RECREATIOIM IN THE FEDERAL FOREST RESERVES 



461 



then that we were planning anything uni()ue, but they 

 told us afterward that we are the first women who 

 ever tramped in this region alone. I know that in the 

 southern foot-hills of Mt. Baker another friend and I 

 ha\e tramped to homesteads alone for thirteen years. 

 There may have been early women homesteaders in 

 this region, but we are the first women to start out 

 from Glacier into the Reserve alone and just for the 

 pleasure of it. 



At 5 :15 p. m., with packs containing face cream 

 and powder, soap, towels, comb, tooth-brushes, one 

 five-cent can of milk, one glass of dried beef, one loaf 

 bread, some malted milk tablets, nut-meats, raisins, 

 sweet chocolate, five sticks candy and three oranges 

 we started on a three days' tram]) ; the first station 

 to be at Excelsior, seven miles up the Nooksack river. 

 I wore my khaki mountain suit and my friend a blue 

 flannel blouse and bloomers. We both wore winter 

 underclothes, woolen stockings, mountain shoes and 

 carried our sweaters. My sweater was my only mis- 

 take — it was too heavy. At six we stopped by the 

 river, a roaring mountain river, and ate our supper in 

 the rosy afterglow of the sun sinking behind the black 

 mountain ridges. \\^e had phoned ahead and made 

 arrangements to stay the night with the Dickson fam- 

 ily at Excelsior. Mr. Dickson is manager of an elec- 

 tric power plant located at Nooksack falls. They and 

 three other families that work for them are the only 

 people living in this romantic place. The Nooksack 

 river boils past their back porch and at high water 

 rises up to the porch. A huge hill, a mountain, rises 

 across the road from their front door. Everywhere 

 there were great clumps of the red berried elderberry 

 loaded with scarlet fruit. 



It is an ideal place to Wve for with all this wildness 

 and grandeur they had the comforts of civilization; 



ALONG THE BERRY BORDERED TRAIL 



Miss Baker and her friend in their mountaineering costume on one of the 

 trails on the approach to Mt. Baker. 



FROiM GLACIER TO EXCELSIOR 



The road winds through magniticent forests from the gate of the Reserve 

 at Glacier, many miles along a plateau nine hundred feet above sea level. 



lights in abundance, electric cookers, hot and cold 

 water, bath, piano, graphophone, books, magazines 

 and lovely rooms. I can't remember when I have had 

 such refreshing sleep as I enjoyed this night. After 

 breakfast Mr. Dickson took us over the plant where 

 they make the force that furnishes transportation and 

 light for Bellingham fifty miles away. The plant in 

 no way destroys the picturesqueness of this spot. 

 The walls of the valley are really mountains and the 

 vast dimensions dwarf the buildings of the plant until 

 they give just the evidence of human interest the val- 

 ley needs. There are innumerable cascades and water- 

 falls in the Washington forests, but the Nooksack 

 falls are not ordinary falls. The plant onl}- uses one- 

 third of their power. By a bend in the rock bed and 

 wall the falls are half encircled and the sound of the 

 falling waters in this huge bowl reverberates like the 

 tones of a pipe organ. Far out on the rocky walls, in 

 the mist, is a bunch of blue hare-bells and they will 

 never be disturbed by men for until the water stops 

 flowing no human hand can reach them. 



It was nine when we started for our next stopping 

 place, Herman, seven miles farther into the mountain. 

 There are several shacks here, but only one is oc- 

 cupied. This is owned by a bachelor, a miner, who 

 keeps a road house when he isn't off to his mine. The 



