Happy to be back in the saddle again

Healthy again, Martinat set for Ellensburg debut||

ELLENSBURG — As is the case every year, this weekend’s Ellensburg Rodeo’s performance schedule is overflowing with the biggest stars in professional rodeo.

Bryan Martinat will be there, too.

The 22-year-old saddle bronc rider is a household name in, well, his own household. You’ve probably never heard of him. But if the pride of Marsing, Idaho (pop. 945) can catch a break — as opposed to a broken bone, or another collapsed lung — you will soon enough.

“I’m just excited to be rodeoing,” said Martinat, who will make his Ellensburg Rodeo debut in Sunday’s matinee session. “Whether it’s a $55 purse rodeo or one that pays $10,000, it doesn’t matter to me — I’m just excited to be crawling down into the chute onto bucking horses with a chance to compete.”

He knows what it’s like not to have that chance.

In the autumn of his sophomore year at Western State College, Martinat was badly injured during a rodeo in Hamilton, Texas, suffering a collapsed lung for the second time. He spent three weeks in the hospital and doctors told his coaches he’d probably be out for five months.

Four months later — after having missed half of the college rodeo season — he was back in the saddle.

“We had five spring rodeos, and for me to have a chance (at reaching the collegiate regionals) I had to win three of those rodeos and place in the top three in the rest of them,” recalled Martinat, who did precisely that. He placed second in the regional finals, earning a trip to the 2009 College National Finals (CNFR), where he won the average.

This summer, now riding for Blue Mountain College — coached by Yakima-area favorite Chance Dixon — Martinat reached the CNFR again and tied for the win in the saddle bronc short (championship) round.

But his big year wasn’t quite over. Splitting his time between college rodeos and two professional circuits — the Wilderness and Columbia River — Martinat didn’t win enough money to earn a trip to either circuit finals rodeo. But when the Columbia River Circuit finals found itself with an open spot, Martinat got the call.

And boy, is he ever glad he answered that call. He ended up drawing Spring Planting, Flying Five’s reigning world champion bucking horse, in the CRC Finals’ Saturday night session.

“That was awesome just to get a chance to get on a horse like that,” Martinat said. “You know if you can ride him, you’re going to go to the pay window. My coach, Chance, was there, and he just kept me calm. I didn’t overlook the horse, I went at him just like I would any other horse and it paid off.”

Only time will tell if Martinat be able to replicate the career of say, Cody DeMers, another CNFR saddle bronc champion who two years after his college victory used a win at Ellensburg to springboard to the first of three straight trips to the National Finals Rodeo.

But Martinat is certainly happy for the chance.

“There’s going to be so many good animals in stock there (at Ellensburg) — it should be a pretty even pen of horses,” Martinat said. “I’m just going to treat it just like any other rodeo.”

And, perhaps, add a new star to that already glittering Ellensburg lineup.

Ellensburg Rodeo information

Rodeo performance times: 6:45 p.m. Friday, 12:45 p.m. Saturday, 12:45 p.m. Sunday, 11:45 a.m. Monday finals.

Slack sessions (timed events only): 10 a.m. Friday, 8 a.m. Saturday, 8 a.m. Sunday.

PRCA Xtreme Bulls: 8 a.m. Saturday.

Who’s coming: Almost everybody who’s anybody in the PRCA, including:

• the top 37 competitors in the steer wrestling money standings, all vying to be the top 15 to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo;

• the top 30 bull riders in the standings, a remarkable number this late in the season in such a rugged, injury-riddled event;

• the top 18 bareback riders, with Washington native Ryan Gray of Cheney making a strong bid to earn his first world championship;

• 19 of the top 20 team-roping duos, including the Ellensburg brother duo of Riley (the header) and Brady (the heeler) Minor, who are on pace to earn their third straight NFR appearance as a team (and Brady’s fourth overall);

• and 26 of the top 27 saddle bronc riders.

