Were they attached markings or blazes?
They were attached markings, diamonds probably, orange diamonds. I can’t remember for sure.
Similar to what we’ve got now?
Yes. In March of 1948, I think that was the year where the January was a light year. It started to snow in February and it never quit until about June. My wife remembers that. This was one of the problems about this part of the country. The winters were great, but in the Spring along about April or May, you’d go down to Klamath Falls and everything was nice down there and you had to come back up to the dirty snow at Crater Lake. If cabin fever ever set in, that was when it started to get to you. But one spring, the National Geographic decided to run the Pacific Crest Trail from the California border, I believe to the Washington/ Canadian border. They were taking some of the newer Snow Cats and these were Snow Cats that had tracks on all fours. They had four tracks instead of two tracks and two skis. They were much more sophisticated than the one we had up here. Crater Lake was used as a proving ground for tougher Snow Cats. They would bring them up here and try them out. Well, they were going to go through on this and they were going to go following the Pacific Crest Trail as much as they could. They couldn’t travel on a whole lot of it, but they could follow one of the motorways that went fairly close to the Pacific Crest Trail in the west half of the park.
Was it still called the Skyline Trail at that time?
I think it was, as I remember. They didn’t have any trouble until they got across the west entrance road and started up the road, which then bottomed out at the Pumice Flat and up into that country. On the side below Watchman there is a spring down there, I can’t remember the name of it. Is it Thousand Springs? (11) I’m sorry the name escapes me at the moment. But down in that part of the country. We had warned them about this because we were having terrific snows and we had a terrible March. It just snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed. It was one of those times when you would get two feet of snow over night and then it would just keep on going. So that you might get, within a 48 hour period, three of four of snow. It was loose snow, it wouldn’t have a chance to pack. And Snow Cats, at least in those days, did not operate too well in that loose snow. I think I’ve given you ideas about that. I think there were two Snow Cats and I don’t recall how many people of course, there would have been a writer and photographer along, plus a couple of drivers. That got completely bogged down over in that park of the park. Now how we knew all this I don’t recall. There must have been radio communication somewhere between them and the Forest Service or us. But anyway, we sent our own Snow Cat in. I didn’t go in on it. But they finally came out the way they had come in on the west entrance road, took their Snow Cats down the road, and then came back up the road that runs between Union Creek and Diamond Lake junctions. They could not go across clear through on the Skyline Trail. I don’t think I ever saw that article. I don’t know whether it was ever written or not.
