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Ira Spring - An Ice Axe, a Camera, and a Jar of Peanut Butter
Chapter 1 - Mountains, Cameras, and World of Wonder
p. 14: Twins Bob and Ira Spring were born on December 24, 1918.
Chapter 2 - My Mountains
p. 23: Photo of a skier climbing the trail to Mt Gladys above Flapjack Lakes.
p. 27: In April 1938, the Bremerton Ski Cruisers and Shelton Ridge Runners scouted the Flapjack Lakes basin. The clubs later raised $1000 for a cabin. The cabin was constructed in 1939-40. The author writes: "In April and May the road was open and spring ski tours were great. However, we soon became aware of the frequent avalanches and the limited amount of safe terrain. These, added to the road problems, clearly meant that Mount Gladys was never going to make a good ski area." Sometime during the war a tree fell across the cabin roof and broke the rafters. When Flapjack Lakes became part of Olympic National Park, the rangers tore down the remains, along with a nearby shelter.
p. 29a: Fine photo of skiers on Mt Gladys above Flapjack Lakes cabin in 1940.
p. 29b: "Today's hikers have little notion of how much 'civilization' there used to be in the Olympic wilderness. In the 1920s and 1930s dozens of three-sided shelters and peak-top lookouts were scattered throughout the mountains, all hooked together by miles of telephone wire."
p. 30a: Photo of Mount Steel from Home Sweet Home shelter on a spring ski tour.
p. 30b: "Deer Park had a pair of shelters built before construction of the road. The road allowed Deer Park to become a ski area of sorts, with a warming hut, bunkhouse, and rope tow." Also: "The roads to Deer Park and Hurricane Ridge were the two ends of a planned ridge-top meadow drive." This page describes other road-building proposals in the Olympics.
Chapter 3 - Is There Life After the Olympic Mountains
p. 39: "When snow closed roads into the Olympics we spent our weekends at Mount Rainier. Paradise Valley was the most popular ski area in the region, referred to as the Valley of Ten Thousand Sitzmarks." This page has a good description of the Paradise ski scene in 1939.
Chapter 4 - Hip Two Three Four, About Face
p. 41: "As with other members of my generation, [World War II] was the Great Divide..."
Chapter 5 - Life Begins at Thirty
p. 55: By 1946, the Storbo Mine buildings in Mt Rainier's Glacier Basin were deserted.
p. 57: In the late 1940s, Ray Atkeson was Bob and Ira Spring's leading competitor in Northwest outdoor photography.
Chapter 10 - Mountain Rescue
p. 100: Photo of mountain rescue team pulling Bill Degenhardt off Mt Snoqualmie after he broke his hip in an avalanche. Page 104 has a brief description of the rescue.
p. 101: This chapter ("Mountain Rescue") is a good summary of the founding of the Mountain Rescue Council and the role of Wolf Bauer, Ome Daiber and Dr. Otto Trott.
p. 104: In 1955, Bob and Ira Spring produced a safety movie for the Mountain Rescue Council, starring Ome and Matie Daiber, called Mountains Don't Care. Over fifty copies were printed and the movie was shown thousands of times to schools, churches, Scout troops, and elsewhere. See spring-movies.
Chapter 12 - Books, Books
p. 114: This chapter has a good summary of the creation of the "100 Hikes" guidebook series in the mid-1960s.
Chapter 13 - Winter Wonderland
p. 120: Fine photo of a skier touring in a crevasse in Boston Basin in 1965.
p. 121: In late December 1937, Bob and Ira Spring attempted a ski traverse in the Olympics. They hiked to Upper Lena Lake and traversed toward Mt Stone. Near Saint Peter's Gate they encountered high avalanche danger and bailed out toward the valley, eventually hiking back to their car along a logging road. The author writes: "We were very lucky to have survived our first lesson in avalanches."
p. 123: In 1959, Bob and Ira Spring skied the Paradise to White River traverse on Mt Rainier over three days. They made a movie of the trip, which became Skiing Above the Clouds. See spring-movies.
p. 124: Fine photo of two roped skiers descending Emmons Glacier with Little Tahoma beyond.
p. 125a: This page includes a short description of the author's week-long winter trip to Ed LaChapelle's research station on the Snow Dome at the edge of the Blue Glacier on Mt Olympus. The author was flown in and out by Bill Fairchild of Port Angeles in a ski plane.
p. 125b: Another fine photo of a skier touring in a crevasse in Boston Basin.
p. 127: A year or two before the establishment of Glacier Peak Wilderness, the author and seven others hired Bill Fairchild to fly them to the Honeycomb Glacier. They skied four days there, including a ski ascent of Glacier Peak.
Chapter 17 - Ptarmigan Traverse
p. 161: The 1957 Ptarmigan Traverse party included Peggy Stark, Russell Brockman, Marge and Ray McConnell, Coleman Leuthy and the author. The trip was conceived as a Saturday Evening Post story of four youths and an older leader attempting the traverse from Cascade Pass to Image Lake. The party arranged an air drop of four food boxes on the Le Conte Glacier. One box was lost and the other not dropped, due to poor flying conditions. With rations shorter than planned and several days of poor weather, the party nevertheless completed the traverse in about two weeks.
Chapter 23 - Through the Years With Boots and Camera
p. 211: Fine photo of a man skiing on the roof of Paradise Inn in 1951.
Chapter 24 - Green-Bonding for a Green Constituency
p. 217: In this chapter the author describes his "green-bonding" philosophy.
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