The Mountaineer 13 
A. H. Denman 
MT. OLYMPUS Mt. Olympus to the north about twenty miles distant. Looking 
FROM THE across a sea of virgin, evergreen forest on the sloping headwaters 
a a of Chileechee creek, which empties into the Queets river. From the 
KNIFE-EDGE TRAIL Knife-edge trail. 
25 to 30 
field men during the summer months—including the expenditure of a 
sales, and in fact all the activities of the present forest force 
special fund of $5,200 for trail, telephone line, pasture fence, and cabin 
construction. 
The above brief statement of the timber resources of the Olympic 
National Forest and what can be expected in the way of perpetual 
production of this product commercially, makes at once apparent the 
wisdom from a purely financial point of view of national control and 
administration of this million and a half acres of mountainous timber 
land. But there are numerous other considerations. 
The best available statistics show a per capita consumption of 
260 cubie feet of wood in this country (37 and 25 cubic feet, respec- 
tively, in Germany and France), or an annual cutting from our forests 
of three and one third times the annual growth. This does not include 
the annual loss by forest fires. Another value than the purely financial 
consideration in the present National Forest policy is therefore easily 
evident, and the Olympie which today contains practically one- 
eighteenth of all the timber on the 160 national forests in the United 
States proper will prove of particularly prominent assistance to the 
future generations. 
In addition to the financial and perpetuation considerations, all 
timbered areas in mountainous regions exert a very appreciable con- 
trol on the flood tendencies of rivers and creeks, and on the erosive 
or soil wash action of rains on steep slopes. Particularly is this true 
