Emmett Blanchfield

At the same time, I had a project up on Crater Rock on the south side of Mount Hood to build a climbers shelter up there. So I designed a shelter that was built at Crater Rock. I had to design the lookout on the summit of Mount Hood to determine if that could be rehabilitated and strengthened as another shelter for climbers. I remember, particularly, this trail on the old historic Barlow Road, coming over the mountain, and we made a bridal trail out of it. We had rustic signing incorporated in it. There were a number of very interesting projects while I was there at Zigzag Ranger Station. I even drew up a plan for the development for a local school. Where it is now, a major condominium and recreation area by the Welches golf course. Things like that would come into being. We did a lot of work with the local communities around the forest. I had some interesting field trips up to the Oak Grove Ranger Station by taking what we call a speeder car up through one of the city of Portland dams and electrical projects. But you’d take this little speeder car and you’d sit on the side of this speeder car and you’d go over these trestles and then all of a sudden you’re looking down between your knees and there was a drop off that looked like several hundred feet. You were up high on the trestle above the river. Then a lot of backcountry horseback trips. The Forest Service type of work was quite interesting in that there were a lot of backcountry campgrounds and hot springs like at Bagby Hot Springs. It was first about a 12-mile speeder trip and then a 17 mile horseback trip into the backcountry to Bagby Hot Springs, where we planned the development of campgrounds and the development of the hot springs itself. On the matter of shelters on the Timberline Trail, I had to come up with the design of stone shelters that would be on the 32-mile length of the trial. In scouting that out, it was quite interesting because I had to climb up over the Zigzag and then the Reed Glacier, and finally up to the Sandy Glacier. At one time, looking back where I had been, I was just right up above a yawing crevasse with about 2,000 foot drop off just below it. I didn’t realize that I was walking across terrain like that until I had gotten over into a glacial moraine on the Sandy Glacier.