Fire Lookout Life: View from the stairway landing #1 (10' up) in the lookout substructure

[Bo Zarts]

The lookout is 30' high, and has 3 flights of stairs, two landings, and 43 steps up. Each flight gets progressively steeper, with the last stairway being more like a ladder. In a perfect world, the step rise would be a uniform 6", and there would be 60 steps up. But on this tower the stairs are inside the substructure timbers. To get the 6" step rise the stairway has to be built outside the substructure, and that was the design of the first lookout that I worked in Oregon (2009-2013).

Olympus OM-5 MK2 w/14-150mm lens

©2025 Bo Zarts Studio

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Ya gotta be strong to get up those steps! Good grief.

It's a great photo. Glad I don't have to climb those stairs.

[Irish_Dem]

9. I was thinking the same thing.

Those stairs have to be a killer.

[GiqueCee]

2. Hell of a driveway...

... betcha don't get a lot of company up there.

[wendyb-NC]

3. Well done

Thank you, Bo Zarts for sharing the view from your workplace while climbing the steps to get to your office. How many people can do that, and have a view .
I love to see your photos from that workplace in the air. Your photos are stunning, and offer a glimpse of remote western mountain landscapes, with their rugged wild beauty, and the rolling miles that each photo represents something I, and probably most people, don't see that often.

[Tom Dyer]

4. On a walker.

I SO support a consistent riser.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.😄😄😄

[Chicagogrl1]

5. Stunning!!!

[4Sitka]

6. Nice photo of your nice view!

[KS Toronado]

7. That road looks wide enough for my full sized Bronco to come visit

[erronis]

8. I love your sharing of this wonderful spot on earth. But I fear that some want to destroy our lands.

In my fly-overs of that area during several decades I've marveled at the expanses of protected lands. Some controlled forestry and other activities, but so much seems unscathed by our rapaciousness. I pray (athiestically, of course) that we can hold on to these patches of nature.

[HeartsCanHope]

10. Thanks for doing all this, Bo Zarts!

My goodness, that climb would be scary!

[Hekate]

11. Always wonderful photos. Query: back at the start of this season you had some MAGAs come trucking in...

They wanted to make nice, get inside, and see the view — but oddly enough you didn’t like their vibe and shooed them off. You said something about giving a heads-up to some of your cohort across the way …

Were the red-caps ever sighted again?