Know Your Forest Bacon Creek

According to my dad, the fire that burned over Cow Heaven from Jackman Creek in 1929 burned all the way to Bacon Creek (see Know Your Forest Cow Heaven post of July 2, 2013). This was before his time but, from the evidence I can see, the majority of the forest in this drainage is second growth in an old burn. I don't know if the second growth in this old burn on Bacon Creek grew back after the Jackman/CowHeaven fire or some slightly earlier fire. This wouldn't be out of the question, sometimes you see where forest fires burn into areas that are still occupied by younger trees from a previous burn.

The logging that started in this area in the 1940’s was probably in stands of unburned old growth.  The second growth stand extends from Bacon Creek over the ridge to the west into the Diobsud Creek drainage and across Diobsud Creek onto the Cow Heaven slopes. There are patches of old growth timber mixed in with the second growth stand, often around bluffs, and there are a few old growth Douglas-firs with fire scars above an inactive rock pit below some bluffs about half a mile up the Bacon Creek Road. The forest from Bacon Creek to Cow Heaven is about the same size and looks very similar. I think it is safe to say that my dad’s information was correct.

I did run into a lot of old growth, 5 to 6 foot dbh (diameter at breast height) Douglas-fir and western red cedar on the west side of Bacon Creek. These trees were all fire scarred and had a thick understory of second growth, so this area burned as well. The trees were growing in amongst a number of bluffs with drop offs of up to 20 or 30 feet or more. I ended up getting cliffed out and having to back track several hundred feet and go south, skirting below another set of cliffs to get out. The thick stand of timber in the bluffs fooled me. Usually, if there are a lot of trees, there is usually a way down that doesn’t require ropes and rock climbing.

I encountered this stand of timber on my way out of Hiyu Lake which is on the ridge between Bacon Creek and the head of Falls Creek, which drains to Bacon Creek. Hiyu is the Indian or Native American name for Bacon Peak. I don’t know if the creek bore that name as well before European Americans arrived. The current name, Bacon, is for Albert Bacon, who homesteaded on the creek.

I don’t know much about Albert Bacon beyond the fact that his wife was Indian. I don’t even know her name or which tribe she belonged to. I do vaguely recall my dad mentioning him in passing in some stories. He is mentioned in some history books and the information in those books is probably more abundant and more accurate than any I could provide. I do know several interesting stories about his sons, Huey and Leonard.

The one about Huey is from before my dad’s time. My grandpa told it to my dad. It seems that Huey Bacon had a trap line up Bacon Creek. One winter they found his canoe empty in the creek (everybody traveled in canoes in those days) and no Huey. He had disappeared. Seven years later, someone was going down the Skagit and, at the big eddy at the confluence of Bacon Creek they happened to look into the water and see a body. The body was fished out and it turned out that it was Huey Bacon. According to my grandpa, it looked like he had died the day before except the body looked taller and one finger was bent at an odd angle. The Bacons were big men, so I have always been told, nearly seven feet tall. Well, evidently, Huey was a bit taller after they fished him out of the river.

I know this story sounds pretty fantastical. Of course, the story could have been remembered wrong or garbled with other stories, either by my dad or me or both. From what I have been reading recently, it appears that each time we retrieve a memory, it is altered in some way. The story may have simply been misunderstood somewhere in the telling as well.

The thing about this story that has a ring of truth to it is the fact that it was passed down at all. In my grandpa’s day everybody used the river to travel so there were a lot more opportunities for people to wind up drowned, especially since life jackets were unheard of. So that was the fate of a lot of people on the river. They were always hauling drowning victims out of the river. So another dead person wouldn’t really be worthy of note. However, if that person had disappeared for a long time then suddenly appeared in the river years later, that would be worthy of note. The strangeness of Huey disappearing and showing up years later was stressed in the story as it was passed down to me. The story may not be one hundred percent accurate but whatever happened to Huey Bacon didn’t happen every day.

Assuming that Huey Bacon disappeared for years then suddenly turned up drowned, is there a rational explanation for it? When I was younger, I figured that the water must have been cold enough to preserve the body. Years of checking salmon carcasses in spawning channels disabused me of that theory.

