Enchanted Valley Chalet moved out of harm’s way

Sept. 13--OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK -- It took nearly two dozen helicopter trips to get an assortment of steel beams, rails, fuel tanks and hydraulic jacks into this remote valley on the western slope of the Olympic Mountains, more than 13 miles from the nearest road.

Then it took seven mule team treks to bring the ham, eggs, steak and potatoes to feed the crew that would spend days getting tools and materials ready to push the Enchanted Valley Chalet -- an Olympic National Park landmark beloved by generations of backpackers -- away from the river ripping at its foundation.

By Sunday evening, all that was needed was a little magic made by the meeting of Ivory soap and morning dew.

"Put that on good, Jake," said house mover Jeff Monroe on Sept. 7, standing over the man he tasked with soaping a pair of metal rails. "When the dew hits that tomorrow -- bam! -- it'll be ready."

Monroe and his five-person crew pushed the three-story structure nearly 70 feet from the Quinault River's edge by Monday evening. Another push, expected to bring it more than 90 feet from the river, was planned before the project wraps up this week.

Monday's work was enough for Monroe to declare the chalet "out of harm's way."

At least for now. The Quinault is still restless. Its shifting channels will likely put the chalet in danger again, although the more optimistic guesses give the chalet -- built in 1931 -- another 80 years.

OLYMPIC ICON

If the Olympic Peninsula were a country, the chalet would be a national icon. That's how Larry Baysinger sees it, anyway.

"It's as important as Betty Ross making the flag," he said while tying up his mules in a grove near the chalet.

The owner of Sol Duc Valley Packers has led mule trains and horse camping trips into Enchanted Valley for decades.

Wearing a black cowboy hat, dusty jeans and suspenders, Baysinger looks much like chalet's first visitors -- people who came deep into the Olympics' primordial forests on horses to enjoy one of the last vestiges of the wild left in the West.

This was not the age of two-pound tents and featherweight sleeping bags. The thick canvas and wood-poled tents of the 1920s and '30s weighed more than 60 pounds, making backcountry trips difficult. Shelters and lodges proliferated in the Olympics, allowing the region's first outdoor adventurers warm, dry places to sleep as they hiked or hoofed their way to places like Enchanted Valley, known for its waterfalls, moss-covered maples and glacier views.

The Olympic Recreation Company began building the 10-room chalet in 1930 -- eight years before Olympic National Park was established. The bricks and mortar for its chimney, window frames and lumber for its interior were packed in by horse. The logs for its exterior were cut from the site. Three other backcountry lodges were constructed along the Quinault. The chalet is the only one that remains.

The chalet continued as a commercial operation for a few years after the newly-minted park surrounded it in 1938. During World War II, the chalet served as a defense outpost manned by Aircraft Warning Service personnel. The park took control of the property in 1951, using it as a ranger station and emergency shelter until last year, when the building was declared unsafe.

Park advocate Rod Farlee says the chalet was key to building support for Olympic wilderness preservation.

"The people who built this -- they opened up this valley so people could see the beauty of the Olympics," he said. "Famous photographers came through. It was written about in newspapers. This is a large part of the reason why people thought Olympic was national park caliber."

Another park advocate, Tim McNulty, author of "Olympic National Park: A Natural History," sees the chalet in starkly different terms.

For him, the chalet represents one of many "aggressive development schemes" -- including a highway up the Quinault and over the Olympic Mountains -- that rallied support for public ownership of the peninsula's wild places.

The chalet, he wrote in High Country News, is "an artifact of an earlier time in Western history, when parks and natural areas were the 'pleasuring grounds' of urban elites who could afford catered pack trips and rustic hunting lodges. We've come to a more egalitarian view of our public wildlands since then."

While park users either loved or hated it, the National Park Service has been largely indifferent, leaving substantial repairs to hiking groups and other volunteer organizations.

Early this year, the park submitted a plan that leaned toward dismantling the chalet before it toppled into the river, where it could become an impediment to sensitive fish populations.

State Historic Preservation Officer Allyson Brooks thought the park could do better.

"My role is to help agencies listen to their community," she said. "And what I heard loud and clear is that the community wanted the chalet saved."

Her official rejection of the plan wouldn't halt it, but it would have made things difficult for the park.

"When our office disagrees, it makes for a long, time-consuming process that goes to their upper management in D.C.," she said.

Farlee credits Brooks for pushing the park to begin serious discussions with Monroe and other preservationists about saving the chalet.

WARNING SIGNS

Park officials have long known the chalet was in peril.

