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Bruce Gilbert - Personal Communication
Phone conversation, 11 June 2001
I had a short phone conversation with Bruce. I was interested in any recollections he had about ski trips with the Hesseys to Lyman Lake and Spanish Camp.
by Lowell SkoogBruce remembered going into Spanish Camp in September 1955, just a week after his discharge from the military. This was not a ski trip, and Bruce did not recall going to Spanish Camp with the Hesseys on skis. This is puzzling, since I have a 1958 Spokesman-Review article by Chuck Hessey with photos of Chuck, Marion and Bruce at Spanish Camp. My guess is that Bruce may have merged his memory of the Spanish Camp trip with the later Lyman Lake trip. I'm inclined to accept the 1955 date as a bracket for his trips with the Hesseys.
Bruce was fuzzy on the date of the Lyman Lake trip when Skiing Cascade Wilderness was filmed. He recalled that it was on March 30, Marion's birthday, and he thought that 1956 sounded right. Bruce gave a brief recounting of the notorious dog food story. He was not familiar with Chuck's week-long winter trip from White Pass to the Goat Rocks.
Bruce said that Marion was a secretary for Bruce's oldest brother, which is how he met the Hesseys. They also became acquainted through skiing at Gold Hill, where the Cascadian Mountain Goats had a cabin. The Hesseys used a cabin there maintained by Scout Troop 1.
He said his father, a long-time Scout leader, died of a heart attack when he was 16. Afterward, his uncle and William O. Douglas named Gilbert Peak in the Goat Rocks after his father. Louis Ulrich was Bruce's step-father.
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