Online information: www.ellensburgrodeo.com

Rodeo/ticket office: 800-637-2444

Chinook Pass bridge is … gone

YAKIMA, Wash. — If you drove over Chinook Pass on State Route 410 last weekend, you probably had one of those little out-of-body moments where you feel like you’ve drifted into some kind of alternate universe. Wait a second … isn’t there supposed to be a bridge over the road right here … ?

Well, yes, there is, and right now there … isn’t.

Last week, maintenance crews at Mount Rainier National Park removed the cedar-log crossing — leaving the stone-construction base in place on each side — in order to replace it. The bridge, over which hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail have crossed 410 for decades, is expected to be back in place with new cedar logs sometime next summer.

“It wasn’t unsafe, but it is aging, so the wood is beginning to rot,” explained park trails-crew member Julie Okita.

The bridge span itself was made entirely of three-foot-diameter cedar logs, including the handrails made from split cedar logs. Park crews are trying to obtain and prepare replacement logs “from within the park as much as we can,” Okita said, and then will be trucked to Chinook Pass for bridge assembly next summer.

Until then, hikers parked in the long-term parking lot on the north and west side of Chinook Pass can cross 410 by way of a newly painted crosswalk near the bridge location. Additional signage has been posted to alert motorists to the pedestrian crossing.

The missing bridge has already become a topic of discussion on the Northwest Hikers site, with a photograph of the missing and some imaginative visions of the replacement bridge to come. Check it out.

– Scott Sandsberry

Rafting outfits going with the flow

You’d think an extra week of raftable September flows on the Tieton River — which figures to be the case this year — might be just the thing to lift the spirits of commercial outfitters vexed by this economic downturn.

Except that they don’t seem to be vexed.

“This is one of the most successful seasons we’ve ever had,” said Don Martin, who runs River Recreation, based in Bothell.

The state’s largest rafting outfitter, Blue Sky Outfitters in Peshastin, can even top that.

“We’ve actually had a record-breaking year,” said Terri Sarver, who oversees Blue Sky’s operations with her husband, Brad. In the struggling economy, she added,

“Instead of going on a three-day rafting trip on the Colorado (River) or the Salmon over in Idaho, people still want to go out and do something. And since we offer one-day trips, people can still get out and go play for the day.”

Blue Sky is coming off the most productive August the company has ever had, and the Tieton season may just produce some September magic. This year’s Bureau of Reclamation decision to begin the Tieton “flip-flop” a week earlier than usual means the river — usually not at thrill-inducing whitewater levels until a week into September — is already there.

Flows are already running at close to 1,200 cubic feet per second, probably double the typical levels at the beginning of September — and that meant a bustling opening weekend of rafting before August even ended. The flows are projected to ramp up slowly to a peak in the 2,000-to-2,400 cfs range in mid-month before beginning to come back down. That means there should be as many as four productive whitewater weekends — perhaps even five.

“It’s definitely a positive thing for the rafting community,” Martin said.

“Our Saturdays are expected to definitely sell out,” Sarver said. “We’ll probably raft 200 people every Saturday. Sundays, we’ll probably be at about 100, and weekdays are kind of hit-and-miss.”

Last year’s Tieton rafting season was spotty, primarily because of rafters’ concerns over congestion around the two bridges west of the Windy Point campground. Last year the

Department of Transportation was in the middle of a construction project replacing the two bridges, meaning two rafting take-out areas were inaccesslble.

That project is now almost complete, with traffic using the bridges and only some finishing touches and cleanup remaining. The take-out area Martin’s crews typically used beside the westernmost bridge will remain inaccessible, while the one nearest the east bridge — routinely used as a take-out by the majority noncommercial rafters — is nearly ready.

“The takeout just below the (easternmost) bridge is not quite finished,”

Transportation Department spokesman Mike Westbay said last week. “The contractors are guaranteeing we’ll have that open by the 4th. We’re pushing them to have it open sooner — Sept. 1 is what we’re hoping for.”

