cibachrome prints are offered by a select number of the world’s best photography galleries. To read more about the galleries who carry Philip Hyde’s work see the blog posts in the category “Galleries for Philip Hyde” or go to “About Vintage And Black And White Prints.” A limited number of his vintage and original prints are still available for viewing and acquisition on the Philip Hyde Photography website. As we scan Philip Hyde’s original vintage black and white prints and film, a few new images, and on a few rare occasions a whole new portfolio is added to PhilipHyde.com. The selection of photographs chosen for the new “Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sierra Black and White Portfolio” were carefully reviewed by many experts in the art world, in photography galleries and by other professional photographers. Please enjoy and write me as you have questions.

What writers, artists or other influences helped you connect to a place?

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Oregon Cascades Conservation: Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area

August 15th, 2011

The Cascade Mountain Range, National Parks and Wilderness Areas Of The Northwestern U.S.

Mount Jefferson, Jefferson Wilderness Area, Oregon Cascades, Oregon, copyright 1959 by Philip Hyde.

(See the photograph large: “Mount Jefferson, Jefferson Wilderness Area, Oregon Cascades.”)

The Cascade Mountain Range, a string of volcanic peaks and vertically thrust rocky crags, runs from Northern California through Oregon and Washington and into Canada. Land battles in the 1950s and 1960s over the lush forests of the Cascade Mountains in the Northwestern United States, helped shape future strategy for wilderness conservation campaigns across the nation.

As the U. S. Forest Service and the timber industry, on one side, grabbed for more trees to mill, recreationists and environmentalists, on the other side, attempted to save their beloved woodlands, river valleys and rainforests from destruction. When enough public outcry supported the protection of an area, it became a National Park such as North Cascades or Olympic National Park. However, just obtaining wilderness status for many wild areas engendered a terrific political and often legal war.

The Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area became one of the many controversies of the 1960s. Mount Jefferson is Oregon’s second highest peak (10,249 feet) behind Mount Hood (11,497) and not to be confused with the Mount Jefferson in Montana, or in Utah, or the mountain bearing Thomas Jefferson’s carved likeness in North Dakota. Mount Jefferson of the Central Oregon Cascades is surrounded by plentiful lakes, steep raging rivers and lush river valleys riddled with gold and silver mining claims, cattle grazing and thick stands of mixed conifer trees.

In 1959, after conferring on strategy and partial funding with David Brower, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Philip Hyde hired mountaineer and wilderness guide Fred Behm as a horse packing guide. Fred Behm led Ardis and Philip Hyde by horseback pack trip into the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area. Philip Hyde made photographs for use by the Sierra Club and local Oregon environmental groups working to attain permanent wilderness designation or national park status for the Jefferson Wilderness Area.

U.S. Forest Service’s Controversial Redrawing Of Cascades Wilderness Area Boundaries In The 1960s

Mount Jefferson Primitive Area, one of the largest in Oregon, formed in 1930. It stretched across the Deschutes, Mount Hood, and Willamette National Forests. Each of these National Forests helped manage the primitive area. Lumbering slowed significantly during the Great Depression, but took off again during and after World War II. In the Willamette National Forest, the volume of logs cut more than quadrupled between 1945 and 1955 and continued to increase for decades. The Forest Service began to reclassify many primitive areas as either multiple use or permanent wilderness without any input from locals. Frequented by hikers, fishers and small boaters, Mount Jefferson Primitive Area had some of the highest recreation levels of any wilderness in the Northwest, second in Oregon only to the Three Sisters Wilderness to the south.

In his autobiography, In The Thick of It: My Life In The Sierra Club, Michael McCloskey wrote:

In the early 1960s, the Forest Service was using its administrative powers to decide how much land it wanted to put into its new wilderness system. Wilderness areas in this system would have carefully considered boundaries and would be permanently managed as wilderness, without roads or logging. In contrast, primitive areas, which had been set aside earlier under regulations of the 1920s, allowed some roads, had boundaries drawn with little study, and were only provisional in nature. In response to pressures to better protect primitive areas, the Forest Service had decided to either reclassify them as wilderness areas or to drop the provisional protection it had accorded them.

