Fall 2002 - The North Cascades

Fall 2002 - The North Cascades

Editor's Note
By Kate Koch, Editor-in-Chief

Click, swish, tap. Click, swish, tap.

The last decent radio station turned to static three miles east of Marblemount, Wash. The only thing I could hear was the gentle tap of rain on the windshield, the wipers whisking the water away and the hum of my Jeep's motor. I needed inspiration.

The idea for this issue of The Planet started with an epiphany during a lecture last spring. I was watching a slide show with images from a summer backpacking trip across the North Cascades crest when I realized how special it was to be this close to such an amazing and wild place. Snow-capped peaks and blue glaciers, gnarled trees and 300-foot waterfalls flashed across the screen, each slide more impressive than the last.

We set out to cover everything, but sadly we couldn't possibly do it all in 28 pages of text. Instead, we put together a selective look at the North Cascades' peaks, places and people. We tell the story of the Northwest's playground through the eyes of an elder of the climbing community, with the voice of a lookout-turned-poet and from the heart of a constantly changing mountain range.

Initially, our goal was to encourage people to get out and enjoy the powerful landscape - the rugged trails and winding gravel roads, the blue skies and misty gorges, the mudslides and wildfires. But the more we listened, the more we learned that getting people to visit the region might not be the best thing for it.

This issue isn't a regurgitation of expert opinions. It highlights real people in real places. We talked to farmers who worry about grizzly bears eating their livestock and U.S. Customs officers who worry about being killed by drug runners. We met scientists who watch glaciers accumulate pollutants and lose mass each year. We saw a village completely isolated from the rest of the world and a basin being loved to death by climbers.

I thought about these things as I traveled west on Highway 20, heading back to the office to put the finishing touches on this issue. The road wound around the base of mountains taller than skyscrapers. I leaned forward and looked up through the windshield, straining to see their tops, but they were engulfed in a cloud of mist. I settled back in my seat and watched the wet, blue-tinted rock walls change to orange as the sun peaked out from under the clouds before it slipped into Puget Sound. The rain stopped. I smiled to myself, turned off my windshield wipers and turned on the radio.

Fall 2002 - The North Cascades

Editor's Note By Kate Koch, Editor-in-Chief

Editor's Note
By Kate Koch, Editor-in-Chief