Until then, rafters have been leaving the river at the Windy Point campground.

“I think the biggest improvement should be a slightly safer situation on the road,” said Jerry Michalec, proprietor of North Cascades River Expeditions in Arlington, one of the oldest rafting companies in the Northwest.

“It’s always been a fairly dangerous highway to begin with, and then to have a situation like that, where you have people coming off the river, carrying boats across the road, and trying to park and then pulling out with trailers. I’m hopeful the situation should be improved.”

Most commercial rafting companies that run the Tieton offer a 14- to 16-mile trip lasting roughly 21?2 hours, with prices typically running $65 to $80 per person. The price includes wetsuits (and, in some cases, the wetsuit “booties”), safety/training instructions and usually a pre-run or mid-run snack/lunch.

At the upper end of the scale is Blue Sky — “the Cadillac,” according to another outfitter — at $92 per person. Blue Sky’s trip is longer than most, at 21 miles and four hours, and customers also finish their rafting experience with a steak barbecue dinner (or veggie option).

Bruntjen forced to drop out of Tour Divide

Last summer, when he completed the rugged Tour Divide mountain bike race in honor of a Selah veteran injured in Iraq, Eric Bruntjen’s heart was clearly in the right place.

This summer, though, his knee wasn’t.

Nearly halfway through the 2010 Tour Divide, Bruntjen was on pace to improve dramatically on his 2009 performance over the 2,780-mile course along the Continental Divide between Banff, Canada, and the New Mexico-Mexico border.

“I was really racing well,” said Bruntjen, a 39-year-old information-technology specialist and Yakima resident. “My head was in it, and my heart was in it.

“But I just really overdid it.”

Bruntjen had ridden the 2009 race to raise enough money to buy a specialized all-terrain wheelchair for injured Army veteran Evan Mettie of Selah. His goal that year was to go the full distance, because the pledges he had collected were based on how many miles he rode.

This summer, Bruntjen was in the race strictly to compete, and he was churning out 150-mile days and running nearly 31 hours ahead of his 21 1/2-day 2009 pace by the time he reached the Teton Range in Wyoming. But he was paying a steep price. The harder he pushed himself, the more the muscles, ligaments and tendons securing his patella — his kneecap — tended to pull it out of place.

The issue, called patella tracking disorder, is often hereditary and related to the knee structure itself. It can sometimes be caused by failing to stretch properly prior to exertion.

Bruntjen knows he wasn’t stretching properly. He was in a hurry. Every day.

“I’ve had it in training before and I’ve always been able to stretch my way out of it. This time it didn’t stretch off,” Bruntjen said. “The crazy thing is I had no pain walking — I could walk just fine. I’d get off my bike and walk for a while and I’d think, ‘OK, I’m cured, I’m fine,’ and I’d get back on my bike and start again and my knees would be in agony right away.”

Bruntjen pulled out of the race on the eighth day near Jackson, Wyo., and although he regrets not being able to complete the race — and, of course, improve on the time from his 2009 Tour Divide debut — he doesn’t have any second thoughts about his decision.

“It was super frustrating for me, but it was actually clear-cut. I didn’t waffle about it,” he said. “I was just mechanically unable to go any further.”

Another Tour Divide racer, a 37-year-old Vermont resident named Dave

Blumenthal, died after he was struck by a pickup truck near Steamboat Springs, Colo. Bruntjen had gotten to know Blumenthal earlier in the race, when the two were both camping at Wise River, Mont.

“He was this 6-foot-7, just towering guy — a nice guy,” said Bruntjen, who had already left the race and returned home when he heard about Blumenthal’s accident.

Despite the rough going in the 2010 race, Bruntjen said his Tour Divide days may not be over.

“If I have enough time to train — and to stretch,” he added, laughing, “I might do it again. There’s nothing like it. You feel like you’re a superhero out there, like a cowboy out in the wild west. It’s so remote out there. No one can help you, no one can save you, and you’re trying to go as fast as you can.

