Pentagon Shack Construction

I’m sorry some of these pictures are a bit blurry, but if you have ever used one of those 110 camera’s, they were rather small which made it difficult to hold it steady sometimes.

Here’s a couple of pictures of the early construction.

You can see one of the walls have some cedar shacks on it already.

We had one those big 2 man saws that we used for cutting up cedar logs. There were a couple of large dead cedar trees that had fallen down not too far from the site. Here is a picture of the shaking site.

After cutting up the log we used a shake splitter to break off the shakes. There were probably more unusable shakes than good ones.

Here you can see how we constructed the walls using the small trees that were at the site of the cabin.

Here are a few pictures showing the progress on the walls and roof.

That’s me on the roof with Rotten Ron.

Here you can see the shack with 3 of the walls completed and our little plastic shelter for sleeping during the construction.

This is a view looking up at the cabin from the downhill side. We temporarily covered up a window opening on the right.

Here it is starting to take shape. This is a view of the front door. We covered the roof with tarps so that we could stay there while working on it.

Another view of the cabin taking shape. You can see some of the windows we installed. It was a lot fun hiking those up there in the middle of the night!

Another view of the cabin taking shape.

This is a view looking at the front entrance. Off to the right is the door we were building.

This is me and my friend P. as we installed the front door.

We built the roof so it spiraled up as it went around the shack. This gave us an upper story on one half of the cabin which allowed us to build a sleeping loft.

This me hanging out on the top.

This is a blurry picture but it shows one side of the shack completed with the roof on. We brought up some black building paper which we used underneath the shakes on the walls and roof.

Finally here a couple of shots of the sleeping loft.



The Pentagon Shack was completed in 1978 with the installation of a small lightweight wood burning stove.

I spent Christmas there that year with my younger brother and my friend S. There was an advantage to going up there in the winter time. The river was very low at that time of the year and it was possible to ford it, cutting off 4 or 5 miles of hiking.

We used to keep a stash of old shoes hidden under a tree. When we got there we would take a our boots and pants off and put on the old shoes, which were frozen solid. Then you had to find a good walking stick.

The river still had a strong current and the bottom was covered with slippery stones. The deepest part at this time of year only came up to your crouch, but with a backpack on it was a treacherous crossing. A slip and fall could be fatal as the water was very cold!

Christmas of 78 was white in the mountains and after a couple of days myself and S. went down but my brother wanted to stay on for a few more days. He claims he was being stalked by a mountain lion, so ended up coming down a couple of days later.

It would be nice if the Pentagon Shack still survived. I doubt the boys at the real Pentagon saw us as any threat. One day during the construction phase we arrived at the cabin and found a hand written note: “This is great but what would the Rangers think?”

We were uneasy about having been discovered, but we hoped it had been written by somebody we had known. Whatever the case, the next time my brother went up for a visit in 1979 the shack was gone. All that was left were the ashes from a fire. They also found our stash of tools and removed them.

We can’t really complain I guess, it was technically illegal, but it was sad to see a beautiful cabin which took several years to complete destroyed like that.