For quite a few years I checked spawning channels during the coldest time of year, November to February. Sometimes after the salmon die they float and I noticed that on these floating carcasses, the parts of the fish out of the water decomposed more slowly because these parts became frozen. The parts under the water remained unfrozen and rotted rapidly, down to bones in a month or two. Fish that sank immediately after dying decomposed rapidly as well. In addition to this, there were a number of aquatic insects, especially caddis flies, that ate the carcasses. So anything dead in the river would be gone in a short time, a few months or maybe a year for something big but not years.

The most logical explanation I can think of for this story is that Huey Bacon was drowned either in, or shortly before a flood. Floods are frequent occurrences, so it is likely that, unless it was a really big flood, it wouldn’t have made it into the story or it was forgotten at some point. During floods, an enormous amount of sediment is moved by streams and enormous amounts of sediment and debris (and maybe bodies) are deposited in the slack water of eddies. If the sediment is fine, the conditions in it can become anoxic, or without oxygen. Remember too, that this was before there were any dams on the Skagit so there was probably quite a bit more very fine glacial flour in the system in those days than there is now.

Anoxia inhibits or completely stops the bacteria that decompose things. This is why the Lady of the Lake in Lake Crescent on the Olympic Peninsula didn’t decompose even years after death and why intact bodies are sometimes found in the peat bogs of Europe thousands of years after death. 

My theory goes that Huey was buried in the eddy by a flood and was exposed by another flood years later as the currents changed and eroded the sediment he was buried in. The body was found shortly thereafter before any serious decomposition occurred.

Of, course, as I pointed out earlier, the story might all be a garbled understanding of the words passed down, a game of telephone over one hundred years old. Even if this is the case, it still makes an interesting story.

I think this is how the myths and legends of older cultures come about. Something worthy of note happens and it is passed down in a story. As time goes on, the story is changed or added on to as the tellers misremember and mash stories together and later generations, lacking context and first hand knowledge, add their own stories or special touches to it. This would be especially prevalent if the stories weren’t written down. After many years and generations, you end up with a tale that might sound pretty fantastical but which often has a core of truth to it. These myths and legends can be entertaining as well as educational and they help maintain cultures.

I have heard stories about Leonard Bacon from at least four different people. My dad and uncle Nick used to watch him cut timber when they were little kids. In the days of the falling axe and crosscut saw, when cutting timber was a two man job, he cut timber by himself and kept up with the two man crews.

According to my dad, one time Leonard did have a cutting partner. When this partner didn’t show up after a couple of days, dad and uncle Nick asked what happened to him. Leonard made a statement to the effect that it wasn’t too bad when the guy was just hanging on the other end of the saw but, when he started digging in his feet, he (Leonard) had to get rid of him.

As I stated earlier, he was a big man. Sometimes in the winter, dad’s family would see these huge barefoot tracks in the snow along the railroad tracks near their cabin. When they asked what could have made them, my grandpa said it was just Leonard Bacon walking by on his way home. Evidently, in the wintertime when there wasn’t any work in the woods, Leonard had a habit of walking around shirtless and barefoot, drinking whiskey. My uncle Nick thinks the tracks were made by sasquatch.

One other story I heard about Leonard Bacon was from a guy I worked with over at Darrington. This guy had worked with Leonard up on the Suiattle and he said that Leonard made excellent blueberry pie.

Leonard Bacon lived near Bacon Creek. I don’t know if his homestead was separate from his dad’s or whether he inherited the land from his dad. His place is just upstream of Bacon Creek on the Skagit River. Seattle City Light owns the property now and operates it as a Boy Scout camp called Camp Marion. The building there now was built after Leonard’s time. The last time I was down there, a few years ago, there were still a few old fruit trees in the clearing. There is a very good chance that these trees were planted by Leonard Bacon himself.

There was also a man named Frank Oakes who homesteaded several miles upstream on Bacon Creek. From what I have heard, he was a bachelor and given to speaking profanities. In those days, it was a big social taboo to swear in the presence of women. When he went to town to get supplies, if the person attending to him in the store was a woman, he wrote everything he needed down on a piece of paper and didn’t say a word. Evidently he didn’t trust himself to keep a civil tongue and this was his way of being polite. This story is also from the time my dad was a little kid.

Frank Oakes’ place is still there, although a lot of it washed away in a big flood in 2003. Oakes Peak and Oakes Creek are named after Frank Oakes.

