"The panorama from Kerouac’s old lookout remains the same, with great Hozomeen, ever changing aspect in the clouds and light, anchoring the view, commanding all attention. Desolation is still a remote place—eighteen miles south to the nearest road, or a half-hour boat ride from Ross Dam. To the north, on the Canadian side, there is still only a single gravel road coming down from the town of Hope to the border crossing at Hozomeen. From sourdough, the northern vista is absolutely unchanged from the day of Snyder and Whalen. The same astonishing one-eighty that greeted them at the top of the ridge in the Fifties—the northern half of Whalen’s mala, from Davis Peak in the west all the way around to Jack and Crater on the east—is what one sees today. The view to the south is significantly different, however, changed permanently by the Cross Cascades Highway that skirts the flanks of Ruby Mountain on the far side of Diablo Lake. On a summer’s day the distant throg of a Harley chopper can carry across the valley; weekends, RV headlights flicker all night long as they climb the grade from Panther Creek. Sourdough Mountain, despite its awsome three-sixty of surrounding wilderness, is hardly wilderness itself; cars can drive right to the trailhead in Diablo. Were it not for the daunting gain of the lookout trail, Sourdough LO might well have suffered the same fate as Whalen’s cabin on Sauk by now."
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