Bruntjen hits 2,100-mile mark on Tour Divide

The 2,780-mile route of trails and rugged roads that make up the Tour Divide mountain bike race aren’t exactly the Yellow Brick Road, but the “lions, tigers and bears” refrain isn’t far off.

Three-quarters of the way through the race, Eric Bruntjen’s checklist of beasts he has seen that would have sent Dorothy’s “Wizard of Oz” friends into a frenzy goes like this:

Lions. Check. (A cougar is a mountain lion, after all. He surprised one Sunday morning while barreling up a mountain pass in southern Colorado.)

Tigers. Not yet.

Bears. Check. Black and grizzly.

Oh my.

If you’ve been following Bruntjen’s progress online on the Herald-Republic’s “Out There” outdoors blog (sports yakima.com/out-there) or on the Tour

Divide site (tourdivide.org),

you already know why he’s doing it — to generate enough financial pledges to buy a specialized all-terrain wheelchair for injured Iraq war veteran Evan Mettie. You also know that that he has proven to be a far stronger competitor than perhaps even his staunchest supporters expected.

He is, after all, a 38-year-old information technology specialist from Yakima, who stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 225 pounds — not exactly the tale-of-the-tape one might expect for a guy competing against top endurance athletes from around the world.

The 42 riders in this year’s Tour Divide field came from England, Germany, Italy, Austria, Canada and all over the United States; 14 have already dropped out, felled by mechanical issues, injuries, logistical nightmares, day after day of terrible weather or a simple failure of will.

Not Bruntjen.

This morning he will begin his 19th day on the trail, having already ridden about 2,100 miles — across parts of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, across Montana,

Wyoming and Colorado. He spent most of Monday climbing and descending from passes in the San Juan Mountains of northern New Mexico.

Yes: He is in New Mexico. One state to go.

Over the last week, his journey has taken him to great highs and terrible lows.

On Thursday night, he rode into Kremmling, Colo., in a torrential downpour. Not only had a day of rain and deep must cost him his bicycle’s rear brake pads — which he’d just had put on hours earlier in Steamboat Springs — he found that a snap on his rear rack had broken and his tent, sleeping bags and his only dry clothes were gone. They had fallen out somewhere on the road.

But a night motel clerk pretty much said, “Hey, here’s my car key, why don’t you drive back the way you came and see if you can find your stuff?”

And, remarkably, he did.

Then, on Saturday, he was slammed by a huge thunderstorm that made him seek refuge. He ended up going several miles off the route to try to find somebody that would put him up, and finally he pounded on the door of a rancher who gave him a place to stay for the night.

“For 40 wet and moldy and muddy dollars,” Bruntjen recalled in one of his semi-regular call-ins to the Herald-Republic, “I got a room, no lights, no water, no heat but a working roof and what I swear to God was a horse-hair mattress. It just felt like heaven, though, compared to the weather at night.”

And the next day, he charged up and over four mountain passes, including Indiana Pass (elev. 11,910 feet). That night, when he pulled into the tiny town of Platoro, Colo., he pulled his bicycle up in front of the local bar — “It’s a one-bar town,” he noted — there were three people on the deck actually awaiting his arrival.

The bar patrons had been following the race on the Internet and knew he was getting close, and he was welcomed in like an arriving dignitary and asked to sign the leaderboard printout they had hanging on the wall.

And, of course, the reason Bruntjen is doing the trip is to generate enough per-mile pledges to tourdechair@gmail.com to be able to purchase that specialized wheelchair for Evan Mettie. (You can write a check to the “Evan Mettie Donation” fund at any U.S. Bank.) While heading up Boreas Pass in Colorado, he had a nice little experience that touched him.

He happened to come along alongside a mountain-biking couple heading up the same pass, and because they were friendly, he rode along with them for a while. On the climb, he told them about the race and what he was doing.

At the top of the pass, before Bruntjen left them behind, the couple handed him a $20 bill.

“That’s for Evan,” the man told him.

So is Eric Bruntjen’s ride.

6/30 What’s Happening

Selah teen shooter a  2-time state champ

Todd Peterson, a 15-year-old from Selah, missed back-to-back shots in his first group of 25 targets, then broke the next 75 straight for a 98×100 round to capture to win the junior division of Sunday’s handicap event in the Washington State Trapshooting Championships in Spokane.

Peterson also won the “C” Division in Friday’s class championship singles in the four-day Amateur Trapshooting Association event, hosted by the Spokane Gun Club. He tied with two other shooters at 97×100, then won the shootoff with a perfect 25×25 round.

********

Hunter ed class coming up in Selah

A hunting education class will begin July 13 at the Selah Civic Center.

Mandatory preregistration begins Wednesday at the Civic Center, with a $5 fee payable at sign-up. Because class size is limited to 30 and hunter’s ed classes always fill up, signing up quickly is recommended.