When I was a kid, there was a big old victorian house that sat just north of Highway 20 and just west of the Bacon Creek road. My memory of this house is somewhat fuzzy. In my time nobody lived there but a friend who was about 15 years older than me said his grandmother lived there and they used to roller skate around the porch. The house was torn down sometime in the late 1970's or early 1980's and the land it occupied was used for a gravel pit. The pit was later abandoned and trees were planted back in the area so now it is a young forest. 

Until the Northwest Forest Plan was enacted in the early 1990’s, there had been logging activity going on in the Bacon Creek watershed since at least the 1940’s. One of the first logging jobs my uncle Ez worked on was up there, shortly before he was drafted into the Second World War. My dad laid out quite a few timber sales in the area and planted a lot of trees as well when he worked for the U.S. Forest Service. He was once stalked by a cougar while laying out a timber sale. I worked there on several timber sales and also cut a lot of firewood.

Bacon Creek has also always been an important hunting spot for myself and a lot of people I know. It is also a pretty popular camping spot for many people.

Recently this area has been proposed for inclusion in an expanded North Cascades National Park. If this happens, hunting will no longer be allowed. This wouldn’t just be for game animals. Mushroom hunting will not be allowed either. Dogs would not be allowed. Forget about any wood cutting. And, since North Cascades is primarily a wilderness park, the road would probably be torn out, making this area inaccessible to people who lack the physical capability to walk miles.

The people behind this expansion effort claim that this area needs to be “protected”. Protected from whom? Protected for whom? I ask. As it is, anyone who can drive can access this area and its scenery and they can do it in a reasonable amount of time, always an important consideration in our time strapped society. Of course the road allows easy access to some slobs who trash certain small areas but, from my observations, this is pretty minor in nature with the exception of a forest fire started by a careless act in the early 1990's. As far as that fire goes, there are lots of people who act irresponsibly in a number of ways. We don't shut our highways down because some people drive on them irresponsibly do we?

In the proposal for an expanded National Park there is some talk of “family friendly” trails. What exactly is a “family friendly” trail? This seems like a term borrowed from something like family friendly restaurant. Does a “family friendly” trail mean that it meets ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) standards? The road that is there now makes Bacon Creek accessible to anyone who can drive or ride in a motor vehicle. So you would need trails meeting ADA standards to maintain even some semblance of the access that is available now, and this would still preclude people with certain disabilities from access.

I have it on authority from a friend who, until recently, built and maintained trails, including ADA trails for a living. According to this friend, ADA trails cost about 100,000 dollars per mile or more to build. Who is going to pay for this. Not the Park Service or North Cascades National Park. Neither has a budget for this. This is a problem because often the big, grand things like expanding the park happen but no one takes care of the little details like making sure there is a budget big enough to carry out all of the grand plans. This is what happened when North Cascades National Park was originally established and, as a result, this park has suffered from an inadequate budget to this day.

At the end of the day, road might still be torn out because the U.S. Forest Service also doesn’t have funds to maintain the road. When the Northwest Forest Plan was enacted in 1994 (I think), timber harvest virtually stopped on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest (and other National Forests as well I’m sure) and Congress declined to backfill the revenue lost from timber sales so there is no money for maintenance.

I’m sure that, if the road was torn out, there would be a number of people who would be quite pleased with this development. I am not one of them. This place belongs to everyone, not just a small number of elites and idealists who think only the "right" people should be allowed in the woods.

The fact that the Bacon Creek area is deemed worthy of “protection” after decades of logging and recreational use, speaks volumes to the capacity of these forests to recover and also, probably the ignorance of many of those behind the “protection” movement. Most of these people don’t live here in the first place and most of those that do live here came recently and have no idea of the history of this place. The sections of forest along the road that have never been cut, the ones that are most visible and readily accessible and probably the one that these folks are looking at aren’t that old. They are the second growth forest grown back after the 1929 burn and 84 years old isn't old by tree standards, in fact, there are people still alive today that saw that fire or its immediate aftermath. I also suspect that these "protection" folks don’t really know the difference between this “natural” forest and the stands that have grown back after logging.

Following are photos of stands of timber on Bacon Creek whose history I am familiar with. Some are stands that were thinned, others are old clear cuts. These are stands of timber growing back from areas where timber was harvested to meet society's needs for any number of products including building materials. While it is true that these stands are not old growth, they are not pictures of complete and utter devastation either. 

