Range of Glaciers: The Exploration and Survey of the Northern Cascade Range by Fred Beckey

Abstract

Range ofGlaciers: The Exploration and Survey of the Northern Cascade Range By Fred Beckey Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland, 2003. Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 568 pages. $40.00 cloth. Reviewed byWilliam B. Beyers and Stephen J. Hyde University of Washington, Seattle TO MOST OUTDOOR ENTHUSIASTS, the name Fred Beckey is indelibly tied to his unsurpassed number offirstascents inthe North Cascades and to the trilogy of climbing guides he coauthored. The guides' introductory sections have briefdescriptions of thevegetation, geologi cal structure,and history of human use of the Cascades, but they are largelydescriptions of climbingroutes with recordsoffirst ascents.Range ofGlaciers, in contrast, presents a detailed de scriptionof theexploration and surveyofBeckey's beloved North Cascades and represents the re sult of fifteenyears of research in libraries and archivesflungfarandwide acrossNorth America and Europe. It will be of interesttoboth climbers and people interestedinthehistoryof thePacific Northwest region. Allow us topause fora disclosure: we know thatBeckey isa tenacious researcher fromfirst hand experience. In the summer of 1995, Steve and Fred retreatedfrom the coast range ofBrit ishColumbia and found refugeat theUniversity ofBritishColumbia libraries.Fredknew ofa good place to bivouac among the pines on campus. They spent thenext day scouring aerial photo graphs and alpine journals in search ofhistorical accounts of exploration. By the end of theday, theyhad deduced what had been climbed in a particular region and had taken note of all unclimbed mountains. InRange ofGlaciers, Beckey never reallyde fines theNorth Cascades, which today aremost commonly thoughtof as theCascade Mountains from Stevens Pass to theCanadian border. His treatment basically covers the Cascade Moun tains in Washington state,but he does discuss the BritishColumbia extension inchapter 6.He di vides thebook intothreebroad sections.The first addresses the early settlers,furtraders,and ini tial attempts atwagon roads and railroads. The second emphasizes thefirstinternationalbound ary surveys between 1857and 1862 (precipitated by the boundary settlementwith theBritish in 1846) and the surveys initiatedby theNorthern PacificRailroad land grant.The thirdsection ad dresses more contemporary matters, including theconstruction ofhighways, earlyclimbinghis tory, miners, the topographicmapping and geo logical description of the region, the second in ternationalboundary survey,and the imprintof the U.S. Forest Service andNational Park Service on the region. Beckey supplements the textwith historic photographs and copious references.There are also a number ofmaps, which are of varying quality and have been placedwith varying utility. For example, the map ofNative American trails on page 5 isset in the section on earlynavigators, and the map related tonavigators ison page 15, in the section onNative peoples. Some informa tion is missing onmaps, such as the map of early overland exploration that leaves out Lewis and Clark's route. Beckey provides extensivedetails and quotes from thediaries and reports of early explorers, whichmake forfascinatingreading.The accounts of the railroad pass surveys and the boundary surveysare especially absorbing. So, too, are the accounts ofearlyclimbs and thejudgmentspassed about theweather (awful) and the tasteof game such asmarmot and goat (awful). In general, the book paints a picture of the region as hostile, 6oo OHQ vol. 104, no. 4 dismal, not conducive to settlement,and difficult to conquer for human purposes. Beckey's writ ing tends to be dry,descriptive prose, but it is quite readable and for themost partwe found the content accurate. Place-names in the early accounts thathe quotes are oftendifferentfrom those used today,and only Beckey could know the landscape of the North Cascades sowell as to interpret the contemporary locations of these places. There area couple of instances wherewe think thathe has his history somewhat confused. In chapters 3 and 9, he indicates that theNorthern PacificRailroad did not reachTacoma or Seattle until the late 1880s. Itactually reachedTacoma in 1883and Seattle in 1884 (see Louis T. Renz, The History of the Northern PacificRailroad, 1980). In chapter9,he notes thatJamesJ. Hill and theGreat Northern Railroad eventually took control of the Northern Pacific,but it was nearly a centurylater (long afterJamesJ. Hill was dead) thattheGreat Northern Railroad and theNorthern Pacific merged tobecome theBurlingtonNorthern Rail road. The courts blocked theproposed merger of these two lines at the turnof thenineteenth century due to antitrust concerns. He also im plies that it was Hill who obtained theNorthern Pacific land grantwest of theCascades, but that was not thecase. Frederick Weyerhaeuser and his...