“I’ve never found a sport like it, or like the feeling you get in that race.”

Wild turkey group to meet Tuesday

YAKIMA, Wash. — The time and site have been set for the Tuesday organizational meeting of what National Wild Turkey Federation organizers hope will be a new Yakima Valley chapter.
The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Selah Civic Center, 216 S. First St. in Selah.
A number of federation representatives will be present, including NWTF regional director Barnabas Koka and Washington state chapter president Kurt Beckley.
For more information, call Ross Huffman at 509-961-8093.
– Scott Sandsberry

The Cascadians: Blazing trails, telling tales

YAKIMA, Wash. — Eighty-four years ago, an intrepid pair of Yakima men, Clarence Starcher and Clarence Truitt, did something that remains just as remarkable today as it was then.

Over nine days in July 1926, Starcher, Truitt and a third man climbed Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams and Mount Rainier. They carried no bedding, lived on a diet of berries, canned wheat and gorp — good ol’ raisins and peanuts — and climbed four substantial peaks that constituted some 11 miles of climbing.

Except for the stretch from the base of Mount Hood to Spirit Lake near Mount Adams — they didn’t drive from one peak to the next. They hiked — 350 miles in all, including the trek from Paradise on Mount Rainier all the way to Bumping Lake to catch their ride back to Yakima.

Insane? Incomprehensible? Impossible?

Well, perhaps more than anything else, one thing about those two men lends their achievement its proper frame of reference:

They were Cascadians.

By 1926, the club had already been around for six years since the Yakima Morning Herald’s introductory headline — “Amateur Walkers Organize a Club” — that didn’t begin to do the Cascadians justice.

For 90 years the Cascadians have walked more miles to more out-of-the-way breathtaking spots than just about anybody else. They have made first ascents on precipitous peaks, skied into the backcountry when almost nobody else was, hiked trails rarely taken and, of course, built trails where there weren’t.

They have seen more wildflowers, enjoyed more mountain alpenglow, picked more huckleberries and morels, and in every way experienced the great outdoors to a far greater extent than the rest of us Valley-bound landlubbers combined.

The memories and tales will flow Wednesday night when past and present Cascadians celebrate their 90 years of collective existence with a “birthday bash” at the Living Care Retirement Community’s Meyer Auditorium.

Perhaps someone will bring up the renowned mountaineers that have populated the club over the years, from Louie Ulrich and Lex Maxwell to the Prater brothers, Gene and Bill, to Dave Mahre and Fred Stanley, men who literally and figuratively wrote the book on climbing in the Cascades.

Someone might wax rhapsodic about Chuck and Marion Hessey, crosscountry ski pioneers whose films of backcountry skiing in the 1950s and 1960s are still cult classics in that hardy world. Or perhaps they’ll recall Dorothy Egg, who made crosscountry skiing so accessible, by teaching Cascadians the sport she loved so they might teach others.

Or maybe somebody will recall how instrumental Don Havlin was in directing the Cascadians’ focus on trail building and maintenance, a labor of love championed in more recent years by Clar Pratt. Or maybe somebody will bring up the astounding native-plant expertise of Clarence Seely, who even had a rare mountain flower (Seely’s catchfly, or Silene seelyi) named after him.

Or, perhaps, the assemblage will focus instead on who hiked where last week and what they saw.

And that should take a while.

•   •   •   •

Though older and grayer around the temples, the Cascadians — numbering roughly 200 these days — are still filling the trails. And if you’re an outsider wondering whether hiking with the Cascadians is for you, here are the daily hikes:

Tuesday: You have two choices here — the “Tuesdays,” which is an experience for the limber of limb and the Olympic of cardiovascular capacity, and the Tuesday “Twos,” which is for the rest of us.