Class hours will be 6 to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, July 13-17, and then 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 18. Students must attend each class session to pass the course.

For more information, call Tom at 509-457-8039.

********

Volunteers needed for St. Helens trails

Volunteers are needed for a pair of upcoming backcountry project projects at Mount St. Helens in the ongoing campaign to repair storm-damaged trails within the national volcanic monument.

Forest Service trail specialists are partnering with the Mount St. Helens Institute, Washington Trails Institute, Northwest Service Academy, Backcountry Horsemen, Northwest Trails Alliance and Mountain Bike Mutts on a summer-long schedule of volunteer work projects. The two projects in July for which volunteers are specifically needed:

• July 18-19: Repairing hiking and mountain biking trails in the Butte Camp area on the south side, working with volunteers from the Northwest Trails Alliance. (For details: www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volunteering/documents/ButteCamp.pdf)

• July 25-Aug. 2: Repairing trails in the remote Mount Margaret backcountry north of St. Helens, working with volunteers from the Mount St. Helens Institute. (For details: 360-449-7887.)

For a complete list of volunteer work parties, go online to www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volunteering/BecomeaVolcanoVolunteer.shtml.

********
BIRD ALERT

Secretive but curious skulker of dense thickets, the gray catbird is heard — its common call a raspy mew that sounds like a cat — more than it is seen. This week, though, gray catbirds were observed at the Toppenish National Wildlife Refuge, the Poppoff Trail and Clear Lake.

Bellevue birders visiting Fort Simcoe saw several Lewis’s woodpeckers as well as Bullock’s orioles, lazuli buntings, black-headed grosbeaks, a lark sparrow and a pair of ash-throated flycatchers among the oak trees.

A resident along Mieras Road reported a great egret busily consuming goldfish from their small pond and a single gray partridge scurrying across the lawn. Both are great birds not typically found on local yard lists.

A hike up Cowiche Canyon turned up plenty of swallows (cliff, northern rough-winged and violet-green). The canyon also held rock and canyon wrens, Say’s phoebe, lazuli bunting, Bullock’s orioles and black-headed grosbeaks.

A Parker Heights yard saw plenty of excitement as a pair of nesting western kingbirds chased and bickered at a Cooper’s hawk as it sped by. Other yard birds included two singing male lazuli buntings, and black-chinned hummingbirds that regularly visit the feeders. Their American kestrel box fledged four young and a California quail nest held 17 eggs.

The bluebird tallies from the “Vredenburgh Bluebird Trail” this week are in and it still appears that this will be a very strong year for the bluebirds. This week’s nest box totals included 43 eggs and 369 nestlings; 94 western and eight mountain bluebirds fledged this week. That makes 102 western and 29 mountain bluebirds fledged to date this year.

Please call your bird sightings into the Yakima Valley Audubon phone line at 509-248-1963

— Kerry L. Turley

********
AROUND AND ABOUT

TRAIL WORK PARTY: Members of the All Wheelers Off Road Club and other volunteers earlier this week did back-to-back weekend work parties in support of the Department of Natural Resources near the Tree Phones Campground in the Ahtanum State Forest to help remove downed and dangerous trees that had forced a temporary closure of the area. The group logged 119 volunteer hours. Kudos to those hard-working volunteers.

WINTER ADVISORS NEEDED: The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission is looking for public nominations for its agency’s snowmobile and non-motorized advisory committees. The Winter Recreation Advisory Committee is seeking a non-motorized winter sports candidate from Area 5, which represents Kittitas, Yakima, Klickitat and Benton counties, as well as one for Area 1 (Northwest Washington) and an at-large candidate to represent snowmobilers.

The Snowmobile Advisory Committee is looking to fill candidate positions for Northwest Washington and North Central Washington (Okanogan, Chelan and Douglas counties), plus an at-large candidate to represent non-motorized winter sports enthusiasts. For more information on nominations, call 360-902-8684.

********
ON THE CALENDAR

TODAY: The Cascadians’ Tuesday hikers will hike to the Granite Peak Lookout. The hardy souls in the Tuesday group meet at 7:30 a.m. at the 40th Avenue Bi-Mart parking lot and carpool from there, typically breaking into faster and slower groups. Next Tuesday: The Palisades.

WEDNESDAY: Mount Adams Cycling Club riders do their weekly 25-mile Naches loop ride, beginning at 6 p.m. at the Fred Meyer parking lot (near Key Bank). A faster group will begin a little later, since, after all, it won’t take them as long.

THURSDAY: The Cascadians’ Pokies won’t have a hike, this being the Thursday heading into the July 4 weekend. (And, no, there won’t be a Pokies hike at Pleasant Valley on Friday; that note in the Cascadian newsletter was incorrect.) The group’s next hike will be July 9, and that will be the Pleasant Valley trek.

