Hello, my name is Dave and my wife is Kari. Together we are Dari. Between us, we have an incredible number of years of experience in the mountains of Washington State. In particular we both started visiting fire lookout sites. These mountain tops have some of the greatest views available if they have not become over grown. Many of these are relatively easy to get to and some are either physically challenging to get to, very hard to find, or both.
This website will make a good starting point to research the more than 680 lookout sites in the state. If I have been there in the last few years, there will be a GPS track and map you can download and use. Many of site pages have first hand descriptions, hike statistics and even links to WTA and Peakbaggers trip reports.
Go to the Events menu item to see my demonstrator for a multiple signups page suitable for Lookout work parties and other events.
County data has been added to all sites as derived from the GPS Coordinates and confirmed by a more thorough matching of Peakbaggers links and data for all sites. Go to Find Lookouts > By Name and you will see a county column now appears. As of this release more then 90% of the Lookout sites and structures you can find here have a Peakbaggers link on the details page for each site. This exercise improved the quality of the GPS data by a lot. It also helped me to see that knowing the county each site is in helps to match up the sites. Entries in peakbaggers and the markers that can be found for lookouts in Caltopo appear to be far more up to date than other sources.
We are also just starting on adding to and improving the qulity of the WTA links. There are far fewer of these, but where they do match up there is useful information.
You may now post questions to Dari about a particular lookout or site. First find the lookout you are interseted in and then select the Ask Dari menu item. We will try to answer appropriate questions about lookouts and lookout sites. The questions and answers will be posted on the Ask Dari tab of the lookout details page for the selected lookout.
To get started, here is a list of lookout sites we have been to in the last 90 days
| Date | Destination | GPS Track | Discussion |
|---|
In this next list we answer general questions that are not about any particular lookout site.
| Subject | Question | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| Structures | How many of the lookout sites have lookout structures? | There are 97 of the sites that have enough structure left to count in this list. Of these many are still staffed to look for fires, are maintained by various groups and open to the public, and even available for rent! Checkout the Find Lookouts > By Use for lists and details. |
| Want lookout presentations, too? | HI Dave, I am doing a series of 3 slide shows on Historic Fire Lookouts of the Olympic Peninsula for the North Olympics Library System, March 24 -26, later this month. I started filling out your form, but am not really the "organizer", more the guest speaker. And wasn't sure if you are ready for this kind of event. | Hi Leslie, it is great that you thought about using my sign ups app for this. Right now, it is just a demo to show what could be done if people are going to use. You are the first person that has shown an interest, but it is a start! |
There are a lot of ways to find, sort, and list fire lookout sites on this web site. Start by looking at the Find Lookouts > By Name menu item to search for any lookout site. Use the Find Lookouts > Structures menu item to see lists of lookout structures that are open to the public, staffed or even for rent. There is a feature that allows you to find easy or hard to find lookouts. You find lookouts that are more or less the mileage and elevation gain that you choose. Check out the Find Lookouts > Advanced Search menu item for these features. Fair warning, it is rather experimental at this point.