Old growth Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) above an inactive rock pit about half a mile up the Bacon Creek Road. The leaning tree is an old growth fir as is the tree that it appears to lean into as well as the three taller trees in the background. Old growth trees are often taller than the surrounding trees and their foliage is blocky not smooth like younger trees. 

Base of the Douglas-fir shown in the previous photo. This is the tree that the leaning tree in the previous photo appears to be leaning into. The fire scars on the the trunk of this tree are obvious. 

Other old growth Douglas-firs at the top of the pit. These trees a smaller than the one previously pictured, probably in part because they are growing on a rock. They may also be younger than the tree in the previous photo. Since rocky areas often prevent a thick forest from getting established, shade intolerant species like Douglas-fir can get established at any time as long as the seed happens to fall in the perfect spot where there are enough resources for the tree to live and grow.

Another Douglas-fir near the top of the pit showing fire scars on its lower trunk. This tree doesn't look very healthy and will probably be dead before too many more years pass. It is probably not helped out by its growing site which is rather harsh and may be prone to drouth. However, it was probably not killed by the fire because of the site as well. I don't know that much about fire behavior, but it seems that trees that survive large forest fires are often in the vicinity of bluffs and rocky areas. There is probably much less fuel for a fire in these areas and less ladder fuels that would allow a fire to spread from the ground into the crown of a tree and kill it.   

Forest in the 1929 burn. The Douglas-fir to my left has obviously burned. The snag in the left foreground of this photo is a second growth Douglas-fir snag. The tree that became this snag was about the same age as the two living Douglas-firs on either side of me. The snag tree died as part of the natural thinning process that most forests go through. 

Different view of the previous photo. The burned snag is in the foreground in this photo and there is another old growth snag to my right in the background. The second growth Douglas-fir snag in the foreground of the previous photo is just visible behind a small western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) to my immediate right. 

This was near Oakes Creek. It was a thinning sale in the 1929 burn area which, according to this sign, was also planted after timber harvest. I actually found the roads for this sale while hunting before I stumbled across this sign. I am sure the roads and this sign were quite visible when I was a kid and I had forgotten about them as time went by and things grew up.  

I am standing on the edge of one of the roads for the thinning sale. The western hemlock on my left has a barked area or cat's face from the logging activity. The Douglas-fir just to the left of the hemlock on my left probably grew back after the 1929 burn. 

Thinning sale boundary. The aluminum tag on the hemlock on my right denotes the edge of the area to be cut. The stump to my lower right was cut during the logging of this thinning sale. 

I am standing on top of a berm in one of the roads through the thinning sale. When these roads were abandoned after logging, berms were put in to help control erosion. The surface of the road has a thick growth of small trees, mostly hemlock on it.  

The forest in the thinning sale area. It looks like they came in and took the smaller suppressed (with tops below the main canopy) trees and left most of the dominant trees. It also looks like in some areas of the sale the trees were growing more slowly and were smaller than the average of the rest of the stand so they were thinned to encourage more rapid growth by making more resources available to the remaining trees. 

More forest in the thinning sale area. The snag to my right is an old growth Douglas-fir that was probably killed in the 1929 burn. 

The stump to my right has knurled over. This happens when a tree is cut down which has its roots connected to nearby trees via root grafts or networks of ectomycorhizzal fungi. The stump doesn't die. It is fed by the nearby trees and continues to grow and eventually the bark will grow over and completely cover the cut stump. In this case, the stump was only a few feet from the tree in the background. I have noticed knurling most often in areas of poorer soils where the trees grow more slowly. I don't know if this is because trees are more prone to root grafting under those conditions or there is more ectomycorhizzal fungi present or simply because thinning is used more often as a forest management practice in these stands to encourage faster growth in the remaining uncut trees. 

Close up of knurled over stump from previous photo. 

Forest in thinning sale area. Note the fire killed Douglas-fir snags, two right of center frame and one left of center frame. 

Forest in thinning sale area. Note the fire killed western red cedar (Thuja plicata) snag at center frame. 

Second growth stump in thinning area. It appears that more of the dominant Douglas-fir was taken in this area though plenty of dominant trees were also left. The stump to my was a dominant Douglas-fir. 

