RIP Flag Point Lookout

When I was leading hikes for AYM (Adventurous Young Mazamas, RIP), I shadowed a friend on his first hike lead. To commemorate the occasion, I shaved off my beard, leaving only the mustache. When I emerged from the bathroom, laughing my ass off, Wendy looked at me and just said “NO NO NO NO NO”. She refused to give me a hug or even look at me until I shaved it off. I left the mustache all day to make my friends laugh. Here’s a photo so you can laugh too:

I know that mustaches are back in (I swear, it seems like at least 1 in every 3 dudes in their 20s and 30s have one right now), but this is the only time you’ll ever see a mustache on me. People told me I looked like Super Mario. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

The hike that day was to the Flag Point Lookout, a wonderful spot on the western edge of the Badger Creek Wilderness. I love visiting the Badger. It is a quiet place where ponderosa pines and rock formations invite contemplation, where you rarely see other hikers, and where some of the trails are a scratch in the ground, passable only to people like me who love exploring. I’ve spent a lot of time in this area, often in April and May when the trails are reliably snow-free here much earlier than they are higher up. These hikes were a star of my first book Off The Beaten Trail, as well as PDX Hiking 365.

It was an exceptionally low snow year in 2015 (just like this year), and so we were able to hike all the way to Flag Point at 5,400 feet without encountering any snow. The lookout was not yet staffed for the year, and we mostly had the trails to ourselves. The top of Mount Hood was lost to the clouds, but otherwise the views were amazing:

This is the lookout itself, from a different trip to the area in 2012:

I was never able to get a reservation to stay in the lookout, but many of my friends did and reported it to be excellent. Although I never spent a night there, the Flag Point Lookout always seemed to be somewhere on the horizon whenever I visited this area - which was often. The Badger Creek Wilderness (or just The Badger, as people who love this area call it) was a home away from home for me.

It is with great sadness that I report that the Flag Point Lookout has burned down. The Grasshopper Fire, which started near Boulder Lake in a lightning storm a couple weeks ago, has spread across nearly the entire Badger Creek Wilderness, burning many of my favorite hikes in this area and threatening most of the eastern side of the Mount Hood National Forest.

It’s only early August, and the fall rains that usually extinguish our fires here will likely not arrive for several more weeks. We’re in for a lot more of this. There isn’t much more I can say about it. I am grateful for our wildland firefighters, who work exceptionally hard in nearly impossible conditions. Every building and life saved is a testament to their hard work and dedication.

In human terms, the Grasshopper Fire is not devastating on the same level as the fires in Europe or the fire that burned into Spokane over the weekend. Very few buildings have been lost and nobody has lost their life. But as I write this, the fire is now spreading west toward Mount Hood, and even Mount Hood Meadows Ski Area is under a Level 3 Evacuation Warning. I am speechless and terrified.

At this point, I have nothing left to say other than that my heart is broken, yet again. We are living in Hell. All we can do is hope (or pray, if that’s your thing), and try to make peace with the planet as it is now. I wish I had something more positive to say about any of this.

I hope the mustache photo made you laugh a little, because I’m not feeling very positive today.

Thank you for reading, and stay safe wherever you are.

Matt