Sun sets on Triathlon

YAKIMA, Wash. — One of the Pacific Northwest’s first and most storied triathlons was already on life support. Now the plug has been pulled.

“The Valley of the Sun is officially dead,” former race director Candie Turner said. “We killed it.”

All those boxes of leftover race T-shirts have been given away to a battered women’s shelter.

The bike racks have been sold to the Yakima Greenway Foundation for use in the Gap2Gap.

What money remained in the race’s bank account has been donated to the Amateur Radio Emergency Services/Search and Rescue.

“If you know of anybody who needs race numbers, let me know. I have bundles of them,” Turner said. “If there are little races that need some numbers and safety pins, send them my way. They’re theirs.”

Years of dwindling participation and a shrinking volunteer base had prompted race organizers to try a one-year hiatus in 2008. The break becoming permanent might not be a surprise — “Wasn’t the handwriting on the wall?” Turner mused — doesn’t make it any easier to accept for many in the region’s triathlon community.

“I’m sad,” said Mitch Hungate, a Renton dentist who did the race about 20 times and, in fact, nearly 15 years ago actually pushed his wedding date back a week so he wouldn’t have to miss the Valley of the Sun.

“It’s a great course,” Hungate said, “and the people who run it were just the nicest people.”

“When you think about it, Whisky Dick (in Kittitas County) and Valley of the Sun were the two big races for us here in Washington state. And now they’ve just kind of petered out,” said Kelly Molaski of Bellingham, the only four-time winner (1994, 1997, 1998, 2005) in the race’s history.

“For me, I like to race where the competition is, and that race always drew the top competition from the area. That was one of the reasons I went, besides the fact that it was just a fun race to go and do.

“Candie has been doing that race for a long, long time, bless her heart, and she always had the smile on her face,” she said.

But over the last few years, Turner’s smiling exterior was largely replaced by a growing frustration over unreliable volunteers that, she said ruefully, turned her into “an ogre” at times.

“You can put that on the record. Absolutely,” Turner said. “There were a lot of times when ogre was way too kind a description. Way too mild.”

But every time people would volunteer for some preparatory effort or race-day function and then not show up, it put the onus on the handful of regulars Turner knew she could count on.

“My god, the hours that woman put in,” said longtime volunteer Linda McCutchen, who along with her husband, Mike, and daughter, Melana, were among that hard-core group for more than 15 years.

“There were about five or six of them that took over most of it, and not because they wanted to. We would assign things to be done, and of course those people would back out or not show up, and those of us that were there would just try to pick it up and get things done.”

Too many years of that took their toll, said longtime race volunteer Mark Tharp, who along with Jo Whitney coordinated the radio and search-and-rescue support group Turner called “the net that came around the race and held it together for all those years.”

“Our core group was getting to the point where we were just getting a little burned out,” Tharp said. “It was hard to recruit new people to help put the thing on. We always had enough people to pull it off, but it was a lot of work by just a few of us.”

People involved, from the racers to the people who coordinated the event, say they will miss the Valley of the Sun.

“I really miss the participants,” Turner said. “I really did love this race. I loved the people I worked with.”

Tharp noted that while the triathlon committee is “sad to see it go,” he said it was obvious the time had come to let it go.

“We had a good run.”

Gap2Gap assumes endurance-racing throne

YAKIMA, Wash. — The king is dead. Long live the new king.

With the demise of the venerable Valley of the Sun Triathlon after a 25-year run and a one-year hiatus that turned out to be permanent, the Gap2Gap Relay becomes the Valley’s most durable multi-stage endurance event.

And while the triathlon’s volunteer corps had steadily dwindled along with participation numbers, the Gap2Gap has seen its battalion of volunteers hold steady, while racer numbers — largely because of the booming success of the Junior Gap2Gap — have begun to climb back up after a few down years in the mid-2000s.

The junior race this year set an all-time record with 417 racers, a number bolstered by the new, youngest age group for 6- and 7-year-olds. And even in the shaky economic climate that permeated the first half of 2009 and forced some sponsors to pull out, Shields Bag and Printing stuck it out as title sponsor. Others, like Les Schwab Tires, maintained a sponsorship presence at slightly lower levels.

But there’s one thing the Gap2Gap has going for it that the Valley of the Sun did not: a deep volunteer pool that helps keep burnout to a minimum.

“We’ve had the cadre of long-term volunteers who have been with this race for 10 years,” said Yakima Greenway executive director Al Brown.

The total number of volunteers? “A couple hundred.”

Really? That many?

“Oh yeah, there’s that many,” he said. “You have that core group of about 25, they chair a leg or a stage, and they go out and recruit their own people — family, friends, church groups. A few come and go every year, but largely it’s the same folks.”

