The Wild Sky Wilderness isn’t even a real place yet: It’s just lines on a map and proposed legislation in Congress. But the Wild Sky itself is as real as can be — more than 106,000 acres of tall mountains, deep valleys, towering forests and rushing streams just up the road from all of us in Snohomish County.
And most people only know it from looking to their left as they drive up to Stevens Pass.
"I’ve seen a lot of mountains and I still haven’t found any I like better than right here," said Rick McGuire. "Everything comes together in that area; the big trees, the alpine flower meadows, the salmon streams, the tall mountains. Lots of times that stuff gets taken for granted around here."
McGuire is the author of a new Mountaineers hiking guide on trails in and near the proposed wilderness area, "55 Hikes Around Stevens Pass; Wild Sky Country." A longtime conservation advocate and an avid hiker, McGuire wrote the book with the late, legendary hiking photographer and writer Ira Spring.
"Ira used to take pride in saying he was a trail guy, not an environmentalist," said McGuire, a self-described tree-hugger. "He was an environmentalist, too, though. It’s too bad he died before this was finished."
John Spring, Ira Spring’s son, said that preserving the Wild Sky was a longtime goal for his father.
"He had such a passion for the Wild Sky," John Spring said. "He was trying to encourage people, instead of sitting in front of a TV someplace, to get out and explore."
Springs’ royalties from the book will go to the Spring Family Trail Fund, which supports trail maintenance, while McGuire is donating his royalties to the Alpine Lakes Protection Society.
A 46-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair and a well-worn pair of hiking boots, McGuire fell in love with the Wild Sky area as a teenager. Growing up in Everett, he used to look out the windows of Cascade High School and dream about the tall mountains to the east.
He became politically active in 1978, when he began working to save the Boulder River valley, which was eventually protected under the Washington Wilderness Act in 1984. After that, McGuire moved on to other conservation battles. The Wild Sky didn’t become a front-burner issue until 2000, when several conservation groups pitched it to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and 2nd District Rep. Rick Larsen.
"Mostly, it just didn’t have the people working on it, the squeaky wheels," McGuire said. "It gets back to the embarrassment of riches around here."
The Wild Sky Wilderness would fill the gaps between the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness to the north and the Alpine Lakes Wilderness to the south. It encompasses irregular blocks along the North Fork of the Skykomish River, the mountains around Gunn Peak and Mount Baring, and the hills and valleys from West Cady Ridge down to Scorpion Mountain and Mount Fernow.
A surprising number of the hikes in the book are outside the proposed Wild Sky boundaries because there are surprisingly few trails into the huge swath of rugged wilderness. The Barclay Lake, Blanca Lake and West Cady Ridge trails are probably the best-known of the dozen or so official trails within the proposed boundaries, but McGuire said there is the potential to build more.
"There are way fewer trails now than there were in the 1940s, but way more people wanting to hike," McGuire said. "There are plenty of places where trails could be built and not have much of an effect on wildlife."
The bill to create the Wild Sky Wilderness passed the U.S. Senate last year and was approved by a committee in the U.S. House, but died without a vote. Murray and Larsen introduced new bills in February this year. The Senate bill was approved in committee and is waiting for a vote by the full Senate. The House version hasn’t been voted on in committee yet, although Larsen hopes to get a vote early next year. President Bush has already indicated he will sign the bill if Congress passes it.
"The odds increase the more you work at it," Larsen said. "If it’s not this year, it will be next year. Establishing a new wilderness area in the wild Skykomish is too important to leave for long."
Larsen said the wilderness designation is important both because the Wild Sky area is so close to Everett and Seattle and because it will protect lowland forests and salmon streams that have been left out of other wilderness areas.
"For the first time ever, we have a chance not to save just the rocks and crags," he said. "We’re saving the creeks and the trees."
John Spring said that if his father was still alive, he would be in Washington, D.C., right now, "chasing these guys down and becoming such a nuisance that they would finally push it through so he would get off their back."
The wilderness proposal has generated its share of controversy. The state farm bureau opposes it because it believes some of the proposed area doesn’t meet the definition of wilderness and worry that a wilderness designation could mean costly road closures and other problems. There have also been complaints that the public wasn’t sufficiently involved in shaping the proposal, although the boundaries were scaled back to preserve trails for snowmobilers and a provision was inserted to make sure float planes could still land on Lake Isabel.
Whatever happens in Congress, the Wild Sky is not in imminent danger of being logged. The area, part of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, is protected by overlapping administrative designations as roadless area, forest reserve and grizzly bear recovery area, and the Forest Service has no plans for any development.
Still, McGuire said, administrative designations are much easier to change than a congressionally-created wilderness.
"Legislated wilderness is as close as we have come in this country to permanently saving a place," he said. "It’s difficult to get enacted, but it’s difficult to get un-enacted, too."
McGuire has a boots-on appreciation for the wilderness he is working to protect. He eschews the high mountains and sweeping views that attract most hikers and prefers to wander off-trail in search of old-growth trees. It’s amazing, he said, to watch forests change over the years. Even old growth changes if you watch long enough.
Patience, McGuire said, is a virtue in a conservationist, both in politics and in the woods.
"Tree-hugging is the wrong hobby to get into if you like quick results."
Reporter Andrew Wineke: 425-339-3465 or wineke@heraldnet.com.
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