Waterhole Cabin Removed!!!

WATERHOLE CABIN REMOVED!!!!

Here are some answers to your questions.

What were the structural issues?

The structure did not comply with any standard building codes and was a
liability the park could not continue to condone or invite the use of it by
visitors.

Was there an environmental process followed in making the decision?

Removal of the structure was covered under a programmatic categorical
exclusion. Because the structure was not historic, not located in a
wilderness area and removal would not result in soil, vegetation, or
archeological disturbance an Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental
Impact Statement (EIS) were not required under NEPA.

When was the decision made?
What options were considered? (repair, replacement, etc)

The decision to remove the structure was made by the park leadership team in
2008. In August 2012, the Olympic National Park Executive Leadership
Council completed the removal of the structure, as recommended by the
leadership team in 2008. Park management considered improvement of the
structure as well as removal of the structure. At this time, there were no
funds available to mitigate the potential liability of the structure so
removal took place.

Was there an opportunity for public input?

I do not know if there was public input during the initial decision point of
2008. This action did not require public input under the guidance of NEPA.

Would the Park consider future replacement of the hut? (possibly in
partnership with a private group)

Within the next ten years the park has plans to develop a winter use plan.
Replacement of the hut and other improvements to the winter recreation area
will be considered in the plan. Public comment and participation in the
planning process will be invited and encouraged.

Was consideration given to the role this hut plays in providing safe shelter
for injured or storm trapped winter travelers?

The park considered the role that the hut has played in providing shelter
for winter travelers.

Although the shelter has been used by backcountry visitors, there was not a
significant history of the structure being used as an emergency shelter

Hurricane Ridge Winter Sports Club

Obstruction Ridge Ski Hut Proposal

Draft 2/9/2010

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to present a proposal to operate a ski hut system from Hurricane Ridge to Deer Park. We believe this proposal will provide increased opportunities for visitor enjoyment without loss of any park values. This proposal benefits the public, Olympic National Park, local communities, and the Hurricane Ridge Winter Sports Club.

Proposal

The Hurricane Ridge Winter Sports Club proposes to make available for public use for a fee several winter overnight shelters in the non-wilderness areas between Hurricane Ridge and Deer Park. Our preliminary proposal is to:

1. Adapt the Deer Park Ranger Station to winter overnight visitor use;

2. Place a removable winter shelter near the end of the Obstruction Point Road;

3. Place a removable winter shelter along the Hurricane Hill road corridor;

4. Continue current NPS operation of the Waterhole Ski Hut, unless HRWSC operation is preferred.

New shelters could be placed along the non-wilderness road corridor just before the road closes in the fall, and removed when the road opens for the summer season.

Background

The current General Management Plan (GMP) identifies cross country skiing and snowshoeing as appropriate uses to be encouraged and expanded within ONP (ref: ONP – GMP, Hurricane Ridge and Obstruction Point Alternative D – Preferred Alternative).

Huts and hostels are encouraged under NPS management policy 9.3.2.3, which emphasizes huts and hostels particularly as a means of encouraging and facilitating the use of trails and backcountry areas.

Winter recreation is a culturally significant aspect of Olympic National Park. Winter recreation in the Olympic Mountains predates the creation of Olympic National Park. The justification for including the Deer Park area into Olympic National Park in 1940 was for winter recreation (Representative Walgren ref PAEN 6/30/08 p 1). The Deer Park area included huts and lodges for overnight stays. The current ranger station was built as a maintenance shed for the ski area. Built in 1938, the ski lodge at Deer Park was one of the first ski lodges in America. At its period of greatest use, it received as many visits as any ski area in the Northwest.

Ski huts placed along Obstruction/Hurricane Ridge is a historic use. In 1938, a group of skiers traversed the ridge from Deer Park to the Elwha, and returned thoroughly convinced of the need for huts (Port Angeles Evening News various dates 1933-1940 ). Winter use huts were erected at Deer Park, Idaho Camp, Hurricane Hill, Crisler’s “Ski Lair”, and Heather Park. Ski Huts were also in place at Flapjack Lakes, and Marmot Pass. In the 1970’s an overnight ski hut was erected at the former Waterhole campground.

The popularity of winter recreation has increased tremendously in the past ten years. There are over 500,000 snowshoe and cross-country skiers living within a four hour drive of Hurricane Ridge.

Other National Parks have similar ski huts:

In Sequoia Kings Canyon the Pear Lake Ski Hut is operated by the Sequoia Natural History Association, a non profit that supports the mission of Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park.

In Yosemite National Park, four winter ski huts are in operation, Glacier Point Lodge, the Ostrander Ski Hut, Tuolumne Meadows Ski Hut, and Taiga Lodge.

In Mount Rainier National Park, the Muir Hut is available for winter use from Paradise on a first come first served basis.