A strategy that has been particularly successful for the Gap2Gap is the way its organizers have created and expanded the event’s volunteer base essentially by partnering with local businesses and civic groups.

Gap2Gap senior race director Brian Fecht works for Shields Bag and Printing, where numerous employees volunteer to help out the race committee. The Moss Adams office in Yakima has routinely mined its employee base for volunteers, something Zirkle Fruit did this year in a big way. Windermere Real Estate volunteers oversaw the entire finish-line operation, and Sunrise Rotary members routinely recruit other members to volunteer.

“It’s worked out really well,” said Ronda Ide, a past president of the Yakima Greenway Foundation board who oversees the Gap2Gap weekend of activities.

“We’ve asked employers and we get a volunteer or two from that employer. We’ve got somebody on this board from Moss Adams, and they get people from there to come out and help. Zirkle was tremendous this year. Several of the gals from the YVCC women’s wrestling program came out and helped; the rugby team from Central Washington (University) took care of the kayak on the pond for the local kids, and people from the kayak club were actually in the pond assisting the kids.

“It’s just who you know.”

Fishing on the Yakima beginning to heat up

YAKIMA, Wash. — Just two weeks ago, I was whining and moaning about not being able to fish the Yakima River for spring chinook salmon due to water conditions.

What I learned shortly thereafter was, while I was sitting staring at the computer monitor, a group of anglers weren’t letting a little high water bother them. They were fishing the Yakima just below the Roza Dam, and they were catching some fish.

In fact, some of the anglers were doing quite well.

Bo Lybeck, a young fishing fanatic from Selah, had actually been fishing the Yakima for several days by the time he took pity on me and invited me to join him one morning shortly after I wrote about my non-salmon fishing angst.

Lybeck and several other anglers were hooking fish just about every day, even with the somewhat high-water conditions.

“On Saturday I think we saw 20 fish caught,” Lybeck told me as we worked our way down the trail by headlight at 3 a.m.

Not only had he seen some fish caught, Lybeck put his rod and reel through a workout. Turns out that during a few days of fishing on the Yakima, before he had to jump on a plane to go play some baseball in Canada, Lybeck caught several spring chinook.

And he was not alone. I made a couple of trips down to the river as my schedule would allow the last couple of weeks and saw quite a number of salmon caught in the hole just below the railroad bridge and the long hole just around the bend below the bridge.

For several days the Yakima began dropping into shape and for the past two weeks or so it has been very fishable. And there have been enough fish still in the open portion of the river to make for good fishing on many days.

Anglers are using a couple of different techniques to catch the salmon.

Most are either drift-fishing, or float-fishing with bait. The main bait has been cured salmon egg,s but local angler and fishing guide Bob Barthlow caught a few Yakima springers on cured, dyed shrimp.

“Everyone is fishing with eggs, so I thought I would give them something different to look at,” said Barthlow.

Catch information for the past couple of weeks is not available, but from talking to Lybeck, Barthlow and a couple of other friends who have been fishing the Yakima, it looks like the catch ratio of hatchery to wild fish has been roughly 50-50.

Before the season started biologists with the Department of Wildlife predicted this year’s run of returning spring chinook on the Yakima would be somewhere around 55 percent hatchery-origin salmon and 45 percent wild fish.

Anglers must release all native wild salmon, but can keep two hatchery origin fish each day.

As has been the case with many other rivers in the Northwest this spring, a high percentage of chinook jacks are in this year’s Yakima run. Jacks are male salmon returning a year early to spawn, so they are smaller than adults. Most jacks run in the 3- to 5-pound range while the Yakima adults have been running from 8  to 20 pounds.

Biologists are still trying to figure out what has made such a large number of jacks return to the Columbia and its tributaries this spring. Normally officials use the jack count as one of the factors in predicting the following year’s salmon run, but in the past two years, the jack run has been much higher than the 10 percent that traditionally returns each year.

So, many of the salmon caught on the Yakima this year are jacks, but enough adults are being caught, too. The point is, after spending most of the first few weeks of the Yakima River spring salmon season standing on the sideline watching the high and muddy water, anglers have finally had a chance to enjoy some good local salmon fishing.

The salmon season on the Yakima is open until the end of June, and while the run is starting to dwindle some, there is still a chance to catch one of these great fish.

• Rob Phillips is a freelance outdoor writer and partner in the advertising firm of Smith, Phillips & DiPietro. He can be reached at rwphillips@spdadvertising.com.

Cyclist presses on despite challenges

Things have gotten more difficult for Eric Bruntjen on the 2,780-mile Tour Divide mountain bike race. But he pushes on — more than 1,200 miles now.