Looking 90 degrees downhill from the previous photo. The road is visible just below center frame. I am visible at the left edge of the frame. The larger trees in the photo were probably suppressed at the time of the thinning and their growth rate increased when the canopy of dominant trees was removed. The western red cedar just to the right of center frame has had bark harvested it in the traditional Native American way. A cut is made horizontally near the base of the tree and the bark is pulled off and up, leaving a "V" shape at the top of the stripped area. The bark is used for basketry, clothing or to make rope (cordage) or a number of other purposes. This practice doesn't kill the tree. It does leave a large scar where, over time, a cavity may develop that may be used by many species of wildlife. 

Thinning sale area near Oakes Creek. Note the dominant Douglas-fir stump partially hidden by shrubs near the left side of the frame. Also note the round "face" visible just to the left of center frame. This log may be a windfall that was harvested at a date later than the original timber sale. 

Burn dated about 1991 or 1992. Most of the area pictured was logged and replanted in the late 1980's or early '90's. Someone setting off fireworks during the summer dry season (when a burn ban was on) started the fire. When the fire was first reported it could have probably been fairly easily put out or at least contained with the assistance of a helicopter but this was delayed until the fire got out of control. This is one of the consequences of allowing access to public land, people will sometimes do foolish, irresponsible things and some people are slobs that leave litter everywhere but I don't think it is right to punish everyone for the acts of a irresponsible few by denying access wholesale. This would be like closing highways to everyone because there are some irresponsible drivers out there. I have done my share of foolish things but I have been fortunate enough, at least to this point, not to have caused any large scale damage. The person who started the fire replanted the burn. 

The forest in the 1991 or 1992 burn area. Our forests have an enormous capacity to recover from disturbances like fire because these events occur regularly albeit usually at longer intervals than a human lifetime. Even though the fire was accidentally caused by humans, the conditions created were not beyond the capacity of the forest to recover. The burn was replanted by humans which has resulted in a quicker restoration of a forest canopy though a forest would also have grown back on this spot without further human intervention. Just in front of me is a cedar stump that was harvested before the area burned. 

This photo was taken in an area off the road beyond Jumbo Creek. This road is now abandoned. This area was clear cut sometime in the 1960's. When I was a kid I helped my dad cut quite a bit of firewood out of old landings in this area. At that time, many of the trees were only a couple of inches in diameter and somewhere around 5 feet tall at the most. My dad and a coworker were stalked by cougar as they laid out a timber sale somewhere in this area. 

Looking downhill from same spot as previous photo. There is a lot of western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) and Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis)  in this stand and the stumps of these species rot more rapidly than Douglas-fir and red cedar. The large stump to my left and the one behind me in the previous photo are red cedar. 

Looking 180 degrees from previous two photos. 

This photo was taken on the Falls Creek or west side of Bacon Creek. This is in a unit that was logged in the late 1980's or early 1990's. An excellent patch of wild blackberry or dewberry (Rubus ursinus)  grew on the spot where I am standing when this area was more open after logging. I was able to get significant amounts of berries from this patch until about 2004. 

This area is near Falls Creek. It was thinned sometime in the 1950's. From the look of the forest, it appears that they harvested this particular spot rather heavily. In other areas they cut less.

Zoomed in view of the previous photo. Note the two cut stumps on the left side of the frame, one about at the horizontal centerline of the photo and the other below the horizontal centerline with moss and huckleberries growing on it. Also note the cut stump about at center frame above the horizontal center line.  

The same unit near Falls Creek thinned in the 1950's. The cut stump to my left is a western red cedar and the stump to its left is a Douglas-fir. The larger hemlock in the background was probably a very small diameter tree or even a seedling that was left when this area was thinned. 

This photo was taken a little downhill from the previous photo. The stump to my right is Douglas-fir. The western hemlock in front of it probably seeded in after logging. The larger western hemlock to my left (right side of frame) was probably a small diameter tree left during the logging operation.  

Looking about 90 degrees to the north from the previous photo. The cut stump at center frame is a Douglas-fir. The two snags to the left and up the hill from this stumps are also Douglas-fir. These snags were possibly killed in the 1929 fire or died at a later time before logging so they were left when the area was logged. From a wildlife standpoint, leaving snags is a good thing because they provide a lot wildlife habitat. From a safety standpoint, leaving snags is not such a good thing. Starting around the early 1970's the state safety rules required cutting down all snags in an area to be logged because they are the cause of many injuries and fatalities. 

