In Wilderness and Mountain Lore

By Eric Magelssen

In Wilderness and Mountain Lore explores the stories and adventures of visiting a mountain wilderness retreat over a fifty-year period with a group of friends. We nearly always were able to reserve the only two cabins for the second week of June. Domke Lake is located in the North Cascades wilderness area of North Central Washington State. There

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Magelssen Publishing
• Release date: Aug 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781961225350

Eric Magelssen

service of any kind along with little change other thanwhat nature has wrought.

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Copyright 2023 by Eric Magelssen

ISBN: 978-1-961225-34-3 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-961225-35-0 (Ebook)

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotation in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface

Introduction 

Chapter 1 Native Americans in Chelan

Chapter 2 Meeting D. C. Torrell

Chapter 3 Domke Lake

Chapter 4 The Big and Small Cabins

Chapter 5 Domke in the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s

Chapter 6 Gordon Stuart, Proprietor of Emerald Camp

Chapter 7 Mornings at Domke

Chapter 8  The Five Cedars and the Deep hole

Chapter 9 Fishing and Tackle

Chapter 10  Emerald Park and Other Hikes

Chapter 11 Flying to Domke

Chapter 12  Sid Burns

Afterword

About the Author

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Preface

Wildfires are on the rise throughout the United States and abroad. With the planet warming, our forests dry out and become vulnerable to the possibility of fire, especially from lightning strikes during the summer months. One such lightning strike hit the forest around Wolverine Creek, located approximately three miles up Lake Chelan from the village of Lucerne, Washington. When the lightning strike occurred and a fire started, a firefighting team was brought in by helicopter, and this allowed the firefighting crew to rappel onto the fire site to have a close look at what could be done to extinguish the fire.

When the firefighting crew finished, they had to be extracted by another helicopter due to the precipitous terrain. They apparently had recommended that water be dumped on the fire, and this was done by the use of a helicopter that uses a special large water carrier underslung from the helicopter, which was filled by immersing the container in the nearby Lake Chelan. The helicopter flew directly over the fire and dumped the huge bucket that could carry up to 2,800 gallons of water at one filling. It was reported but not confirmed that the helicopter dumped some 30,000 gallons of water on the Wolverine Fire during that first attempt to put the fire out; however, this was not successful. The countryside where the fire started, like nearly all of this terrain, is very steep, and with a precipitous mountain country with no roads in and around the area, the only way in for a close evaluation of the conditions was to rappel. Much of the timber that grows there can be quite old; however, there is a significant understory of brush grasses and dry old branches that accumulate over time, providing excellent fuel for a fire. These fires are difficult to suppress, especially if they ignite tree roots and then slowly burn underground. The fires can smolder and move along for some time this way, and eventually it will erupt at the surface like this fire did thirty days after the initial lightning strike started the fire. The smoldering fire will send up clouds of heavy smoke that can fill the air to where a person cannot see much beyond an arm’s length, and this smoke can travel thousands of feet above the ground and cross-country. Wildfire smoke from a fire in Washington State will travel all the way to Eastern Montana or further. Sometime around a thirty-day period, the Wolverine wildfire erupted into a raging fire aboveground and moved south toward Lucerne and Railroad Creek.

Some of the thinking about where the fire might travel indicated that it would move up the Railroad Creek drainage and possibly strike Holden Village—eleven miles up the mountain from Lake Chelan, and apparently, the fire did begin to travel up Railroad Creek and move across to the south. This caused the Forest Service (FS) to become concerned for Lucerne’s safety, and so they lit a backfire to put distance between the village and the fire. The backfire went up Domke Mountain and wasted no time enveloping the tinder dry forest and moving swiftly toward Domke Lake and Domke Lake Resort. The steep mountain terrain acted much like a chimney flue, and with the fire already being hot and moving, it just sped up and was drawn up the mountain, covering the three miles between Lucerne and Domke Lake in very little time. Meanwhile, Sid Burns, the owner of Domke Lake Resort, had been in touch with the FS, being warned by radio that the fire was headed his way. Sid realized the danger and the fact that his property was going to be struck by fire soon. Sid worried about his home and all his personal belongings along with the historical photos and information from previous owners such as Adelbert Cool, the first to settle there in 1905, and then Gordon H. Stuart, who came in 1920 and was responsible for Sid becoming the proprietor in 1985 after Gordon had passed. Not only were there historical mementos, but Sid had nice aluminum boats and outboard motors, two motorbikes, and all manner of tools and equipment needed to operate in this remote mountain location.