As anyone following Bruntjen’s progress on the Herald Republic’s “Out There” outdoors blog (sportsyakima.com/out-there/) already knows, Bruntjen suffered what he thought would be a race-ending ankle sprain on Sunday while pushing and carrying his bike over several miles of a trail too muddy to ride.

For Bruntjen, it was simply the latest in a series of mishaps, but his misfortune didn’t stop there.

On several of his days on the arduous route, he has ridden for hours in a downpour.  On Saturday, he rode through what he described as “clouds of mosquitos” — so many that many ended up in his mouth as he breathed.

Mile after mile in deep mud have pretty much ruined his brakes. A sleeping pad — pretty much the only thing between him and hard, frozen ground on those nights camping in the high country — came out of his pack on the trail and was lost.

Then, on Monday, a night after he was certain he was too injured to continue, he did just that — only to take a wrong turn and get several miles off-course. Undaunted, upon realizing his mistake he backtracked and continued on the correct course.

And Bruntjen is determined to stay on that course — something at least two others riders have not done, according to other participants who have seen and reported them. According to those other riders’ reports, two Italian riders have on at least one stretch taken easier routes not on the arduous, muddy, difficult course Tour Divide riders are instructed to follow.

The weather and the brutal course have already claimed a number of casualties; about a quarter of the approximately 40 riders who began the race have already dropped out. One rider called the same Sunday mud-slog Bruntjen had experienced as “the most demoralizing experience of my life” on the Tour Divide’s racer blog site (tourdivide.org/blog2009).

Bruntjen is doing the race to generate per-mile pledges toward the purchase of a specialized all-terrain wheelchair for injured Iraq war veteran Evan Mettie. To pledge, simply send an e-mail to tourdechair@gmail.com with your name, per-mile pledge amount — a penny per mile would mean a donation of just under $28 if Bruntjen goes the full distance — and contact info. All donations will be made out to “Evan Mettie Donation” at U.S. Bank.

6/23 What’s Happening

Supporters celebrate WDFW land buy in Nile

Outdoor enthusiasts and lovers of wildlife were on hand Saturday at the Oak Creek Wildlife Area headquarters Saturday afternoon to celebrate last September’s purchase of 642 acres near Eagle Rock in the Nile.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s $578,000 acquisition of the Sanford Pasture, made possible through a lot of hard work by Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation volunteers and WDFW staffers, ultimately came as the result of grants from both the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The latter was involved because, in addition to the area being critical winter range for elk and deer, the area also is a corridor for spotted owl movement during and following the fledging season.

********

Lions Club ATV run set for Saturday

The Chinook Pass Lions Club will hold its third annual ATV Poker Run Saturday from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., centered at the Oak Creek Wildlife Area headquarters.

The quads-only family event on Bethel Ridge begins and ends at the Oak Creek headquarters — the elk-feeding station, as it is known by many — has a cost of $25 per rider, and early registration is highly recommended. Only the first 400 machines are allowed on Forest Service land, while other riders will have to stop at the National Forest boundary and follow a truncated route.

The event drew a big crowd last year, and this year’s event will include sponsor booths and prizes, with two ATVs being raffled off. For more information, call Steve Nevens at 509-658-2304 or e-mail steve.nevens@chinookpasslions.com.

********
BIRD ALERT

The wild turkey was eliminated from much of its range by the early 1900s. But introduction programs have successfully established it in most of its original range, and even into areas where it never occurred before. This week a Yakima resident was surprised to see a wild turkey in her residential yard on 32nd Avenue.

A black-backed woodpecker was heard drumming along the backside of the old burn up Forest Road 1600 in the Nile and another was heard calling in the old burn along the Forest Road 1601 off the 1600 in the Nile. A calling barred owl was noted at mid-day two days last week along the creek that borders the 1601 road.

The Cowiche wastewater plant wetlands have become a nursery to lots of newly hatched ducks and shore birds, with killdeer, mallards, American coots, cinnamon teal, and green winged teal all spotted with young in tow. Two soras were also observed scurrying over the old cattails; seeing this secretive little rail is a rare treat.

While monitoring the “Vredenburgh Bluebird Trail” beyond Wenas Lake, one monitor had 24 consecutive boxes with baby chicks inside, totaling 126 chicks. The tally of fledged birds for the year now stands at 21 mountain bluebirds, and eight western bluebirds.

Please call your bird sightings into the Yakima Valley Audubon phone line at 248-1963

— Kerry L. Turley

********
AROUND AND ABOUT

PARKS OFFICE CLOSES: Beginning in July, Washington State Parks will be operating out of three regional offices instead of four. The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission is closing the Puget Sound regional office July 1 “to streamline operations and save on costs to meet state budget reductions,” according to a news release.

Most of the Puget Sound region parks will be managed by the Northwest (Burlington) and Southwest/Headquarters (Tumwater) offices. The Eastern region (East Wenatchee) will inherit management of the John Wayne Pioneer Trail in Iron Horse State Park as well as Lake Easton State Park.

