Photography

High elevation fire lookouts in the Pacific Northwest (Idaho in particular) have very short seasons because of snow. I couldn't get in until June 30 because the roads were blocked with snow drifts (in 2022 it was July 17). And the snow can fly in early September in the high country (in 2020 the first significant snow on my 10,000 foot peak was August 31!).

Author/poet Jack Kerouac was famously a fire lookout at Desolation Peak in the Northern Cascades of Washington in 1956. The total length of his fire season was only 63 days. I'm now 75 years old, so two months in the wilderness is plenty enough for me!