When reclassifying the Three Sisters Wilderness, the Forest Service dropped 53,000 acres from the wilderness area. After a 25 year struggle from grass roots activist groups and conservationists, Congress finally added 45,000 of these acres back into the Three Sisters Wilderness in 1978, part of which consisted of the west side of beautiful Waldo Lake.

U.S. Forest Service Preserves ‘Everything But The Trees’ In The Mount Jefferson Wilderness

The Mount Jefferson Primitive Area ran in a long, narrow strip along the spine of the Oregon Cascade Mountains with Mount Jefferson on the north end and a peak called Three Fingered Jack on the south. In the Oregon Cascade Mountains, most of the largest and thickest timber stands in the 1960s were below 3,500 feet in elevation. Unlike the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, the Mount Jefferson Primitive Area was mainly above 3,500 feet and did not contain as much valuable timber. Kevin R. Marsh explained in Drawing Lines In The Forest: Creating Wilderness Areas In the Pacific Northwest:

Since the crux of wilderness debates in the Northwest focused mainly on valleys below 3,500 feet, the creation of the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area out of the old primitive area focused on whether to protect from logging some of the lower forests outside the original boundaries…. In 1963, the Forest Service agreed to expand the boundaries outward east and south, adding more acreage to the protected area, but it stopped short of including the forests of the western valleys. In fact, the new boundaries would reduce the protection offered… lower-elevation forests contained in the existing primitive area and open them up to the timber sale program. By 1962, as the debate over proposed new wilderness boundaries continued, the Forest Service built a road and sold timber deep into the Whitewater Valley, close to the boundary of the primitive area…. Increasingly, the attention from all sides focused on Wildlands outside the existing boundaries of formally protected areas: the “de facto wilderness.” The Mount Jefferson debates reflected this changing aspect of wilderness debates throughout the country after passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. The Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area has not garnered much attention from historians and others concerned with wilderness in the United States, but the Mount Jefferson debates are important because they demonstrate a new emphasis on de facto wilderness lands and on struggles over the definition of ‘wilderness.’… The Obsidians, a Eugene, Oregon hiking club, joined five other groups, including the Oregon Cascades Conservation Council, to submit a proposal to increase the size of the area…

Leapfrog Logging Keeps Old Growth Timber Wilderness In Reach Of Lumber Companies

Michael McCloskey acted as legal council and Sierra Club adviser to those working to prevent land from being cut out and removed from within the final wilderness area boundaries. In the process he carefully explored the periphery of the primitive area to see how suitable the old boundaries were. He identified the practice of “leapfrog logging,” the Forest Service tactic of trying to define future boundaries by building access roads right up to the original primitive area boundary while passing by large sections of untouched timber. The presence of the road and logging at the end of it, blocked the land from potentially being designated as wilderness. Environmentalists led by Michael McCloskey applied their own techniques to build a case for expanding the existing wilderness. Michael McCloskey described the method himself:

The technique involved sampling the core values of the area (via a backpacking trip, a horse pack trip, or an overflight); driving every road to the edge of the wilderness area; looking at every peripheral development; evaluating competing values and alternative uses of the resources found there…. People valued these areas for many reasons: to experience wild country, to see mountain scenery, to walk through old-growth forests, to hunt and fish in less crowded areas, and to simply get away from civilization.

Local Citizens Lead Grassroots Environmental Campaigns To Preserve Cascade Mountain Wilderness

People were willing to fight for these wilderness values. Kevin R. Marsh explained one reason why:

The Forest Service roads and clear cuts deep in the Whitewater Creek valley were powerful examples of why wilderness activists focused so much energy on codifying a wilderness system created and maintained by Congress. In the long run… the Wilderness Act resulted in a massive increase in the acreage of land protected as wilderness in the United States…. Following that mandate, the Forest Service reexamined the Mount Jefferson area, the first primitive area in the Cascades to undergo review under the requirements of the Wilderness Act. Expanding wilderness protection into more valuable, lower-elevation forests, however, carried too much additional cost to the industry…. The conservationists proposal would reduce the available timber supply to the local economy by eleven million board feet annually, Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield claimed, and ‘serious economic hardship  could result….’ To add the forested areas proposed by conservationists would result in the loss of six hundred jobs in the local economy, regional forester Herbert Stone claimed. As a result, the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area, as approved by Congress in 1968, did not include the Whitewater Valley.