Nearly a decade ago, park geomorphologist Paul Kennard sounded the alarm, warning in a memo that "it is a virtual certainty the (river) channel will shift catastrophically in the short term."

Kennard's June 2005 memo recommended swift action, predicting that the chalet had about five years before it was destroyed.

In 2003, the river was within 170 feet of the chalet. A year later, it had cut the distance to just 28 feet. Kennard's warning came just after the river had eaten through another 18 feet, bringing the chalet's living room windows within 10 feet of the collapsing riverbank.

"The only way to insure the chalet's safety ... is to relocate it immediately," he wrote.

By the time Monroe and his crew got to work on the chalet, about 8 feet of it was hanging over the riverbank. Large sections of its foundation had already tumbled into the river.

"Nine years ago (the park) was warned," Farlee said. "I am so pissed off they didn't heed it."

JACKING AND SLIDING

Farlee took part in the move this week, calling it a stressful but fascinating process that would have made for an gripping reality TV show.

"Those shows always have crisis -- but it's manufactured crisis," he said. "We had real crisis."

On Day 1, the helicopter pilot, spooked by weather conditions and the weight of the steel beams, refused to fly. Movers had to find a welder willing to rush to the park and cut the beams into sizes the pilot approved. The beams were later reattached and used as supports under the chalet.

Then there was the near disaster when the eight generator-powered jacks were fired up.

"Gravel started coming down from the river bank, and it really started collapsing," Farlee said.

By a stroke of luck, the bank settled. Farlee says he narrowly avoided cardiac arrest.

"Oh, it was scary," he said.

Lifting the chalet 20 inches off the ground allowed movers to slip in the soap-slicked rails. According to Monroe, only Ivory soap will do.

The jacks were then tipped on to their sides and made to push the chalet horizontally, inch by inch. The process was imperceptibly slow, with movers constantly shifting or moving various wedges and blocks around the chalet's base.

Park staff would not permit Monroe to speak with the press. Park spokeswoman Rainey McKenna said he is a third-generation house mover based near Sequim. His record of house moves in one year recently topped 50, she said.

"He's the wizard in this realm," said Del Davis, a house mover from Everett who helped out on the chalet move.

The work of the movers, two cooks and one packer cost the park $124,000. Added to that is the not-yet-tallied cost of the helicopter. The project's final budget could reach $164,000, according to park officials.

The cost of moving the chalet has been a concern for the park.

According to McKenna, the move's funding is coming out of a pool of money that might otherwise be spent on a growing list of deferred maintenance projects.

WILDERNESS WATCHERS

Another worry for the park are the watchful eyes of wilderness advocates. The Enchanted Valley is protected under the federal Wilderness Act, which prohibits roads, structures and motorized equipment. The park obtained special permission for the movers to use helicopters and generators. All tools had to be approved and weighed, and the number of pack animals had to be kept at eight or fewer.

The park service had strict rules about media access during the move. Journalists were not to come within 50 feet of the chalet and were barred from speaking with the movers, packers, cooks and other people associated with the project. McKenna -- one of three park staffers at the site -- explained that safety and worker efficiency were at the root of the rules.

Movers disagreed with that explanation, saying in interviews that took place out of view of park staff that fears of potential wilderness area rule violations and possible lawsuits led to the restrictions.

In 2005, the park lost a legal challenge over its plan to fly two trail shelters by helicopter into a wilderness area near Lake Cushman.

Wilderness advocates, including Olympic Park Associates and Montana-based Wilderness Watch, brought the lawsuit.

The chalet's movers were told by park staff to be vigilant for wilderness advocates looking for violations.

Rattling the nerves of park staff were reports of people emerging from the woods to take photos and then slipping away before they could be questioned, according to Baysinger.

Olympic Park Associates had written a letter opposing the move, preferring instead that the chalet be dismantled and hauled away, but no effort was made to catch violations, according to McNulty, who serves as the group's vice president.

"We're trusting the National Park Service," he said.

THE NEXT 80

Even McNulty can't help but get wistful about the chalet. He remembers sleeping inside it in the 1970s, back when it served "as a free backcountry hotel for hikers." While working on a trail crew in the '80s, it sheltered him from an early season bout of snow and rain.

It's unclear what kind of purpose the chalet will serve at its new location. For now, it'll sit boarded-up and perched on steel beams and wood blocks. The park plans to initiate a public process sometime in the coming year to help decide its fate. All options are on the table, from dismantling it to making it habitable again.

For Baysinger, it's enough that it's not lying in a heap in the river.

"Now my kids, my grandkids -- everybody -- can come here and enjoy this beautiful thing," he said.

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