The Tuesdays’ popularity with a solid core of regulars is testament to the hardiness of the Cascadians, because those people go. A typical hike might be a 10- to 12-miler with 2,000 feet of elevation gain, with little tarrying along the way. Hikers who pause to snap a photo or admire a view are apt to find themselves 200 yards behind the rest of the group.

“The Tuesdays are too damn fast,” says Jim Barnhill of Yakima, one of the founders of the Tuesday Twos.

“You can’t change that Tuesday group — that’s the way they’re going to be,” adds Irene Hlousek of Zillah. “That’s why I steer new people away from there. People say, ‘I walk every day.’ Well, that’s not the same as hiking with elevation. Don’t even think about going out with (the Tuesdays) unless you know what you’re in for.”

The Twos go a pretty good distance — maybe eight to 10 miles — but you can take a picture or a water break and not have a lot of catching up to do. The other hikers will — gasp — wait for you.

Hlousek was a longtime regular with the Tuesdays who also switched to the Twos. “I was beginning to feel that I couldn’t keep up the (Tuesdays’) pace,” she says, “and there was no way I was going to give up hiking. And there were other people feeling the same way, so we figured why not have another group? We meet a half-hour later, don’t go as far or especially as fast. We have people who like to take pictures, and we enjoy the strolling along.”

Thursday: The “Pokies” typically have the largest group every week, with 20 to 25 people regularly showing up and as many as 50 Cascadians who hike with this Thursday group at least infrequently. Although there are the occasional younger Pokies, many are grandparents or great-grandparents. But don’t let that fool you: They can still hike.

“We do have a lot of (people in their) 70s and 80s who have been hiking a long time, and we’re still there,” says Jeanne Crawford, who has coordinated the Pokies’ hikes for many years. “We figure that’s why we’re still there — because we’re still out there.”

The Pokies might hike anywhere from two miles to seven or eight miles — last week’s trip to Union Creek Falls was about five miles — but they’ll take breaks for views, breathers and the camaraderie. Says Crawford, “It’s a companionship thing.”

Some Thursdays also feature a second hike that might be called the “Thursday alternates,” though it hasn’t quite taken hold. This one is sort of the reverse of the Tuesday Twos — it’s for people who want to go faster and perhaps further than the Pokies.

Saturday/Sunday: Some of the weekend hikes are as long and difficult as the Tuesdays, but because newcomers or prospective Cascadians are more apt to be on hand, the pace is typically a little less than breakneck. And more recently the club has begun hosting easier hikes — including one this Saturday at Naches Peak — intended primarily to introduce the club to potential new members.

Even for people who aren’t joiners, Cascadians are great to know because, well, they know things. They know where the wildflowers will be at their prettiest and where to see them, where the huckleberries will grow and when, when to break out the crosscountry skis and where the first good snow trails will be, how and why some winter trails are better for snowshoes, and where the views are good regardless of the time of year.

Cascadians do it all. They have a camera club that meets monthly to share their outdoor photographs or techniques. They host backpacking trips, climbs and treks of all kinds.

Not too shabby for a bunch of “amateur walkers.”

Cascadians would do well to pay experiences forward

Anybody who has ever seen Frank Capra’s Christmas classic,

“It’s a Wonderful Life,” remembers the film’s final-scene toast by Harry Bailey to his brother George, “the richest man in town.”

When it comes to the great outdoors, the Cascadians are George Bailey.

The members of this venerable club have hiked and skied to so many places, seen so much remarkable scenery, been so routinely close to what Mutual of Omaha used to call “the Wild Kingdom,” and enjoyed so much of this state’s wilderness that they are a collective vault of knowledge, understanding, experience and appreciation of the very things that make this part of the country so special.

So here’s my suggestion to the Cascadians: Pay it forward.

Pass that wealth on to future generations.

Specifically, to kids.

Honesty in advertising moment: It wasn’t my suggestion, initially. It came from my far better half, who comes up with a significant portion of “my” great ideas. Upon learning I was going to be going out with one of the Cascadians’ hiking groups last week, she asked why they didn’t offer hikes — nature walks, whatever you want to call them — specifically for families with kids.