Even though the final boundaries of the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area did not include the Whitewater Valley, conservationists did succeed in persuading Congress to include other expansion areas such as Marion Lake and a few other tracts of undisturbed forest.

To learn about how conservation strategy in the Cascade Mountains had national impact and to discover more on how Cascade Mountain wilderness battles helped environmentalists refine their message into the Wilderness Act see the blog post, “The Oregon Cascades’ Impact On Conservation.” Also, discover more about the protection of the Cascades Mountains in blog posts to come, particularly the creation of North Cascades National Park and the protection of Glacier Peak Wilderness, both in the state of Washington.

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Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 13

June 29th, 2011

Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log: June 14-September 14, 1971 by Ardis Hyde

(Ardis, David and Philip Hyde in Their Camper. Continued from the blog post, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 12.”)

Part Thirteen: Juneau, Alaska To The Haines Highway, Canada

 

Mud Flats On Yukon River Near Beaver, Alaska, copyright 1972 by Philip Hyde.

Thursday, July 8, 1971: We woke up at 5:45 am, dressed and looked out to another clear, sunny day with the water of the Inland Passage glassy and smooth again. We drove back over the bridge to Juneau and out the south road as far as we could go. We stopped once to watch eagles: two adult, three immature and two crows around a fresh kill on the tidewater flat. David stayed asleep until we parked in the Alaska Ferry lot, checking in about 6:45 am. I cooked and we ate breakfast while waiting to leave. Philip took photographs of the Alaska Ferry “Taku” coming in at 8:00 am. Taku made a late departure at 10:00 am because there were many semi trailers to load and numerous cars on standby. This leg of the Inland Passage was the most beautiful so far with high, snowy peaks close on both sides of the Inland Passage and glaciers along the West. At last we saw a whale, a humpback whale, flapping his flukes and blowing as a continuous repeated exercise for about 5 minutes. We could clearly see the humpback whale without binoculars. Later a school of porpoises cavorted in sight of Taku. Most of the six hour passage we spent reading the Slickrock proofs. Philip took pictures from the deck with his Hasselblad 2 ¼. We ate a bag lunch while sitting in the quieter aft lounge. As we came into Haines, Alaska, a layer of mill smoke hung over town. Each sunny day, this being the warmest so far at 74 degrees Fahrenheit, seemed to bring more haziness in the towns. Our first objective on arriving in Haines was to find a garage that could lube the GMC Truck. We found Haines Automotive and left our Camper there at 5:00 pm to walk down to the port and back by 6:00 pm when we picked the finished truck up. Haines was a small town with the atmosphere of one out in the bush. Haines lies in a gorgeous setting in a valley sloping to the sea with high snow covered peaks ringing the valley. The town of Haines was ugly and seemingly oblivious to the surrounding beauty. Most of the streets of Haines were gravel, on which cars went too fast producing lots of dust. Temperatures were even warmer in the sun with no breeze. We were delighted to find a cleaner, fresher wooded place to go for our dinner and the night at Portage Cove Campground. We arrived in beautiful light. The black rock strewn beach provided a good foreground. One huge fan of rock thrust upright, veined with white quartz. Philip included this rock in several 4X5 photographs. He did the same with an ancient overturned snag complete with spreading roots. Earlier this snag had been David’s airplane. After a dinner of beans cooked earlier in Juneau, cabbage salad and a root beer float for dessert, we watched the sun set behind the mountains earlier than usual at 10:00 pm. We were at the end of the road, along which even as we were trying to go to sleep more campers and autos came in looking for a place to camp for the night. Soon the whole Portage Cove Campground was jammed. We missed the Chilkat Dancers as it was not their night to dance. We had the camper windows open all night. Lovely clouds frothed over Portage Cove.