This proposal is not in conflict with the Burgess decision. The ski huts will not be placed in designated wilderness. In filing the suit against replacing the shelters in the proposed wilderness locations, the plaintiffs stated “they are not opposed to shelters per se, but rather the placement of new structures in wilderness.”

This proposal is intended to be fully compatible with NPS Management Policy regarding Hostels and Huts (9.3.2.3).

Path Forward

This letter is intended to introduce our vision for winter recreation at Hurricane Ridge. We welcome input that the NPS has that will facilitate the process of determining the best alternative.

Sincerely,

Joe Gladfelter, President

Hurricane Ridge Winter Sports Club

2008 second interview of Jack Hughes by Paul Gleeson, tape transcript from Olympic NP archives.
PG: And Gay Hunter, thank you for the introduction. Jack what I’m curious about is going out on Obstruction Point Road the ski hut out there. What do you know about the background of that? Out at Waterhole.
JH: More than I’m willing to tell you.
PG: That’s fine. Can you tell me when it was built?
JH: Approximately ‘67.
PG: Okay ‘67. And what was the function of it? Why was it built out there?
JH: It was a ski hut. And a group of skiers of which there was only a few around here… There was a lot of cross-country backcountry skiing in the 30s and Deer Park was the hub of that. Lot of Norwegian Americans. Somehow it had lost out. It wasn’t being kept up. When I got here I skied cross-country and I would be up at the ridge… This would be ‘65 or ‘66. And there weren’t many other cross-country skiers. Hardly any. And then some locals got interested. A couple of Norwegians. Actually they were Swedish. And some people in town who went to the same church. And they said gee we would love to learn cross-country skiing. Yeah you know we used to do a lot of that at Deer Park. We would like to get back into it. So they all got together with wooden skis and pine tar and we all started… And this group was an informal group until they thought you know it would be nice to have a little hut out there at Waterhole. So we asked the Chief Ranger. And he said yes, now this will just be temporary and it will just go in in the fall and it will come out in the spring. And so we got permission, just low key. Yeah go ahead it can’t hurt anything, from the superintendent. Or from the chief ranger, not the superintendent. Then they went to work. And these Swedish guys were excellent carpenters. They built the thing all prefabed so that if you go inside of it now you’ll see that the front and the back can be bolted together or unbolted. Except now it’s got a shake roof and it would be messy. But back then it just had tarpaper. And when you put it in you covered it. And then it was going to be just one square of plywood like this. It ended up being two with a little two-foot drop. So it was bigger than it was originally…
PG: So originally, the idea was to have each side one sheet of plywood and then it rather became two sheets of plywood.
JH: Yeah. So it got a little bigger. But it would still come out. It was still a temporary thing. The superintendent got quite annoyed when the chief ranger said, gee, it’s a little more elaborate than I had envisioned, maybe I’ll go tell them. So he goes and tells them and he gets mad about it and says it’s terrible… Okay we’ll take it out. And everybody hemmed and hawed and finally it snowed and they couldn’t take it out. So it sat there. So then we… And he said but nobody should use it. So we didn’t use it. But we did. I snuck in once in a while just to check on it. And then the next… Morton was Secretary of Interior. Roger C.P. Morton. And Morton’s wife went to Europe and was trekking around and she got to these huts in the Alps. Oh, they’re so wonderful. And these suntanned Europeans come hiking in. You know we should have more of that in America. So this thing gets circulated around that says we… What about this guys? Well the superintendent here says, guess what? We’ve already got a hut. Yeah we’ve already got a hut.
PG: Was that Roger Allen?
JH: No. It was before. And so they said okay you can have it. And then never mind taking it out. So essentially it became a legitimate thing. And then the skiing got more and more popular. And we asked if we could put it on stilts. See up to this point it was just sitting on the dirt.
PG: Oh, okay.
Counter 226JH: So then we got old lumber and put it on posts. And most of this was done on volunteer work. And the materials were all purchased. No stove that was in the hut was ever bought by government money. Including the one that’s no good now. And then it got really popular when this big revolution of outdoor activities in the late mid late 60s. And then we decided… So many people were trying to go there and use it we’ve got to have some… So then they said we’ll have a sign in. So they had a sign in and they opened the doors to the Visitor Center and in would come this bunch of guys, locals, and the phone would start ringing signing up for the hut. And it was guys were elbowing each other trying to be first in line. And by ten o’clock people were calling in sorry it’s all reserved for the whole winter. So then we came up with a lottery. Okay everybody put a post card. It was a more cumbersome system. And then we realized that it was too cumbersome. I think we would get their letters and then we would assign a number or something. Put the numbers in a hat. Finally we just said it’s got to be on a three by five card or a post card and you request the date that you want and we’ll put it in the box and we’ll just pull them out. And give a preference. You could have all the dates, you could have one date or two, whatever you want. And then we would just start pulling and filling the calendar and then it would be booked up. And this went on and on. And then finally we had another superintendent, no names, and a chief ranger who had a vendetta against it. Now we’re into the era of shelter burning. Well I saved Dodger Point.
