5 Years of Bikepacking Lookouts

I love lookouts! You know there is a museum with some lookouts on site in Oregon.

Edit: museum is south of Spokane, WA.

Ken, where is that at? Gotta make a metal note to hit it next time I'm in the area.

Casey, this was a very cool project you took on. Thanks for sharing this.

We have some fire lookouts in the area, but bike access is limited for all of them. Not sure if you've read the book "Fire Season", it was written by a writer who lives in NYC and spends his summers in solitude, manning a lookout in the Mogollon Range of the Gila Wilderness. It might interest you.

Cool series of trips. You could travel the entire western US, visiting groupings of lookouts each summer.

We had a pretty extensive series of lookout towers (historically) in our local National Forest (Los Padres). Some have interesting histories, such as a few that were repurposed as lookouts for Japanese subs and fighter planes during WWII. Sadly we've lost most of them over time to various events or just general neglect… some burned up in fires (after they were abandoned), a few were purposely dismantled, etc. A lot of the old lookout sties here just have the footings left, or maybe the metal frame, but nothing else. We've got a few that actually still have the lookout structure on the top… in fact we just lost one in the last month or so; looks like it blew down in a recent storm.

Anyway pretty sure they're all reachable by bike. They're interesting to visit and generally have impressive views, but ours are nothing like the ones you've been visiting. The ones you've gone to so far look like a good time!

I'll give a +1 to Eugene's rec for "Fire Season." It was a quick, albeit interesting read.

Thanks guys.

Man, that is a great book. Probably my favorite on Lookouts.

It does suck that there are not more lookout towers around. We are really spoiled up here to have so many still standing. There are still quite a few run-down ones, but a lot of times one can work with the FS to get them back up to speed. Which is what a group of us has been doing to one such lookout here in Montana.

Also, the Forest Fire Lookout Association does some really good work on this front. Forest Fire Lookout Association

Here you go. http://www.firelookouts.com/ Oop. it is in WA, just south of Spokane.

I want to do a BPL trip at Bear Basin Butte Lookout here in the northwest corner of CA. You get a cabin and the lookout.

Oh ya, thats Ray Kresek's! I been meaning to get out there for a few years now. If everything works out, we'll be stopping by before our next trip, since we'll be heading that way anyways.