Friday, July 9, 1971:  Clouds filled the sky, but not across the sun. Rain showers darkened some areas while the sun illuminated others. The day began warm while we spent another hour in town getting gas, headlight protectors, propane and groceries. David still ruminated over death presumably reflecting on Grandmother Oliver’s passing. “I’ll bury you when you die mommy,” He said in his most solicitous voice. “I’ll bury you when you die too, Daddy. ‘Cause I was born after you.” Meanwhile, Philip had his 4X5 Baby Deardorff view camera ready for action while the stops for pictures started soon out of Haines. The Chilkat River ran broad and flat here. At mile 13, we made stops for lily blooms in a pond with mountains as a backdrop. We made it to Kluckwan, Alaska by about noon. We took the bypass road through the small Indian village and stopped as we entered town where we saw a cemetery. We looked in vain for carved tomb markers such as we heard talked about in the Haines grocery store. As we came into Kluckwan proper we stopped again for Philip to get architectural details of an old frame house on film. Then on through the village to another cemetery where we again looked for carved tomb markers with similar results. We ate lunch situated on a gravel flat of the Chilkat River that was overgrown with cottonwoods, wild rose, Queen Anne’s lace and some spruce. It was 76 degrees outside and 85 in the camper. We drove out to the main road the way we came in, admiring the grandeur of the scenery all the way. The high mountain peaks were heavy with snow making them extra impressive. We stopped at the Canadian border to put on our headlight guards. The gravel road, from here on called the Haines Highway, began and proved more even than the beat up paved road on the US side in Alaska on which we could not exceed 30 mph. Soon we were climbing out of the Chilkat Valley. Near Guardsman Summit at Mile 55 we stopped for pictures of flowers. Here we were out of the forest and rolling across a low cover of alder across Chilkat Pass, Philip making view camera photographs on the north side. We made a dinner stop on a little further. Rain slid down the sky to the north while the wind blew hard. The rain swept across, over us, past quickly and it cleared again. David found a rusty chain outside and pretended he was mountain climbing on a low bank formed by a bulldozer blade. Later Philip found the other side of the low ridge was a very steep slope straight down to Nadahini Creek. After dinner and another blow and rain squall we pulled back onto the road for a little more driving. We continued to about mile 108 where we found a borrow pit to park in for the night. I baked bread. Though it was unleavened I let it sit overnight and it did rise a little.

Continued in the next blog post in the series, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 14.”

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The Battle Over Dinosaur: Birth Of Modern Environmentalism 9

June 23rd, 2011

Conclusion To The Story of Dinosaur National Monument And The Birth Of Modern Environmentalism

(Continued From The Previous Blog Post, “The Battle Over Dinosaur: Birth Of Modern Environmentalism 8.”

To celebrate this final part in our series on Dinosaur National Monument and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism, below are excerpts from Ardis Hyde’s 1955 travel log of the Sierra Club river trip down the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument.

Steamboat Rock From The Side, Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado, copyright 1955 by Philip Hyde.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here.)

This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country And Its Magic Rivers included an introduction and first chapter by Wallace Stegner with documentary and landscape photographs by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton. It was the first book ever published for an environmental cause. An essay in This Is Dinosaur called “Fast Water”, written by Otis “Doc” Marston, an expert river guide, lyrically described the adventure down the Green River through Dinosaur National Park.

“The canyons of Dinosaur have had a reputation far worse than they deserved,” Doc Marston wrote. “Anyone who goes boating on them now goes with ninety years of experience behind him. The change by which a fearsome river has become a playground has involved two things: the dissipation of wild tales and bogey stories about Niagaras, ‘sucks,’ and cataracts on the one hand; and the development of suitable boats and techniques on the other.”

