True Wilderness
Register Guard
Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, along with other Oregon conservation groups, are working to achieve permanent wilderness protection for the Devil's Staircase in Oregon's coast range.
TRUE WILDERNESS
Conservationists want to protect 30,000 acres of pristine beauty
By Winston Ross
The Register-Guard
Jun 8, 2009
DEVIL’S STAIRCASE — Josh Laughlin emerged at Wassen Creek on Tuesday at just about noon, after an hours-long jaunt through a sprawling thicket of sword ferns, huckleberry bushes and rhododendron trees. . . .
So much quiet. This 30,000-acre paradise squeezed between the Smith and Umpqua rivers in the heart of the Coast Range sees maybe 100 human visitors a year. Laughlin won’t glimpse a soul outside of his hiking group during nine long hours on the trail, which is partly what makes the payoff of his brutal descent to Wassen Creek so priceless.
Here, at the nadir of a steep, roadless and forbidding 1,800-foot canyon, drowning out all ambient noise, is the rush of a glistening waterfall known as the Devil’s Staircase, cascading over sandstone-carved pools large enough to swim in, a jewel of algae-covered bedrock spotted only by the few intrepid travelers who have risked abandonment in this rugged stretch of wilderness to stand before it. The staircase earns its moniker because one can climb up its many ledges when the water is low enough. . . .
In part, the region has been spared the chainsaw because it’s so inaccessible. Andy Stahl, executive director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, has seen the waterfall twice, the first time in 1983 and the second in 2007. Little has changed during that period, he said.
“For three days we saw no evidence that any person had ever been where we had gone” on that first hike, Stahl said. “There was not a candy wrapper, fire ring, boot mark, nothing. One still gets that feeling. If there’s any place in Oregon that evokes wilderness, it’s the Devil’s Staircase.” . . .
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio is one of the few hearty souls to have navigated his way through the brush-choked canyons and laid eyes on Wassen Creek, which winds its way from headwaters at Lake Wassen 17 miles to the Smith River, a few miles north of Reedsport. DeFazio called his 2007 trip into the wilderness “the hardest hike I’ve ever been on. I was on my hands and knees getting up to the first ridge. It’s a wild spot, and yes, it should be designated as wilderness.”
In the next few weeks, DeFazio said, he plans to introduce a bill to declare the staircase a federal wilderness area and to deem Wassen and Franklin Creeks wild and scenic rivers, which would make the region off-limits to logging and other impacts. He’s optimistic it will sail through Congress. . . .
Only 4 percent of Oregon’s land base is set aside as wilderness today, compared to 15 percent in California and 12 percent in Washington. . . .
“The area is incredibly diverse,” he said. “We keep finding fascinating, interesting things down there.”
http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/14949830-41/story.csp
Copyright © 2009 — The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA
Conservationists want to protect 30,000 acres of pristine beauty
By Winston Ross
The Register-Guard
Jun 8, 2009
DEVIL’S STAIRCASE — Josh Laughlin emerged at Wassen Creek on Tuesday at just about noon, after an hours-long jaunt through a sprawling thicket of sword ferns, huckleberry bushes and rhododendron trees. . . .
So much quiet. This 30,000-acre paradise squeezed between the Smith and Umpqua rivers in the heart of the Coast Range sees maybe 100 human visitors a year. Laughlin won’t glimpse a soul outside of his hiking group during nine long hours on the trail, which is partly what makes the payoff of his brutal descent to Wassen Creek so priceless.
Here, at the nadir of a steep, roadless and forbidding 1,800-foot canyon, drowning out all ambient noise, is the rush of a glistening waterfall known as the Devil’s Staircase, cascading over sandstone-carved pools large enough to swim in, a jewel of algae-covered bedrock spotted only by the few intrepid travelers who have risked abandonment in this rugged stretch of wilderness to stand before it. The staircase earns its moniker because one can climb up its many ledges when the water is low enough. . . .
In part, the region has been spared the chainsaw because it’s so inaccessible. Andy Stahl, executive director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, has seen the waterfall twice, the first time in 1983 and the second in 2007. Little has changed during that period, he said.
“For three days we saw no evidence that any person had ever been where we had gone” on that first hike, Stahl said. “There was not a candy wrapper, fire ring, boot mark, nothing. One still gets that feeling. If there’s any place in Oregon that evokes wilderness, it’s the Devil’s Staircase.” . . .
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio is one of the few hearty souls to have navigated his way through the brush-choked canyons and laid eyes on Wassen Creek, which winds its way from headwaters at Lake Wassen 17 miles to the Smith River, a few miles north of Reedsport. DeFazio called his 2007 trip into the wilderness “the hardest hike I’ve ever been on. I was on my hands and knees getting up to the first ridge. It’s a wild spot, and yes, it should be designated as wilderness.”
In the next few weeks, DeFazio said, he plans to introduce a bill to declare the staircase a federal wilderness area and to deem Wassen and Franklin Creeks wild and scenic rivers, which would make the region off-limits to logging and other impacts. He’s optimistic it will sail through Congress. . . .
Only 4 percent of Oregon’s land base is set aside as wilderness today, compared to 15 percent in California and 12 percent in Washington. . . .
“The area is incredibly diverse,” he said. “We keep finding fascinating, interesting things down there.”
http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/14949830-41/story.csp
Copyright © 2009 — The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA
