Groups of hikers gather to take in sights and images from the summit of the High Rock Lookout hike Sunday afternoon near Ashford.
The trail leading to the historic High Rock Lookout in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest will be closed from Aug. 19-22 to allow a restoration project for the lookout cabin to commence.
The overall goal of the project is to bring the cabin that sits on top of the High Rock Lookout back to a habitable quarters where volunteers could stay and look out for the lookout.
“Once the lookout is habitable with lightning protection and everything,” said Martha Garoutte, treasurer of the White Pass Country Historical Society, “through the Historical Society, we will be putting volunteer stewards on board to stay up there. You can stay overnight in the lookout for however many days you want and interact with the people visiting.”
Since the structure was built by the U.S. Forest Service in the early 1930s to be used as a forest fire lookout, it has seen 90 years worth of extreme weather, vandalism and neglect, according to a press release from GPNF.
It will be an ongoing process, said Garoutte — and one that has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic — but this portion of the project will focus on getting the window panes out of the aging cabin and transporting them down the 1.6-mile trail through steep terrain.
“First it was going to be mules, but that’s not going to happen, it is going to be people packing the windows down,” Garoutte said.
Garoutte added that the Sand Mountain Society based out of Oregon is working alongside the White Pass Country Historical Society with the project and has taken the lead on construction of the new cabin.
The project, which is funded entirely through private donations, was supposed to get started in July with volunteers stripping the cabin down to the base and then airlifting the materials off of the lookout with a helicopter. Those materials would either be refurbished or thrown out.
However, COVID-19 threw a wrench into that plan. It has left the partnering organizations to decide what can and can’t be done during the public health crisis, but also how to best allocate the resources they have with uncertainty swelling over how many more donations they will receive because of the financial impacts of COVID-19.
Garoutte explained that they project the restoration to cost in the ballpark of $30,000 to $50,000, and decisions like using people to carry materials to and from the lookout instead of airlifting them with a helicopter are because they determined it would be more cost effective, Garoutte said.
COVID-19 has also disrupted the timeline of the project, which was supposed to begin in July and be done in installments over three years. Now, with the initial delay and potential economic repercussions that are likely to follow, the completion date is up in the air, Garoutte said.
The White Pass Country Historical Society is still accepting donations for the project. Donations can be made at their website, www.whitepasscountrymuseum.org.