June 28, 1955: We met our river party near Vernal, Utah at the house of Bus Hatch, the river boatman. We piled into school buses, crossed the Green River near Jensen and headed into Colorado. A side road off U.S. 40 lead to a point on the Yampa River above Lily Park, a popular put-in four miles upstream from the Eastern National Monument boundary. After lunch the party of 67 people and six rubber ‘barges’ launched. I rode in Ray Simpson’s folbot as a bow paddler. The river meandered through a valley. This normally smooth section grew rough due to headwinds. The fun began upon entrance into the canyon proper at the National Monument boundary. We ran a series of healthy rapids, quite an experience to go through in small craft. We traveled about 15 miles to our first campsite at Anderson Hole. It was a long beach with springs in the sand and a large, flat sagebrush area above, good for campsites. We had a campfire every night on this trip.

June 29, 1955: “Brick” woke Philip and I. He sung us happy anniversary while playing the bagpipes. It was our eighth year of marriage and not unusual that our anniversary found us in a wild place. We logged 28 river miles, a long stretch for the day, highlighted by Big Joe Rapids which is a Class IV rapid in high water. Philip ran with Ray Simpson. I traveled in the boat rowed by Dave Rasmussen holding nine passengers including Dr. Putnam, a Geologist from UCLA, the Drapers of the Academy of Sciences, and Mosses, both photographers. We saw two beavers in the water near a sand bar and three Golden Eagles. In the larger rapids the boatmen customarily stood up in the rear of the raft and faced the danger, pointing the stern downstream. We could see Petroglyphs on the rock wall across the river with binoculars.

July 1, 1955: The first day of July took our Yampa River adventure through beautiful scenery but insignificant rapids. The cliffs were higher and the Yampa River sleepily undulated through giant horseshoe bends. We drifted leisurely down smooth waters under streaked, curving walls of Weber sandstone of an older vintage. Our boat made frequent stops for Philip to photograph. We ran through the heart of sheer 1,000 to 2,000 foot cliffs.” In the evening Charlie Mantle came to the campfire and answered questions about his homestead and living in such a remote place. Afterward the Park Geologist, Morey Powers, along for the day’s run, gave a talk about the Yampa River canyon geology. The moon, approaching full, gave soft illumination to the still river against the high canyon walls.

July 3, 1955: We woke to fire crackers and bagpipes signaling our last day on the river. We pulled out at Rainbow Park for lunch and the unloading of the dunnage. The rapids with the worst reputation, rated Class IV at high water, in Whirlpool Canyon and Split Mountain Canyon were exciting but not too thrilling in the rubber barge. In Moonshine rapid, SOB rapid, and Schoolboy rapid (all Class II-IV depending on water level) the wind blew violently and spray and sand filled the air. We took out for good at Split Mountain Gorge.

At Split Mountain today the road and river mosey to a meeting at the campground and boat ramp. The campground is punctuated by cottonwoods and sleepy aspens nestling with the river and studying the upturned strata on the other side. Bands of yellow and Tuscan red zigzag up the hills to gray-tan sheer sandstone cliffs, with sage and green grasses receding into a blue sky, while puffy white clouds roll away forever over the flowing river. I hear a faint rustling of leaves, a low brushing of soft riffles. I smell the clean mud in the dry afternoon sun. I sit back in this campground and let time slow down until I get a feeling of reconnecting to roots in the Earth, the immediacy of feeling, of knowing what is real, of linking in the moment with something beautiful. This place was a gift from my father to his son, from his generation to mine and all those to come. I want to tell the river runners breaking down their boats, that without those early Sierra Club activists, the rafters and the rest of this campground would be nearly 300 feet under water here. Maybe they know or can feel it somehow, or maybe the circling hawks will tell them when they are silent on a quiet day like this. In the moments of stillness on the river bank, standing at the place where the water meets the land, I say, “Thank you, Dad.”

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Nature Magazine: East Of Zion 1

June 16th, 2011

East Of Zion By Philip Hyde

Originally published by Nature Magazine, March 1957

(Nature Magazine was published by the American Nature Association and taken over by Natural History Magazine in 1960.)

Mission of Nature Magazine: “To stimulate public interest in every phase of nature and the outdoors, and devoted to the practical conservation of the great natural resources of America.”

From Wikipedia: American Nature Association, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, was the publisher of Nature Magazine from 1923 to 1959;[1] and a discount reseller of natural science books for its members.[2] It was founded by Arthur Newton Pack and his father, Charles.[3] Nature Magazine was an “illustrated monthly with popular articles about nature”[4] and later, the “interpreter of the great outdoors.”[5] A May 1924 review of the organization and its magazine, written by Carroll Lane Fenton and published in American Midland Naturalist called the magazine “excellent” with “abundant pictures, admirably printed”; and said it was a “highly worth while publication” that deserves a wide circulation among town and school libraries.”[2] Natural History magazine absorbed Nature Magazine in January 1960.[6]

References:

  1. WorldCat
  2. Journal Storage (JSTOR)
  3. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
  4. Google Books
  5. National Mail Order Association
  6. Smithsonian Institute Libraries

East Of Zion By Philip Hyde

A Glimpse of the Geology of Zion National Park

Wall Of Hidden Canyon, Zion National Park, Utah, copyright 1977 by Philip Hyde.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here.)

To a casual tourist, the eastern portion of Zion National Park in Utah may be just an area through which to pass quickly on the way to the spectacularly beautiful, pink and white walled Zion Canyon on the Virgin River. It is this Zion Canyon that gives its name to the National Park. A closer look along the way, however, reveals many highly interesting facts and features. If the visitor is interested in poking a bit beneath the surface appearances of the landscape, this country will come alive for him. Here are all the ingredients that went into the making of the more showy Virgin River canyon, but in this eastern area it is possible to examine them more intimately.

This part of the country is reached on Utah State Highway 15, from the west by way of Zion Canyon, or from the east from Mt. Carmel Junction. The traveler from the east will find the formations on the way to Zion National Park from either Bryce Canyon National Park, on the north, or Grand Canyon National Park, over the Arizona line to the south. In a region so abundant with colorful natural wonders, this area fully deserves its status as part of one of the great National Parks established to protect these natural wonders.

If you come west from the Mt. Carmel Junction, into Zion National Park, you will emerge gently into this colorfully carved introduction through Zion Canyon. The highway from the junction runs roughly west, climbing first over a series of plateau-ridges, then, near the entrance checking station at the Park boundary, it begins to descend gradually. Almost before you become aware of it, small canyons are born and mature rapidly on either side of the highway. By the time you reach the east portal of the Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel the canyon that the highway has rough paralleled has become a vertically walled abyss. Intermingled with the deepening system of canyons that form the drainage of the usually dry plateau are great, gradually sloping, stratified sandstone pavements, with their delicately eroded concentric curves that are the delight of photographers and painters in search of interesting forms and color. The formation exposed in this area is the same Navajo Sandstone that forms the top layers of the cliffs and towers of Zion Canyon. Seen in these more intimate and accessible surroundings, the erosion sculptures fashioned by the artful fingers of wind and water can be more closely appreciated.

In the washes at the feet of these stone pavements, in the proper season, are many and varied wildflowers and plants. If your visit occurs during early summer, you may be rewarded by the sight of the bright-plumed spikes of yucca, or clumps of the brilliant orange butterfly milkweed. The sharp, linear, spike-like forms of the yuccas are in pleasing contrast to the swirling curves of the stratified rocks.

Probably the landmark that will be first remembered by most visitors to Zion National Park from the East is the pale pyramid of Checkerboard Mesa, whose bulk is framed in one’s windshield shortly after leaving the checking station. This is a well-known example of what geologists call “cross-bedding,” and tells us that this region, in a remote period of earth-history, was a dry, sandy, desert-like place. Only the caprice of desert winds, constantly shifting loose sand, could produce the intricate layered patterns as we see them today, solidified into rock. This rock, however, is relatively soft, and is highly susceptible to the sculpturing forces of erosion that patiently pluck it away, grain by grain.

Continued in the upcoming blog post, “Nature Magazine: East Of Zion 2.”

