Do you recall a number of pictures taken about 1960 at Crater Lake?
It was during that period of time that Ralph Edwards from the National Geographic came out, he and his wife. They were at the park I’d say pretty close to a month and they literally took hundreds and hundreds of pictures. He was all over that park. He would go out on our rescue training sessions and take photos. As I recall, there is one edition of the National Geographic that we were doing an exercise at North Junction with the Stokes Litter and it seems to me he took photos then. I think our sessions were somewhat controversial because I thing there was a feeling that maybe we shouldn’t be doing this, that it wasn’t necessary. I think there was a certain amount of tension there. We did have, it seems to me, two sessions a week. One was on “park time” and the other one was on our time. We would start early in the season, early in June. We generally started up on the slope of Hillman Peak, and it’d be cold, oh, intense cold. We’d try and be up there around 6 a.m. and work on ice and snow, ice sacks, and pitons and that sort of thing. It was really above and beyond the call of duty. It would take the rest of the day to thaw out. Then, as the season progressed, we did exercises at Annie Creek Canyon, Sleepy Hollow, Mazama Rock, and various points along the rim. The only real rescue activities I was involved in personally was [when] a visitor’s dog took out after a golden mantled ground squirrel and went over the wall and broke its leg. We went down after it, and that’s about the only thing that I can recall where I was involved on a rescue activity. It was certainly great experience. But that’s the only photographer that I recall.
As far as the search and rescue efforts, how many people from park staff were involved?
Basically, it [the rescue team] was all park staff. I was the only naturalist on that rescue team, and the only reason that I got on was that one season a fellow [on the team] had to leave due to a family emergency and wouldn’t be coming back. I guess I was next on the line, so Slim Mayberry contracted me and asked if I wanted to participate and I said sure. From that point on, I was on it. It was primarily the protective personnel that were on the team and some members from the fire crew. Dick Brown, incidentally, was on it, and I learned a great deal from him. He was superb climber and mountaineer. He was really the ultimate person in that area.
