Volunteers staff this lookout

Sue and Harry Sprang, volunteer fire spotters, look out over the catwalk at the Green Ridge Fire Lookout

Tower. photo by Tom Chace

A fire spotter atop Green Ridge saw the first puff of smoke for what has become the 600-acre Link Fire on Saturday, July 5, at 4:27 p.m.

Like so many of the people who make life in Sisters safer and more enjoyable, the person who spotted the fire was a volunteer.

Volunteers travel to Green Ridge Lookout each day, even weekends and holidays, during the fire season and spend the daylight hours sitting atop this lonely, albeit beautiful, spot looking for a wisp of smoke to warn of an impending disaster.

"One of the greatest thrills about this job," said Harry Sprang, longtime volunteer who works one of the shifts with his wife, Susan, "is to see that bit of smoke, phone in our concerns and within minutes have a helicopter or 'bomber' swoop over the spot, check it out and extinguish the potential problem if, in fact, there is one."

Now that the fire season is once again upon us these dedicated folk are Sisters' first line of defense.

Built in 1961, the Green Ridge Lookout is staffed this year by Jack Walker, Philip Blatt, Ron Roach, Carol and Philip Pettit, Bob Naidis, Fred Fost, Jo Anne and Dave Heinzel, June and Bob Hill, Allison Hyder and the Sprangs. All volunteers.

One of the volunteers takes three days in a row in order to stay overnight.

This year, from July 3 until September 12, the station will be operating from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

"If we have lightning storms," said Sue Sprang, "we may be asked to stay until all danger is over."

The 15-by-16-foot, flat- roofed structure has a propane stove and heater, a battery -operated radio telephone, a cell phone and a hand-held radio. There is no electricity nor running water. The loft is reached by open wooden stairs and the lower part of the catwalk railing is covered with chicken wire for safety reasons.

There is an outdoor "privy" away from the structure.

"In the wintertime, the cabin is rented out by the day," Harry Sprang said.

The lookout station has only a single bed and no shower nor toilet.

Being exposed as it is, the tower is vulnerable to lightning.

"In case of a lightning storm," Sprang said, "we climb up on this insulated stool and keep away from all metal objects. Or, if it gets really bad, we'll get out of here and stay in our car."

The spotters have their own maps marked in colors of their choosing for easy identification of landmarks. They use an Osborne Fire Finder to mark the location of the smoke and then transfer that information to their map to phone in the coordinates.

"Hardly a day went by last year that we didn't see at least one puff of smoke," Sprang said. "That's unusual."

"With two of us working," he said, "we scan the whole area usually at least once every five to 10 minutes. If there is a fire, we are on it with binoculars continually."

From the lookout, they are able to see more than 180 degrees, from Mt. Hood to the Three Sisters Mountains.

On July 4, Mt. Adams was visible.

In 1991, Marilyn Anderson, of Black Butte Ranch, was the only spotter. She would stay there for "two or three days at a time, until I needed a shower. Then I'd head home, clean up and come right back." she said.

She and Glen Corbett were trained that year by Jim Shotwell. Corbett is still a lookout at the Black Butte tower.

"I loved that job," said Anderson, "and I miss the peace and beauty."

She worked in the tower for 11 years.

"One day I spotted a black helicopter without markings," she said. "I phoned it in but to this day, nobody ever identified it. Another experience was a fire directly below me that I could not see. All I knew was one of our helicopters came up past my window and pointed down. Then I saw the smoke. He got it out.

"It was I that spotted the Jefferson fire," she said, "exactly seven years ago, July 7, 1996. We knew it was a bad one right from the start and we were correct. It went through the lava tunnels and sprouted up in the (Warm Springs) Indian Reservation after we thought it was out over here on our side," she said.

The lookout building has a small refrigerator and most volunteers bring in their own food. Water jugs are provided as is the propane. Otherwise, it is like camping in a three- sided glass house with no terra firma below as the unit is built upon stilts.

This is not a nice place for one who suffers from acrophobia.

The public is welcomed to the area but not the tower itself, the Sprangs said. There are two picnic tables near the structure, one at its rear and another underneath facing the valley and mountains, where the view is.

To get to the Green Ridge Lookout Station from downtown Sisters, take Hwy. 20 W-west to Indian Ford Road (#11). Turn right and drive about seven miles to where the asphalt ends and the road splits. From there the roads are gravel or red cinder.

Take the left fork (Road 1150). It is about nine miles to the lookout from there. From 1150 turn left on Road 1154. It dead-ends at Road 1140. Turn left and drive a short distance to dirt road 600 which takes you to a locked gate at the top. Walk around the gate and 1/2 mile to the tower.