Learn more about Bryce Canyon National Park in the blog post, “New Release: Formations From Bryce Point, Bryce Canyon National Park.”

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Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 1

June 6th, 2011

Martin Litton, “Father of Redwood National Park,” “Grand Old Man of the Colorado River” and David Brower’s “Conservation Conscience.”

Martin Litton, Palo Alto, California, September 2009, Wikipedia. Martin Litton was 93 years old and still speaking on behalf of the Sequoia Redwoods.

The environmental organization, Save America’s Forests, on its website referred to Martin Litton as the “Father of Redwood National Park.” The Los Angeles Times called Martin Litton, “The Grand Old Man of the Colorado River.” The Sierra Club’s first Executive Director, David Brower called Martin Litton his “conservation conscience.” In the groundbreaking Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, Martin Litton used several different names for his photograph credits because as Senior Editor of Sunset Magazine, Sunset did not want him involved in controversial conservation campaigns. Regardless of what he’s referred to as, Martin Litton has proved to be what Voice of the Environment called him, “The great American conservationist of the 20th century.”

In addition to being an environmental activist and conservationist, Sierra Club Board member, bush pilot, river guide, hiker, writer, journalist and landscape photographer, Martin Litton today at age 94 has held leadership titles with many environmental groups including Save America’s Forests, Lighthawk, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and Glen Canyon Institute.

Shortly after the Sierra Club Board made David Brower the first Executive Director in 1952, David Brower saw articles Martin Litton wrote in the Los Angeles Times about proposed dams in Dinosaur National Monument. David Brower invited Martin Litton to join the Sierra Club and thus a powerful alliance began. To learn more about David Brower see the blog post, “David Brower: Photographer and Environmentalist 1.”

David Brower wrote in his 1982 introduction to Martin Litton’s University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library Oral History: “Some people get the kudos and others, out of inequity, don’t. Martin Litton is due most of those addressed to me in error: More years than I will ever admit, he has been my conservation conscience.” In the same introduction, David Brower added:

If you look over the illustrations in the battle to save Dinosaur National Monument, you will find Charles Eggert’s color films, “This Is Dinosaur” and “Wilderness River Trail,” Philip Hyde’s beautiful work in black and white, and Martin Litton’s 16mm color, 4X5 color, and black and white photographs from cameras he happened to be carrying in battery, along with an eye and ear that missed nothing. That was the beginning, but only the beginning. The proper photo history of Martin Litton , with accompanying legends, could occupy many volumes… If there was a piece of American environment that had problems, Martin found out about it, wrote about it, photographed it from the surface or, with a hand on the stick, from the air. Sometimes he could use his own name. At other times, he was Clyde Thomas or Homer Gasquez. So you have to go through numberless publications and add all three names up to appreciate the aggregate retrospective of Martin Litton.

One year the Sierra Club directors, having voted for Grand Canyon dams and a year later reversed themselves, were ready to re-reverse. Martin’s knowledge and eloquence stopped them. They were ready to go for the wrong Redwood National Park. It was Martin who knew where the best Redwoods were, who had the creativity to propose a comprehensive Redwood National Park that would have been a monument to conservation genius. We didn’t get it because organizational jealousies within the conservation movement—one of the major threats to environment—got in the way. It was Martin who knew where the gentle wilderness was on the Kern Plateau—wilderness that should have been added to Sequoia National Park. “Old-boy” conservation trades got in the way. It was Martin, alas, who happened to be in Bagdad when the Sierra Club directors voted, without seeing it, to accept Diablo Canyon as an alternate site for the reactor proposed to be built at Nipomo Dunes. Had he been in San Francisco instead, a different history would have been written… When the Sierra Club Board was discussing what to do at Mineral King with respect to Walt Disney’s proposed ski development, and when I myself had wobbled and was about to go along, it was Martin who got me to reverse myself right there on the spot, in front of everybody.

More on Martin Litton, David Brower and Martin Litton’s travels and projects with Philip Hyde in the next and other future blog posts in this series, “Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 2.”

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