PG: Thank you.
JH: I got Dodger Point on the national Historic… That guy from Oregon State who came up who was a landscape architect. Historical Building architect. And I got him up to Dodger so that he could look it over. He was enthused and put it on the… Because it was on the hit list to get burned down. But anyway… So then this thing about getting rid of the hut and that went on. Oh Superintendent Chandler, I will mention his name, when the Wilderness Bill was being finalized the people that liked… They liked to draw the wilderness line so close to the edge of the road that whenever you threw a beer can out of your truck it would land in the wilderness and then you had to go get a permit to pick it up. But anyway he said now make sure you don’t put Waterhole in the wilderness. He didn’t want a conflict because he knew that then they would say uh oh that’s got to go and then there would be a big brouhaha. And then Chandler, he wasn’t a skier I don’t think, but he thought it’s not doing any harm. So he saved it basically by putting… And that later left the area open for the Snowtel, which is pretty useful. The snow measuring which has structures. And then in that era they said no more lottery. I guess the lottery was offensive to the superintendent who thought of it in terms of Las Vegas and the state lottery. The state of Washington runs a lottery. And nobody paid any fees. We never had a treasury. In other words where we could take a fee and save it and buy a stove with it if we had to. We never even got that. It would have been nice. We should have had a treasurer who would do that. Because when the stoves get old and rusty you have to buy a new one. But anyway then pretty soon it was okay you just go and fight over it when you get there. And now the demand is real low. They usually ask us and we say get an early start Saturday and get out there before anyone else and it’s yours. You can have it for the weekend. And we actually… Many a weekend it just sits empty. Guys come up to Snow Camp and they learn about it and they say, oh we’ll look at it when we get there and they say oh this beats pitching a tent and having a wet tent. And so the use has gone way down. And then the hut is sitting there. And I understand… Well the stove got… Guys were putting too long pieces in it, but it wouldn’t have broke if it hadn’t been rusted out. But that’s the history. The short history.
PG: Okay.
JH: But it’s either ‘68 or ‘67. Before ‘70 for sure.
PG: I remember one of my coworkers was skiing out there and actually running into you probably in the mid-70s.
Counter 305JH: I hardly ever used it. You know because I could stay in the lodge with running water and showers and toilets and sleeping on the floor of an eight by sixteen foot hut… I could ski out there on a good day in one hour. With a good track you know. But it was fun and there were a lot guys that… We used to have a waxing party… With wood skis… Well you’ve skied on wood skies, you’re no spring chicken. You would want to get your skis all ready in the fall. And you would put the pine tar, burn it or melt it into the wood and wipe it down real good. And so we would have a pine tar party and these Swedish guys, who are still as far as I know both alive and well. They’re older than me. In a basement of this guy’s house. He had a big family room. And we would all bring our wooden skis and we would put the pine tar on and melt it in and wipe it out. And then we would have snacks, food and Nels would make his famous glugwah. And we would have hot glugwah and wax our skis. But all of the cross-country skiers that we knew of in Port Angeles were gathered in this one room. And then later there were so many that… Now they probably could get them all back in that same room again.
PG: So you haven’t been seeing a lot of use of it in the last…
JH: It’s definitely declined, yeah.
PG: It’s come up I guess in some question about what’s the life expectancy of the building at this point.
JH: Yeah. I remember when it turned twenty for some reason, but now I can’t remember what year that was.
PG: So that would have been ‘88. So we’re verging on forty.
JH: It has been used on rescues a couple of times. Only once it was really serious. This guy broke his leg and he was not too far away. They brought him in. And it was a femur. It was a serious break. And there was a lot of waiting until we got clearance for a helicopter. And then we had to haul him up. So it was nice to have it. He wouldn’t have died without it. And then there was a Piper Cherokee crashed on Maiden Peak and we had a whole bunch of people sent over to go help us if we had to do it all on foot because the weather wasn’t too good. But it cleared finally so we were able to do it all with helicopter. But we had a bunch of potential rescuers that were staging out of there. And then there were a few minor instances where it came in handy. Now I think if it was useful… If it had a little heater in it, it would be good for the snowtel. Now Bill Bacchus who has been running that… But he doesn’t run it for the SCS, says oh I just wait for good weather. But if ever there were a lot of problems with electrical stuff in there and you were out there for hours working on that it would be nice to have that little hut for that. And you never know. But I think it could be useful for that in conjunction with the snowtel. I’m not sure with codes. You know it’s like a lot of things that we used to always do, we can’t do them anymore.
PG: We won’t go there Jack.