And I thought, “Huh. Good question.”

Over the last decade, I’ve heard countless Cascadians lament the inexorable aging of club membership, resulting from a relative dearth of younger club members. It’s not that the club is closed to outsiders; their hikes are always open to non-members. But for years, few of those hikes have been very family-friendly, at least when that family includes kids.

Some years back, the club tried out something called “Kidcadians,” outings for kids with adult supervision, but it stayed largely in-house, consisting largely of kids and grandkids of Cascadian members. That wasn’t necessarily by design. It was just how things went.

Perhaps the Kidcadian events weren’t advertised enough; maybe the word didn’t quite get out. Or maybe non-club members just weren’t interested.

But they should be.

They need to be.

We are besieged by studies reminding us our younger generations are growing increasingly overweight. Maybe that’s the fault of the way we fund public education, with P.E. classes — once a staple in nearly every school — too often falling victim to budget cuts. Maybe it’s the byproduct of modern technology, which gives us ease and convenience and makes it easy for us to forget that, hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little sweat and effort. Or maybe the kids’ obesity comes from their parents, who think a trip to the mall constitutes an “outing.”

Either way, I think people who have as much to offer as the Cascadians have a great opportunity to reach out to those kids. Maybe even an obligation.

Roger Short, a Cascadian member who has been involved with the Boy Scouts of America for more than 60 years, thinks so. “Kids aren’t getting out there enough,” he says. “It would be nice to have a group like the Cascadians show them how to do it and do it well.”

An enterprising Cascadian named Claudia Christie has begun hosting a relatively easy monthly Saturday hike specifically to introduce newcomers to the club, and that’s a start. But parents with younger kids aren’t chomping at the bit to go along, probably because they think the hikes would be too tough for the kids.

So give them easier hikes.

Perhaps have a different Cascadian leader every time — one with an expertise in flowers one outing, maybe one who can talk about the different birds or animals the next. What’s the most popular hike in the county, year after year? The Cowiche Canyon Conservancy’s Earth Day hike, in which the leaders take their time to point out the rock formations, the birds, the plant life — and the kids, dozens of them every year, just eat it up.

But once a year on Earth Day isn’t enough.

It’s up to you, Cascadians. You have the means to get those kids away from their video games and the malls and get them into the great outdoors, even if it’s only for a little while here and there. Their parents or grandparents will have to come along, too, of course — hey, just think of all those potential new members. And think of the gift you’ll be giving to future generations.

You’re the richest people in town.

Share the wealth.

• Outdoors editor Scott Sandsberry can be reached at 509-577-7689 or ssandsberry@yakimaherald.com

Yakima Fly Fishers head to Leech Lake

YAKIMA, Wash. — The Yakima Fly Fishers Association are hosting a fly-fishing outing Saturday at Leech Lake on White Pass, beginning at 9 a.m. Non-club members who want to join the group should call Fred Collier in advance at 969-4985.

– Scott Sandsberry

Cowiche landscape burned, not burned out

COWICHE — It took years to secure and turn Snow Mountain Ranch into an 1,800-acre haven for hikers, mountain bikers and nature lovers. Reducing most of it to a charred moonscape only took days. Hours, even.

Last month’s human-caused Cowiche Mill Road Fire replaced sagebrush, native grasses and trail systems with blackened ash over roughly two-thirds of the ranch. But the blaze hasn’t darkened the optimism of those charged with maintaining its natural splendor.

“It kind of hurts your feelings as much as anything,” said Curtis Sundquist, board president of the nonprofit Cowiche Canyon Conservancy, which in 2005 purchased the property with $1.1 million in grant money and a lot of assistance from public and private partners. “It’ll take quite a few years for it to all recover. A lot of the sagebrush up there was pretty ancient.”

Fire officials believe the 6,200-acre fire began on Snow Mountain Ranch — just behind the kiosk near the main entrance, in fact — and two fire-protection agencies have combined to offer $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of whoever started it.