Looking about 180 degrees south from the previous photo and a little further to the south along the hillside. All of the Douglas-fir here probably seeded in or was planted after logging. The tree to the left of me is a Douglas-fir which is not shade tolerant. So it would probably not be growing in the shade of the forest canopy. This tree either seeded in after the forest was opened up after logging or it was planted. Western hemlock and red cedar are both shade tolerant so it is more difficult to determine if individuals of these species were there before the area was logged or got established shortly afterward. The shade tolerant species, western hemlock, Pacific silver fir and western red cedar were not usually planted back after logging at the time this area was logged while Douglas-fir was replanted. 

Logging unit on the west side of Bacon Creek near Falls Creek. My dad helped lay out this sale. I believe he said it was logged (clear cut) with a large leave patch in 1964. I don't remember this for certain but it was definitely logged in the early 1960's. I have visited this area since I was 5 or 6 years old in the early 1970's and this logging unit has been there as long as I can remember, only the trees were smaller when I was a kid. The cutting line visible on the right side of the frame and lower on the hill was logged in the late 1980's or early 1990's in the leave patch from the 1964 unit.

Zoomed in view of previous photo giving a better view of the cutting line. I know of some logging units near here that were logged in the 1970's where the cutting line is no longer visible because the new growth has reached a height similar to the trees that weren't cut. Evidently the new growth here is a little slower. 

Looking up the hill from the valley bottom at the edge of the unit logged in about 1964 shown in the previous two photos. 

Forest in the circa 1964 logging unit. This unit was planted back to Douglas-fir but a number of other species are present in the current stand as well. 

Looking up the hill about 180 degrees out from the previous photo. Just below me to my right is a Douglas-fir stump from a tree cut when this area was logged. 

Another view of the area logged circa 1964. My hands indicate roughly the edges of a Douglas-fir stump from a tree cut when this area was harvested. 

Uncut forest at the edge of the circa 1964 logging unit. The Douglas-firs behind me and to my left as well as the cedar to my right are all second growth probably 80 to 100 years old, as are most of the trees in this forest. These trees are pretty much the same age and size as the trees harvested in the circa 1964 logging unit. The Douglas-firs in this photo can be compared with the stump in the previous photo to get a rough idea of how much the remaining trees grew in the intervening 49 years. 

Old growth western red cedar stump at edge of circa 1964 logging unit. I don't know if this cedar was cut in 1964 or earlier. The spring board notches would seem to indicate that this tree was cut earlier in the 1940's or 1950's as springboards and hand crosscut saws were more commonly used in those days. I am standing next to a Douglas-fir that seeded in about the same time as the two pictured in the photo above. Note that it is somewhat smaller than those two trees. 

Looking from the uncut forest into the circa 1964 logging unit. 

The falls on Falls Creek. This waterfall isn't that high, maybe 20 feet but I think it is quite beautiful. The road dead ends quite close to the falls. Because of this, I was able to take an aunt of mine who loves waterfalls out to see it. She has a number of health problems and it took her many minutes to cover the 40 to 50 yards to the viewpoint. If there wasn't a road, there is no way she could have walked the 4 or 5 miles up Bacon Creek, waded across Bacon Creek and then waded across Falls Creek to see this waterfall. I was also able to take a couple of friends not familiar with this area out to see this waterfall one evening after work, also an impossible task without the road because it would have taken too much time and one of my friends probably wouldn't have been up to it even if we had all day. There is a wide spot, an old landing, where the road ends now that makes a convenient parking spot to go see the falls. Of course, this spot has also been used as a camp many times and I'm sure that, over the years, quite a bit of alcohol was consumed and many shots fired here. I know there was a lot of trash left. This is the unpleasant side of easy access. However,  I feel that having to put up with a few irresponsible slobs is a small price to pay for access to our public lands for a wide variety of people, especially those with lesser physical capabilities. The road has been there for 60 years or more, for timber harvest to be sure, but also to allow the general public access to our public lands. These areas should not be sole dominion of only those who are physically capable of hiking for hours. We already have interconnected wilderness areas running the length of the North Cascades for that.