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Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024 Shelton-Mason County Journal — Page 37
Hittite
Serving the communities of Belfalr, Allyn, Grapeview, Tahuya, Mason Lake,
South Shore and Victor
Leslie Rome, author of “Lost Fire Lookout Hikes and Histories,” reads
at North Mason Timberland Library on Feb. 8. Herald photo June
Author shares tales of Iostifire lookout hikes .
By June Williams
june@masoncounty.com
“I’m a lookout hunter,” Leslie
Romer, author of “Lost Fire Lookout
Hikes and Histories: Olympic Penin—
sula & Willapa Hills,” told an audience
at North Mason Timberland Library
on Feb. 8.
Romer said her interest in fire look—
outs started 20 years ago. She began
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by following hiking guides, and after
visiting more than 500 sites, wrote her
own guidebook in 2022.
You won’t find descriptions of most
of these trails online or in other books,
she said. Romer studied maps, planned
routes and scouted the hikes. They all
lead to areas where fire lookouts once
were, though today sometimes all that
remains are scattered debris, bits of
concrete or just a clearing.
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“So very few fire lookout buildings
are still standing,” she said.
Plenty of historical photographs are
included in the book, so you can Visu-
alize the structures, which were typi-
cally towers with cabins on top.
The lookouts were staffed dur-
ing fire season until the 1960s, when
air patrols became the choice meth—
od to spot forest fires, Romer said.
By the 1970s. most of the lookouts in
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The first lookout on the Olympic
Peninsula was Finley Peak, by Lake
Quinault, built in 1916. The hike to
Finley Peak is one of two backpacking
routes in the book. Most of the hikes
can be done in a day and are rated on
a 1 to scale for difficulty.
see AUTHOR, page 38
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