RECREATION IN THE FEDERAL FOREST RESERVES 



BY IDA AGNES BAKER 



OUR vacation was a ten days' tramp among the 

 foot hills of Mt. Baker, in the Washington Na- 

 tional Forest Reserve; and "we" means two 

 women who enjoy the woods and the out-doors and 

 wished to begin a nearer acquaintance with old Koma 

 Kulshan. We had no ambitions for dashing straight 

 to his summit, as so many try to do. We wished to 

 climb to a few of the outer courts, greet him afresh 

 on each rise, see him in many moods and reckon with 

 our own moods as well. We didn't care to join a big 

 mountain climbing party. We hoped to be able to go 

 alone. A crov\'d overwhelms sylvan life with its 

 human chatter, but two people can quietly blend into 

 the shadows and stillness of the forest life. This was 

 as near as we came to having a plan when we started. 

 Of course the fact that there is no recreation in tramp- 

 ing with a heavy pack on your back was a deciding 

 condition in planning our trip. 



On the twenty-fourth of July we went to Glacier 

 with a party of thirteen students from the Normal 

 Summer School, ready to climb Heliotrope Ridge. 

 Glacier is a village at one of the gates of entrance 

 to this Reserve. It is forty miles, by train or auto, 

 from Bellingham and Puget Sound and nine hundred 

 feet above the level of the sea. It exists just because 



of the mountain. From it trails radiate to coal mines, 

 gold mines, Forestry Lookout stations and mountain 

 climbing stations. It lodges miners and mountaineers 

 and summer guests, and it furnishes packhorses, 

 packers and mountain guides. It sells food and post 

 cards. Has a tennis court with a hotel, one street, a 

 side walk that you risk your life walking upon, several 

 pretty little homes and is a Forest Ranger's Station. 

 It is surrounded by boiling grey-green glacial rivers, 

 virgin forests and mountains and enveloped in air that 

 is exhilarating. 



From here the party had planned to climb Helio- 

 trope Ridge on Saturday and return on Sunday. We 

 were going with them, but we had as yet no definite 

 plans as to when we would return to either Glacier 

 or Bellingham. Heliotrope Ridge is one of the sta- 

 tions for the Marathon runners who raced from Bel- 

 lingham to Mt. Baker's summit and back. It is ten 

 and one-half miles from Glacier and fifty-three hun- 

 dred feet elevation and four miles from the summit. 



The first nine miles of the trail is easy tramping, 

 in the deep forest by beautiful waterfalls, over old 

 burns and one treacherous slide. It was so surjjris- 

 inglv easy that my friends protested "there will surely 

 be a day of reckoning." There was. The last mile 



THE SNOW FIELD ON THE APPROACH TO MT. BAKER 

 The- .lllthor and a fripml spent ten clays trampinR in the foot hills around this fine mountain which is in the Washington National Forest Reserve. 



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