********
ON THE CALENDAR

TODAY: The Cascadians will hike up Mount Si near North Bend. This one should be for intermediate to advanced hikers, with plenty of uphill.

The Tuesday group meets at 7:30 a.m. at the 40th Avenue

Bi-Mart parking lot and carpools from there, generally breaking into faster and slower groups. Next Tuesday: Granite Peak Lookout, another toughie with views that make it worthwhile.

WEDNESDAY: The Mount Adams Cycling Club will hold its weekly 25-mile Naches loop ride, beginning at 6 p.m. at the Fred Meyer parking lot (near Key Bank). A faster group will begin a little later.

THURSDAY: The Cascadians’ Pokies will hike to Lost Lake on the Manastash Lake trail. For meeting time and place, call Claudia Christie at 509-388-9307.

SATURDAY: The Cascadians will lead a trip to McNeil Peak. For meeting time and place, call Ted Gamlem at 509-697-5051.

SATURDAY: In addition to the McNeil Peak hike, which will be for intermediate to experienced hikers, the Cascadians will also be leading an easy, five-mile hike to Union Creek Falls, with 500 feet of elevation gain and a lunch break at the base of the second falls. Participants should call ahead to trip leader Ed Huang at 509-457-1533 so he can have a head count, then meet at the north end of the 40th Avenue Bi-Mart parking lot by 8:30 a.m.

Sportsman State Park offers a taste of island life

By RON GRAHAM

YAKIMA, Wash. — Fishermen use the island trails to reach favorite fishing spots for salmon or trout.

Birding enthusiasts use the island trails to spot multiple varieties of birds.

Horseback riders travel the island trails for personal enjoyment.

Hikers and mountain bikers explore the island trails for a variety of reasons, ranging from exercise to viewing wildlife.

Even cross country runners occasionally dash along the island trails for a workout.

Surprisingly enough, this quarter-mile-long island in the Yakima River floodplain sits right in our own backyard, offering up numerous options for outdoor recreation both to local residents and visitors.

The island is within Sportsman State Park boundaries and access to its web of trails received a major boost in February with the construction of a sturdy footbridge.

That footbridge spans a side river channel that previously had to be waded in order to reach the island. Although the island has gotten plenty of use over the years by those familiar with its charms, visitation is expected to grow with the addition of the bridge.

“It’s a great area to explore,” said park head ranger Mike Thomas. “It’s the only place you can hike on established trails in the natural floodplain of the Yakima River.”

Thomas displays particular excitement about the prospects for visitor access to the island and other park trails since it was not so long ago that Sportsman State Park was on the “mothballing list” of state parks that were to be shut down due to the state’s economic crisis.

“We really want to thank all the citizens and groups who supported keeping us open,” he said.

In addition to the maze of trails on the river island, visitors to Sportsman Stae Park can enjoy a dike trail that extends for more than two miles along the east side of the Yakima River. Bikers ride along this route, as do  equestrian users and walkers.

The park also provides a paved interpretive trail in the main park and a loop walk around a juvenile fishing pond. These routes are reached along the main access road shortly after passing the entrance office.

Access to the island is off the dike route just north of the grassy lawns and picnic grounds of Sportsman State Park. Once you drop down off the dike to the left and cross the bridge, the main trail splits off in multiple directions with many possible loops and several access points to the main river flow to the east. Thomas said the web of trails offers three miles of possible exploration. Signposts are located at junctions, but use of a trail map (available at the park office) is recommended.

The island is a great place for viewing wildlife of all types, Thomas noted. Bald eagles, osprey, red tail hawks,  heron, deer, coyote, beaver, otter, muskrats, raccoons, skunks, and many other wildlife can be spotted at various times. Audubon birders have identified some 147 species of birds visiting Sportsman State Park during surveys over the years.

Thomas, who has worked at the state park for 17 years, the last eight as head ranger, said the island trails have been cleared and developed over the years by community volunteers as well as park staff. The footbridge project was accomplished through the federal Bureau of Reclamation, he added.

The island trail system also incorporates a scattering of benches and several picnic tables at various points. Thomas said the park is a great place to enjoy solitude even though its location is so close to the city of Yakima and the bustling traffic of Interstate 82.

An interpretive sign on the island urges visitors to listen closely — for the river and the wind, for the sounds of a hawk, a coyote or an owl, “or a beaver slapping his tail against the water to warn you that you are in his territory.” The sign doesn’t mention mosquitoes, but those who visit the island should go prepared. High water from the river this spring prompted a plentiful mosquito hatch.

The high water also effectively cut off foot traffic to the island, Thomas said, for a period of weeks during April and May. The bridge withstood the minor flooding, but another low section on the island side of the bridge had water up to a foot deep until recently.

