G'S SPOT - Notes on Album Desolation Adventure

Desolation Peak (6102'/1860m) overlooks Ross Lake in North Cascades National Park.  From the U.S. trailhead to Lightning Creek Camp, at the base of Desolation, is a distance of around 20 km.  From there to the summit is another 11 km, with 1.3 km elevation gain (most over the final 7.5 km).  I didn't have a lot of holiday time to spare for this trip, having just returned from a week in Olympic National Park.  To cut down on travel time we hired a water taxi to drop us at Lightning Creek Camp and pick us up later.
 
Background:
Desolation Peak was named for its appearance after a 1919 fire.  Being in the rain shadow of larger mountains to the west makes it especially vulnerable to fires -- on average some part of the mountain burns every 14 years.  The peak is home to one the last 30-or-so operational fire lookouts in Washington State (there were once over 650). North Cascades National Park was not created until 1968.  Prior to that the area was under the management of the U.S. Forest Service, which had a policy of total fire suppression.
 
Desolation Peak is best known for being where "Beat Generation" writer Jack Kerouac worked as a fire lookout in the summer of 1956.  He incorporated the experience into the novels Desolation Angels, The Dharma Bums, and other works.  Finding a "hermitage" was something he had often fantasized about but never attempted until then.  He was inspired to apply for the position after meeting two poets, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, who had both worked as fire lookouts in the North Cascades.  Kerouac spent 63 days on the mountain and only saw another person once -- when he ran out of tobacco and called the ranger station to ferry him out more (he had originally intended to quit smoking).  Nicotine aside, this was probably one of the longest drug-free periods he'd seen since childhood, and would see for the rest of his life.  Maybe the lack of drugs contributed, but the hermitage fantasy apparently didn't live up to expectations.  His writing in Desolation Angels, which is basically an autobiography, suggests he was extremely bored and longed to be elsewhere, away from "that mountaintop trap".  It seems he preferred the solitude of his rooftop shack in Mexico City, where he was close to "the pleasures of society" and could drop down to the street to score drugs or a 14-year-old prostitute (no kidding) when he so desired.  Near the end of his time on the mountain in Desolation Angels, he wrote, "I want to come down RIGHT AWAY... Desolation Adventure finds me finding at the bottom of myself abysmal nothingness worse than that no illusion even--my mind's in rags--".  Kerouac died in 1969 from a gastric hemorrhage, the result of years of heavy drinking.  Fifty years ago this month (September 2007) his most popular novel On The Road was published.
 
Unless otherwise noted, quotes used with the photos are from the novel Desolation Angels.

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