Sid’s home was in danger along with several other buildings, one being the old home of Gordon Stuart. Sid realized he might not be able to save his home when he looked up and saw the barn ablaze approximately one hundred yards from the other buildings, and so he began saving the historical photos and information from the past one hundred or more years. Sid had a large two-wheeled cart about twice the size of a wheelbarrow, and he began making trips from the house down to the boats on the lake as fast as he could, filling the cart with his possessions, which mostly were historical in nature, along with his hunting rifle and pistol—all the while fire was raging toward his home and there was nothing to be done to stop it other than get out of its way. Sid moved as much as possible into the boats and created a flotilla, which he pulled out into the lake and tied to a dead snag approximately a hundred feet from shore. Meanwhile, he realized the fire was approaching the cabins on the far shore across the lake a mile away from his place and that if possible, he wanted to save as many things as he could from there too. The fire’s smoke was like a sea of acrid clouds that settled onto the surface of the lake and all round him, leaving him gasping for air even though he was wearing a carbon filter mask for some relief, and he said, It didn’t seem to help much. Yet Sid kept up his work of salvaging as many things as he could from the rental cabins. He literally threw things into the lake or at the shoreline, hoping their being in or around the water would save them. Sid was literally running from the small cabin to the large cabin to save equipment when he remembered the old sign that was nailed up above the door of the big cabin back in the 1930s, which said, Through these portals pass the best Damm fishermen in the world. He ripped the sign down and saved it along with a few other items before the big cabin became totally engulfed in fire, on its way to oblivion and fine ash.

Sid had been going from one side of the lake to the other in one of his boats, saving what he could before the fire drove him to exhaustion, and he had to lay down in his boat to sleep while dense smoke lay all around the area, making it nearly impossible to breathe, let alone try and sleep. He did manage to get some rest while the entire forest around the lake was now ablaze, and the fire was already moving away from the lake and up toward the higher ground of the mountains and ridges surrounding the area.

Sid had two Norwegian Fjord Horses, and when the fire was approaching his home on the east side of the lake, he began to be concerned for them although they normally roamed around the area somewhere on Domke Mountain or up around the meadow at the north end of Domke Lake. In his efforts to save his property, he could only hope they found their way to safety; because the fire was bearing down on him, he was not able to go looking for them. Sid found them up around Domke Mountain two weeks later, both dead and partially consumed by what he thought had been a cougar since he found cougar tracks in the area near the carcasses.

Through the years, there have been forest fires in and around Lake Chelan, and during the years that I spent visiting Domke Lake, I recall at least three fires that came close to the resort. Before one particular fire closed in on the resort, Sid had wrapped all the buildings in protective foil from top to bottom, and he set up sprinklers much like those used to water golf courses. The sprinklers were fed by gas-powered pumps that Sid owned, and because he had enough time to set up the sprinklers, he was able to keep enough water on the vegetation and buildings to prevent them from being consumed by fire when it finally reached the resort’s buildings.

Unfortunately, on this occasion, time was not on his side; and he couldn’t do the preparations to fend off the fire. When the Wolverine Fire ended and life began to return to some form of normal, Sid was without a home except for one rental cabin and most of his tools and equipment, which were lost in the fire. Still, he had to try and make something work for him. The FS closed the trail to Domke and the campgrounds due to dangerous conditions where the fire had been active.

Chelan Airways closed down their air service and pulled out of the Lake Chelan area, never to return, mainly due to their no longer being able to serve Domke Lake Resort. They had a continuous stream of customers who flew in to the lake week after week from spring until fall, and along with other customers flying to Stehekin and the like on Lake Chelan, their business was sufficient to keep them happy. Not long after the fire, they lost their lease for the floatplanes, and since then, all the potential locations along the lake have gone the way of some form of development for either homes or other businesses.

Along with this, the Lady of the Lake added another fast boat that made round trips from Fields Point to Stehekin, now making three ferry boats operating on Lake Chelan on regular schedules daily. People can have more frequent service up and down Lake Chelan without the high expense even though the travel time is a bit longer then flying.

The days of the bush pilots flying into high mountain lakes in Washington State are now gone with the closing down of Chelan Airways, and those of us who had the privilege to experience such flights over a long period of time were the fortunate few.

Given the changes of nature—mainly due to the warming of our planet—that have taken place over the past century or more, an era has come to its end, and what we have left now are some of the stories that will follow.

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Entry door sign of Big Cabin

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Foil fireproofing covering over Big Cabin

Introduction 

If it weren’t for the Boy Scouts of America and the Seattle Mountaineers entering my life early on, I likely would not have learned all about the great outdoors and what it’s like to trek and climb in the magnificent mountains of Washing ton State.

I grew up during the Second World War, and like most children of that time, we found plenty to do out of doors, playing in the surroundings such as they did, especially where I grew up in the country just outside the city of Seattle.

Our neighborhood was a mix of small homes and at least three small farms still eking out a living by doing what