In addition to the trail system already described, Thomas is continuing to work on connections to the Yakima Greenway and its paved pathway on the west side of the river. The focus now is on the north end toward Terrace Heights, but he expects that eventually a loop trail opportunity will exist incorporating the dike trails on both sides of the river.

“We’ve been working in conjunction with the Greenway and other groups to accomplish this long-term goal,” he said.

For now, Sportsman State Park offers a diverse choice of trails for a variety of users. If you haven’t explored these routes, go check them out soon. If you have visited in the past, come back and enjoy them once again.

• Ron Graham, an elementary school teacher and native of the Yakima Valley, is an avid outdoorsman who has hiked throughout the Pacific Northwest.

******

IF YOU GO

What: Hiking along a dike and on an island in the Yakima River.
Where: Yakima’s Sportsman State Park.
DIRECTIONS: The main signed access is off Highway 24 from exit 34 on Interstate 82. From the interchange it is 2.5 miles to the park entrance. Heading east on Highway 24, turn left on University Parkway. Follow the brown state park signs to the park entrance. Another approach is from Yakima Avenue heading east into Terrace Heights. Turn right on Keys Road. Continue to University Parkway, passing a trailhead parking area on the right which also provides access to the dike trail and island route. From University Parkway, turn right for the park entrance.

Tour Divide cyclist holds his own in early going

By the time you read this, Eric Bruntjen will probably be somewhere near Seeley Lake, Mont., or perhaps even as far as Lincoln, another tiny town on the fringes of the thickly forested Rocky Mountain foothills northeast of Missoula.

The 38-year-old Yakima man will have traveled about 450 miles from Banff, Alberta, in the Canadian Rockies, with about 2,300 miles still ahead on his mountain-bike journey to Antelope Wells, N.M., where there are no wells and certainly nary an antelope.

He will be four days and nearly one-sixth of the way through the Tour Divide mountain bike race, while slowly creeping past halfway toward his other goal: that of generating enough pledges to purchase an all-terrain wheelchair for severely injured Iraq war veteran Evan Mettie.

Over his first four nights of the Tour Divide, Bruntjen has camped out in grizzly territory — and, yes, seen grizzlies — and slept in cheap motels. He has dealt with bicycle-maintenance issues but certainly no motivational shortages. And, although he has no dreams of winning the race, he has spent the first three days in the top third of the pack.

But by the time he reached Whitefish, Mont., where he spent Sunday night, he was dealing with a litany of issues with his bike — some bearings on a bracket, a pedal cleat that had been giving him problems since the first day, a broken spoke and the need for a new bicycle seat.

He was able to get most of those taken care of at a Whitefish shop called Glacier Cyclery.

He also had some issues with a plastic clip that holds the handlebar bag to the bicycle. A Yakima friend, Frank Hieber, was able to locate a replacement part at a San Diego specialty store called Jandd Mountaineering in San Diego (www.jandd.com) — which was willing to provide the part for free to support Bruntjen’s effort, by the way — but getting it to him on the road will be the challenge. Said Hieber, “It is like hitting a moving target with a blindfold on.”

Dealing with all those mechanical issues on Monday morning kept Bruntjen in Whitefish until 10:30 a.m., several hours after other cyclists had hit the road. But he rapidly began making up ground by powering through some 30 miles over the next three hours.

Bruntjen is already doing well in what he calls “the large-animal bingo,” having seen a bull moose, “more elk than you can shake a stick at,” deer, bighorn sheep and even a couple of grizzly bears. The first one he saw was perfectly timed: Bruntjen happened to be next to a sign reading AREA CLOSED DUE TO BEAR ACTIVITY.

But the bears were mellow, especially when compared with the feisty grouse Bruntjen encountered on his way up a mountain pass.

The grouse “came out and defended his territory; that was pure comedy gold,” Bruntjen said on one of his reports to the Herald-Republic’s “Out There” blog (sportsyakima.com/out-there/). “He had his ring feathers all puffed out and he was strutting his stuff in front of me, wouldn’t let me by.”

Meanwhile, the pledges keep slowly coming in for Bruntjen’s selfless goal.

He read a few months ago about the circumstances of severely injured Selah veteran Evan Mettie, who after being struck by shrapnel from a roadside bomb in Iraq was left with “locked-in syndrome.”

Bruntjen wanted to do something for Evan and the Mettie family. Upon learning of about their hopes to purchase an all-terrain wheelchair so Evan could enjoy the outdoors again, Bruntjen decided to appeal to some of his friends to pledge a few cents per mile for his ride of nearly 2,800 miles. One of his friends eventually forwarded his appeal to the Herald-Republic, which has been following his campaign ever since.

