washington

North Mountain Lookout_14
Field Notes

Something Worth Saving: Fire Lookout Restored by Logging Town Community

As you climb up the tower steps, layers of jagged peaks within Washington’s Cascade Range emerge in every direction. Below, wild river valleys carve through the sea of forests around the small town of Darrington. The million-dollar view from the historic North Mountain Lookout was once used by the Forest Service to spot fires, but the structure fell into disrepair once technology and other fire detection methods took its place. Now a small group of dedicated locals are on a mission to restore the abandoned piece of history sitting on top of North Mountain.

Read more

5 Min
man holding oars while standing in boat
Profiles

Lael Johnson – Olympic Peninsula Fly Guide

Lael Johnson is a fly fisherman and guide on the Olympic Peninsula. His passion for the anadromous fish of Washington’s coastal rivers is contagious. He loves these fish, these rivers, and the people he is lucky enough to experience them with. Filson Contributor Ben Matthews spent a few days on the river with Lael to ask a few questions about guiding, steelhead, and life in general. If you’re interested in heading out on the river with Lael yourself, check out his website and book a trip. You won’t regret it.

Read more

5 Min
black and white image of fish and wildlife officer looking through binoculars
Field Notes

Encounters with a Game Warden – Tales from the Field

As a vital, but often unseen, part of our outdoor landscape, game wardens are jacks-of-all-trades—part policeman, part researcher, part educator. They are the folks on the frontlines ensuring that the outdoors we all love is being treated respectfully and correctly. From federal wardens patrolling our coastlines and backwoods to local officials working the streams and parks near our homes, they complete various tasks in close contact with all manner of creatures— humans included.

Read more

3 Min
sun shining through pine boughs on the side of a river meandering through piles of river rocks
Profiles

Why the Skagit River Watershed Matters

Nothing feels small on the Skagit River. It emerges from the Cascade Mountains, the ridgelines rising suddenly and severely, compressing the landscape and framing the view with their immense, sharp mass. For much of its length, the river is wide enough that three or four drift boats could easily pass side by side with plenty of room to spare. Anglers standing in its flow could never dream of reaching the far bank with a cast. If that angler is fly fishing, then they are likely to be using a two-hand rod to throw a Skagit head, a short specialty fly line developed on its namesake river a generation earlier to deliver big flies and sinking lines to winter steelhead-holding water.

Read more

4 Min
team of vets and forestry service personnel inspect an animal on a towel on top of a table with a breathing apparatus attached to its face
Profiles

Conservation Northwest: Keeping the Northwest Wild

For the 7.5 million residents of Washington state, most, if not all, have used or will use I-90 at some point. This interstate connects the two largest cities in the state: Seattle to the west and Spokane to the east. It also runs right through the southern end of the North Cascade mountains, home to great populations of blacktail deer, Roosevelt elk, coyotes, and black bears, among other species. As you drive east from Seattle, you might notice a bridge with no roads connected to it that spans the interstate just before you get to the city of Easton. This bridge is a wildlife crossing that will help keep these animals safe from vehicles. The bridge is there thanks to a Seattle-based organization, Conservation Northwest, and is just one of many projects this organization has helped fund, design and implement in this region.

Read more

2 Min
rocky mountainside and snow on mount rainier amongst low lying clouds
Profiles

The Glaciers of the North Cascades

North Cascades National Park counts more than 300 glaciers along this northwestern spine of mountains—and that’s just inside the park boundaries. The North Cascades are the most glaciated place in the country outside of Alaska, but this ice-clad range has remained relatively under the radar compared to places such as Montana’s Glacier National Park or Mount Rainier in the South Cascades. The landscape here feels wilder, at the edge of things, with a mystical feel of vastness and geologic time lent by the presence of these relics from the last ice age.

Read more

5 Min
North Cascade mountains dusted with snow rising out of pine forest
Profiles

North Cascades: Bastion of the Wild

Sitting like stone guardians just below the Canadian border, the North Cascade mountains are keepers of the wildness that once roamed unchecked across North America. Soaring high into the skies, their stony and snowy peaks seem to scrape at the clouds that pass overhead demanding tribute as they float by. Sparkling like scattered gems, glacially fed lakes brilliantly reflect the sunlight while, through deep green valleys, bright, blue-gray rivers run down to the surrounding flatlands. It is a spot where a person could quickly leave behind all of the trappings that attach themselves to our modern daily existence and transport to another existence entirely.

Read more

4 Min
exterior view of large shipyard building with sign reading
Profiles

Pacific Fishermen Shipyard: The Origins of Ballard’s Oldest Working Shipyard

Pacific Fishermen Inc., or “PacFish,” as it is known to the many boat builders, ship crews, employees, family members and stakeholders in the Ballard community, can be traced directly back to the year 1871. It was in this year that a 47-year-old Norwegian immigrant, ship carpenter, and operator named Thomas William Lake settled on the north side of the Salmon Bay waterfront in unincorporated Seattle and opened his own shipyard.

Read more

3 Min
a dock view of a black hull and white maritime academy boat
Profiles

Seattle Maritime Academy – 50 Years of Training Seaworthy Mariners

Long before Seattle was a tech town, or even an aviation town, it was a maritime town. In fact, it still is. And although some brag that Seattle has more pleasure boats per capita than any other city in the country, it’s the working vessels—and the men and women who serve on them—that make Seattle a maritime powerhouse. For the past 50 years, Seattle Maritime Academy has played a key role in training the professional mariners that keep this powerhouse running.

Read more

4 Min
man sitting in saw mill for group photo
Field Notes

The Oldest Continuously Running Sawmill in North America

Port Gamble was a gamble that paid off for 142 years as the longest continuously running sawmill on the North American continent. Like many logging towns, it faced boom years and bust years but was far more successful than most. New England influenced the creation and construction of the town. The merchants Andrew Pope and William Talbot sailed west from Maine to San Francisco seeking large resources of timber to supply the growing demand of an ever-growing American West.

Read more

8 Min