But although as much as 1,400 acres of Snow Mountain Ranch burned, the area’s creekside vegetation was left largely unscathed and natural post-wildfire regeneration has already begun.

“In many ways, this is good news,” said Betsy Bloomfield, Conservancy executive director. “On a very, very human scale, no one was killed or seriously injured. No major structures were lost. No major agri-cultural infrastructure was lost. What we got instead was a big wildlands burn.

“In our part of the world here in Eastern Washington, we would expect to see natural wildfire in these shrubsteppe ecosystems on an interval of between 30 and 70 years, and it had been about that long (since the last wildfire in the area).”

Wind pushed the fire south and east from its genesis behind the entry kiosk, leaving the kiosk itself untouched by flame. Signs directing hikers and bikers around Snow Mountain’s 9.2 miles of trails, much of that snaking up and over Cowiche Mountain, also survived the blaze.

“What’s amazing is we did not lose any trail signs,” said Conservancy board member David Hagen. “Sometimes it burned the post and that fell, but then the fire moved on and the sign survived. We lost some old-growth sagebrush — some taller than I am — and those won’t be back anytime soon. We’ve lost that. But the grasses and the wildflowers, they’ll all be back next year, maybe better than before.”

Thanks to Hagen, the Conservancy has access to a remarkable pre- and post-fire photographic record. A month before the fire, Hagen and Kristen Winter, a graduate student working in Central Washington University’s geographic information system (GIS) lab, had made a photographic tour of Sun Mountain Ranch, using GIS mapping technology to chronicle each location.

Their intent was to be able to upload the photographic data onto Google Earth, thereby allowing Internet users to take a virtual tour of the site. Now, it will also give the Conservancy and others a scientific tool to study wildlife fire and its ecological impacts.

“Now we have this perfect set of these photographs,” Bloomfield said. “We will set up a five-year, post-five monitoring survey, see how the landscape changes after fire, what birds come back, what animals come back, what plants come back, what doesn’t come back. So we’ll learn a lot from this — what kind of restoration techniques work, and how to plan for the future.”

The primary post-fire concerns are threefold, according to Bloomfield. The first is the potential for invasive weeds establishing a foothold in the most highly-disturbed areas. Then there are the wide fire breaks designed to contain the fire spread have inadvertently “created a potential superhighway for the off-road vehicles that can really damage areas.” And, finally, nearly three miles of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife elk fence burned in the fire, opening up nearby fruit orchards to marauding elk.

Other public and private entities — the Audubon Society, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, North Yakima Conservation District, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — have offered to help the Conservancy in the aftermath of the fire. Their participation might include mapping the extent and severity of the fire and reseeding highly-disturbed areas with natural bunch grasses.

There’s also the possibility of erosion, especially in the areas that burned the hottest, an event that could impact the gains made in the South Fork Cowiche Creek. Since the 2005 purchase, the Conservancy removed a dam and diversion channel built for irrigation purposes in hopes of restoring natural fish runs. Those hopes were realized last April when a WDFW survey found 10 steelhead egg nests (redds) and three adult steelhead in the creek bordering Snow Mountain Ranch.

“We weren’t sure if we would even have visibility to (see the redds and steelhead),” said WDFW fish biologist Eric Anderson, who oversaw the April survey. “We just happened to hit it just right. This was along about a mile-long reach that borders the ranch, so there’s likely more redds above that point and more redds below that point.

“The fact that the fire didn’t burn down into the riparian area is a great thing. Unless we have a huge snowmelt spring runoff this following year, I would think a lot of that area will grow back pretty quickly.”

That’s just one more reason for optimism among the people responsible for turning Snow Mountain Ranch into a destination for recreationists.

“I see a lot of good coming out of this,” Bloomfield said. “We have a wakeup call, and we’ll have a road map toward what we need to do (in the event of) future emergencies.”

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