Since the Tour Divide race began last Friday, a few more pledges have come in — four cents-per-mile here, a nickel-per-mile there. But because the highly specialized all-terrain wheelchair costs more than $10,000, Bruntjen figures he needs more than $4 per mile in total pledges, and more than that if injuries keep him from completing the full 2,780 miles.

So far the total pledges — many of them from his friends and even a hefty 50-cents-per-mile pledge from his doctor — add up to just over $2.25 per mile.

But, of course, Eric Bruntjen still has more than 2,000 miles to ride.

*******

MAKE A PLEDGE

To make a per-mile monetary pledge on Eric Bruntjen’s Tour Divide effort, with all proceeds going toward the purchase of an all-terrain wheelchair for injured Iraq war veteran Evan Mettie, send an e-mail to tourdechair@gmail.com with your name, contact information and how much you would like to pledge. Donation checks made out to “Evan Mettie Donation” can be submitted at any U.S. Bank.

For the latest online updates on Eric Bruntjen’s Tour Divide effort, check in on Scott Sandsberry’s “Out There” outdoors blog (http://sportsyakima.com/out-there/). For a broader look at how the race is progressing, go to TourDivide.org or, for podcast and MP3 racer updates, to MTBCast.com.

Leavenworth’s Icicle Creek offers anglers breathtaking scenery

If there is a prettier place in the state to catch a spring chinook salmon, I’d like to see it. Icicle Creek, located just outside of Leavenworth, is a bit of an unknown to many anglers. But the creek, which flows as big as some rivers, offers anglers a shot at spring chinook in scenery that is unmatched, at least in Washington.

Flowing out of the Chiwaukum Mountains in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness northwest of Wenatchee, through pine trees and blooming wild roses, the Icicle is flanked by peaks and ridgelines, many of which still are topped by the remains of winter’s snowfall.

And in the lowest portion of the gentle stream, spring chinook return like clockwork to the Leavenworth Fish Hatchery, providing a fairly consistent fishery for anglers in late May and through the month of June.

My son Kyle and I fished with Shane Magnuson of Upper Columbia Guide Services on Saturday and got a taste of what the Icicle has to offer.

Magnuson, who basically grew up on the banks of the pretty creek, dropped us from one hole to the next, in what turned out to be a very short drift — basically from the hatchery to the sport fishing deadline just above where the Icicle meets the much bigger Wenatchee River.

But in that short drift we hooked and landed three springers — which, compared to some of the previous days, was a slow day. As we talked to other anglers in other drift boats and on the banks of the stream however, it was evident we had hit an off day, and our three fish caught was actually not bad.

“We hooked nine yesterday,” Magnuson said as we climbed into his drift boat at 3:15 Saturday morning. “But each day is different.”

Yes, I said 3:15. And when we got to the boat launch, there were already 14 empty trailers sitting in the parking lot.

“People like to get to their favorite holes early,” Magnuson joked.

I guess so. But it didn’t seem to matter too much. Magnuson found a hole that didn’t have any boats anchored in it and when it was legal to drop our lines in the water, an hour before sunrise, we didn’t have to wait long.

“Here, take this,” Magnuson said as he jabbed the rod into Kyle’s hands as he was letting out line.

Turns out there was a fish on the herring and Spin-N-Glo combination that is one of Magnuson’s favorite baits on the Icicle.

Kyle fought the fish in the glow of the early morning pre-dawn and soon had a five-pound springer in the net. The fish was a “jack,” a male salmon that comes back from the ocean a year earlier than normal, so it didn’t have the size a 3- or 4-year-old adult fish would have. But the smaller salmon fought well nonetheless.

The Icicle is getting a record number of jacks back to the hatchery, which has happened at most of the rivers in the Columbia River system this year. But not all of the fish in the river are jacks.

“We caught a 14- and 18-pounder yesterday,” Magnuson said. “And our biggest fish so far this year is a 28-pounder.”

That is a big springer anywhere.

Fishing on the Icicle is fairly simple. Bank anglers either plunk a Spin-N-Glo and eggs or herring into a hole and wait for a bite. Or, they might drift fish with a small slinky and a Spin-N-Glo and bait.

Magnuson, who has already fished the Icicle 17 days since it opened, has caught fish every day, and will continue to fish the stream until roughly the end of June. But the Icicle remains open until the end of July.

When the water drops and warms, the fish get spookier and tougher to catch, according to the veteran guide. But he says fish can still be caught.

And my guess is, that even though there might not be snow on the nearby peaks, it will still be one beautiful place to fish for spring chinook salmon. I look forward to getting back there soon.
• Rob Phillips is a freelance outdoor writer and partner in the advertising firm of Smith, Phillips & DiPietro. He can be reached at rwphillips@spdadvertising.com. To reach Upper Columbia Guide Services, call 509-630-5433.

Next Page »