Paradise River Dam Reprised

Day 107: There's a reason I'm posting photos from eight years ago. It has to do with Morris dancing. Yeah, that's what I said: Morris dancing. Last night, our side (Sound & Fury) held its annual "Mistletoe Faerie" gift exchange, similar to the traditional office "secret Santa" swap. I was certainly not prepared for what Mark O'Kelly had in store for me, not by a long shot. Since we'd drawn names in early November, Mark (who is very talented) had been doing research into the activites of your favourite ranger, and had pulled them together in a song to the tune of "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain" and presented it to me both as a written copy and in live performance before the rest of the group. I was laughing before the first verse had concluded:

"She's been ranging round the mountain through the years
She's been ranging round the mountain through the years
Through the forests and the valleys
She doesn't dilly dally
She's been ranging round the mountain through the years."

Reading ahead of Mark's singing, I began to get a feel for how deeply he'd delved when I hit the third verse:

"She'll snowshoe to the cabin when it's cold
She'll snowshoe to the cabin when it's really really cold
No matter if it's freezin'
For her it's just a breeze in
She'll snowshoe to the cabin when it's cold."

But I really lost it when I hit verse five:

"Then one day in Paradise she found a dam
One day in Paradise she found a long lost dam
She released the river's waters
Now she's one of Neptune's Daughters
One day in Paradise she found a long lost dam."

Never mind a slight historical inaccuracy (I did not bust the dam), at this point I said, "HOW THE HELL DID YOU KNOW OUT ABOUT THE DAM?" but Mark just kept on singing.

One would be rightfully shocked to know how much information the internet holds about one's personal, private self, but at that moment, I could not recall having ever mentioned the Paradise River Dam to anyone outside the Park colleagues who had sent me out to find it. Mark had managed to find an article in our Volunteer blog, an interview with yours truly in which I told the story in brief. I realize now that I had also posted it in more detail in 365Caws, a reprise of which follows. Mark, I know you're not on Facebook, so I hope someone from Sound & Fury shares this with you. This was the BEST Mistletoe Faerie gift ever. Thank you!

*****
July 20, 2012
Follow the Penstock

When the call went out for a photographer who was willing to bushwhack through dense brush given only vague directions for finding an old and dilapidated concrete dam on the Paradise River, I waved my hand furiously in the air while jumping up and down yelling, "Me! Me! Me!" There is nothing I like better than an Adventure, and when only a handful of my colleagues had any remote idea that this dam even existed, let alone knew where it was, I couldn't resist the lure.

I suppose I should offer the backstory here because it's quite amusing. Some time in the last couple of weeks, Mount Rainier National Park received an edict from the Federal Government stating that all hydroelectric dams were to be brought up to a particular standard by such-and-so date. The Paradise River Dam was on their list. At eight feet high and approximately fifteen feet wide, it wasn't much of a power producer even in its heyday; nevertheless, its kilowatts had gone on record and no one had ever bothered to mention that it had fallen into serious disrepair. The wooden penstocks have been maintained where they are close to a trail, but where they debouch into the forest, they are often in the condition shown here if, in fact, there is even that much structure left. Mossed over, buried by soil, crushed by fallen trees, the penstock was what I needed to locate in order to track it to its source, the dam.

Well, as I said, I love an Adventure. When I lost the visible sections of the penstock, I began thinking like an engineer, puzzling out where the pipes might lay. I followed a variety of subtle visual clues, a slight subsidence of the land, a cutbank where there was no natural reason for one to occur, and eventually, I came upon an exposed section of the wire framework which held the wooden slats together. I spent some time disentangling blueberry bushes from my glasses, unhooking bootlaces from unseen sticks, freeing my packstraps from snagging branches, but yes, I found the dam. I spent a couple of hours prowling over the structure taking photos from various angles, estimating length and width and surface area of various components. It was only once I was content with the data and images I had gathered that I happened to glance up at the sky. We'd had a morning of hard thundershowers, and it looked like another system was moving in. I packed up my gear, pleased with my success, and followed the penstock back to easy trail and down the miles to the car.