10/8/12
Answers from Todd Suess

Here are some answers to your questions.

What were the structural issues?

The structure did not comply with any standard building codes and was a
liability the park could not continue to condone or invite the use of it by
visitors.

Was there an environmental process followed in making the decision?

Removal of the structure was covered under a programmatic categorical
exclusion. Because the structure was not historic, not located in a
wilderness area and removal would not result in soil, vegetation, or
archeological disturbance an Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental
Impact Statement (EIS) were not required under NEPA.

When was the decision made?
What options were considered? (repair, replacement, etc)

The decision to remove the structure was made by the park leadership team in
2008. In August 2012, the Olympic National Park Executive Leadership
Council completed the removal of the structure, as recommended by the
leadership team in 2008. Park management considered improvement of the
structure as well as removal of the structure. At this time, there were no
funds available to mitigate the potential liability of the structure so
removal took place.

Was there an opportunity for public input?

I do not know if there was public input during the initial decision point of
2008. This action did not require public input under the guidance of NEPA.

Would the Park consider future replacement of the hut? (possibly in
partnership with a private group)

Within the next ten years the park has plans to develop a winter use plan.
Replacement of the hut and other improvements to the winter recreation area
will be considered in the plan. Public comment and participation in the
planning process will be invited and encouraged.

Was consideration given to the role this hut plays in providing safe shelter
for injured or storm trapped winter travelers?

The park considered the role that the hut has played in providing shelter
for winter travelers.

Although the shelter has been used by backcountry visitors, there was not a
significant history of the structure being used as an emergency shelte

10/1/12

Waterhole cabin in 2006

As a further assault on winter recreation in Olympic National Park, the Waterhole Ski hut was removed from the park with no public notification (let alone process) sometime in September 2012.

The Ski Club made a formal proposal to ONP in 2010 regarding the Waterhole hut and possible placement of other huts (see next page) so they cannot claim that they did not know there was any public interest.

The hut was installed in the 1960's and for a very long time was on a reservation only basis.  The Park removed the wood stove sometime in the 2000's, making it less attractive as an overnight destination.  Of course continued access problems also contributed to its dwindling use, but it was still loved and used by those in the know.

 By the way, ONP has a copy of "Ski Trails" so they should also know the history.

This trip report gives an indication of what will be missed.

Waterhole October 1, 2012

The following are exceprts from Eric Burr's excellent book "Ski Trails and Wildlife" regarding the history of the Waterhole Ski Hut. Ski Trails and Wildlife

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To:

Mike Kelly, chairman, Friends of Olympic Trail Shelters

Lowell Skoog, Alpenglow Ski History Project

Seabury Blair, Jr., Kitsap Sun

Paul Gottlieb, editor, PDN

Jeff Chapman, Public Lands Chair, Backcountry Horsemen of Washington

Donovan Rafferty, Washington National Parks Fund

Allyson Brooks, State Historic Preservation Officer

From: Rod Farlee, board member, Friends of Olympic NP

Waterhole ski hut on Obstruction Point Road in Olympic National Park was abruptly demolished last week. There was no prior public announcement, and no public statement or explanation for this action has yet been released by the Park.

This harkens back to the unannounced demolition of many Park trail shelters in 1974, which galvanized Richard Pargeter, Jack Nattinger and many others to organize Friends of Olympic Trail Shelters.

A brief history of Waterhole is on the Free Hurricane Ridge website. It was built in 1968 by volunteers and was so popular that the Park held lotteries for spaces and required reservations for weekend use for many years. In 1991, policy was changed to "emergency use only". In 2008, the Park declared it "unnecessary for emergency use" and removed the wood stove. Park spokeman Rainey McKenna states that it was in 2008 slated for removal because of potential liability, but no public notice was made of this decision. In 2010, Hurricane Ridge Winter Sports Club requested permission to use it as part of an expanded ski hut system, including Deer Park Ranger Station and rermovable yurts at Obstruction Point and Hurricane Hill trailheads, and offered to maintain it.

I visited it last year, and found it was clean and in very good condition. A windfall tree had fallen onto it in 2006, had broken a few shakes on one eve, but had not damaged the roof. I found the entire structure was solid and dry, from the roof down to the sills in its lower level woodshed area.

The demolition of Waterhole is an unexplained mystery. It is certainly a grievious loss of a useful historical structure, the site of fond memories for hundreds of Park visitors. Unless this was an emergency action essential for the safety of Park visitors, it appears contradictory to NPS mission, management policy and Director's Orders, the Park's General Management Plan, and the backcountry structure retention criteria and public process pledged in the.Park's 1976 Wilderness Environmental Impact Statement.

At this time, I am told the Park does not plan to announce the removal of Waterhole until the winter use schedule is published, typically at the end of November. I only able to refer those desiring more information to Rainey McKenna in the Public Affairs Office.