Next steps
Game over
The Methow Conservancy takes on a new role
Pac-12’s collapse sidelines traditions, memories
Methow Valley News
EXTRA! Page B1
STORY Page A6
PUBLISHED WEEKLY SINCE 1903
TWISP, WASHINGTON
VOL. 120 NO. 17
WWW.METHOWVALLEYNEWS.COM
AUGUST 23, 2023
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Wildfires — and their smoke — surround the valley Large Canadian fire encroaches into county from north BY MARCY STAMPER
Wildfires are now burning on all sides of the Methow Valley, with a fire burning near Blue Lake in the North Cascades, and a large fire that started in British Columbia pushing into Okanogan County over the weekend. The actively burning fires trapped the valley under a thick shroud of smoke last week that was declared “hazardous” over the weekend. The Blue Lake Fire was detected a little before midnight on Monday, Aug. 14. It had grown to about 290 acres as of Tuesday (Aug. 22). The fire is burning just south of the North Cascades Highway and near popular hiking and climbing trails, such as Blue Lake, Heather/Maple Pass,
and the Pacific Crest Trail near Bridge Creek. The North Cascades Highway was closed for a week from the Silver Star gate, 22 miles west of Winthrop, to Newhalem, about 51 miles in all, but was scheduled to reopen on Wednesday morning (Aug. 23) for through-traffic only, with a pilot car, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation. (See details in box.) Numerous firefighting resources have responded to the Blue Lake Fire, including interagency hotshot crews, U.S. Forest Service Type 2 crews, fire engines, rappelers, smokejumpers, and helicopters with water buckets, the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest said on its Facebook page. Fire managers plan to burn strategic areas to prevent the Blue Lake Fire from threatening high-value recreation resources and infrastructure. These firing operations are expected to increase the size of the fire. Firefighters are also looking for natural features like avalanche
chutes that could act as a control feature, according to Inciweb, an interagency information-management system. In addition to the North Cascades Highway, many trails are closed, including the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) from the North Cascades National Park boundary north to the junction with the Snowy Lakes Trail, and Maple Pass and Twisp Pass. There is a 70-mile detour for PCT hikers from Stehekin to the West Fork Methow trail in Lost River. Blue Lake Fire behavior has been active, but had moderated by Monday. There are areas of isolated torching and spotting. The Blue Lake Fire was 5% contained as of Tuesday. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Sourdough Fire
The Sourdough Fire near Diablo Lake had grown to almost 6,000 acres, with 12% containment as of Tuesday (Aug. 22). Most of the fire growth has been in remote terrain in the inaccessible northern part of the
A new model may enhance home ownership options Methow Housing Trust explores permanent ‘housing easements’ BY ANN MCCREARY
Home ownership is out of reach for most of the Methow Valley’s working class — local residents whose jobs are located in the valley — and rental housing is scarce and expensive. The valley’s housing market is increasingly driven by a limited supply of homes and high demand from high-income earners, many of them part-time residents or people who live here but work remotely. Many local wage earners simply can’t compete. “Said most simply, we have a local housing supply issue,” said Simon Windell, chief operating officer of the Methow Housing Trust.
“High demand from high earners compounds an already overall constrained supply of housing, leaving negligible supply of market housing for local folks,” Windell said. To address the housing dilemma faced by local residents, the Methow Housing Trust is exploring a new model of home ownership, called local housing easements, aimed at creating and preserving housing for people who live and work in the valley. The idea is to establish permanent easements on properties that would require occupants of housing on those properties to be full-time residents of the Methow Valley. “We’re very early in this process,” said Windell, who has been researching the idea for the Methow Housing Trust. “We are interested in this as a tool to conserve housing for locals and there are a lot of details still to be determined.” The Housing Trust’s interest in
See HOUSING, A3
CLEANUP CREW
Photo by Steve Mitchell
A plane dropped fire retardant over the Blue Lake Fire in the early stages of fighting the blaze, which has grown to about 290 acres. fire, where it is expected to keep spreading. The fire consumed a significant area in the north on Friday, when it sent up a huge
plume, but the fire hasn’t crossed creeks to the north and east, Northwest Incident Management Team 10 Operations Section
Chief Dean Lange said. Fire crews have been using the
See WILDFIRES, A2
Lost, and found, in the wilderness A hiker’s chance encounter rescued Hank the horse BY MARCY STAMPER
Hannah Fitchett’s experience with horses was limited to cleaning out stables — she’d never even ridden one — but she drew on her considerable resourcefulness and compassion and single-handedly rescued Hank, a buckskin quarter horse that had been missing in the Pasayten Wilderness for a week and a half. Fitchett set out on a four-day backpacking trip Thursday, Aug. 3, planning to hike 53 miles from Billy Goat to Thirtymile. The night before, she had dinner with her parents in Winthrop, where she saw flyers about Dennis Gardner’s 16-year-old horse Hank, who’d been missing since he’d wandered off from a group of horses and mules out grazing on Monday night, July 24. Gardner was at Spanish Camp with other guests and an outfitter, visiting lakes in the high country. Hank had
Photo courtesy of Dennis Gardner
Hannah Fitchett, left, reunited Dennis Gardner and his horse, Hank, after the hobbled horse wandered off from a Pasayten Wilderness campsite. been there on previous rides and was familiar with the area so, after a couple of nights at camp, Gardner hobbled and put a bell on him and turned him out with the other horses and
mules, he said. When they’re hobbled overnight, horses typically meander a quarter- or
See HORSE, A3
Envisioning a fire safe community Forum stresses ‘defensible space’ around homes BY MARCY STAMPER
Photo by Steve Mitchell
Participants in the Gambler 500, an international movement to clean up offroad trash — and have fun — took a break in the Methow Valley last weekend.
ADDRESS LABEL
In an era of increasing impacts from climate change, logging and thinning projects cause ecological harm to forests and won’t protect communities from destructive wildfires. Instead, we should focus on areas where people live by clearing vegetation and hardening homes. Those were the central points at “Visions for a Fire Safe and Ecologically Sound Community,” a forum held in Twisp last week. The forum featured forest scientist and wildfire-management expert Dominick
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DellaSalla; Methow Valley residents Ric Bailey and Michael “Bird” Shaffer, who’ve been working on forest-health issues for decades; and environmental attorney Liam Sherlock. About 70 people attended. The North Cascades Conservation Council (NCCC) helped organize the discussion because of its concerns about the impacts of U.S. Forest Service restoration, thinning, and logging projects in the Methow that encompass almost 200,000 acres, Bailey said for the NCCC. Wildfire is part of living in the Methow Valley, and to think you can control fire is not realistic, Bailey said. Naturally ignited wildfires replenish the soil, he said. DellaSalla and the other panelists stressed that they’re not opposed to thinning or logging. But any restoration plan has to consider the entire
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valley and conserve the ecosystem for future generations, Bailey said. DellaSalla maintains that areas that have been logged tend to have higher-severity fires. It’s also crucial to remove slash piles once the work has been completed so that they don’t add more flammable fuel to the forest, Bailey said. In the Buttermilk area, after logging and thinning in the Mission Restoration Project, “there are clearcuts choked with flammable logging slash, which has been there for two summers,” Bailey said. DellaSalla, who studies biodiversity and climate change, said the situation is growing dire, with the Earth on the cusp of warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius. While firefighters succeed in suppressing 98% of fires, the other 2%
See FIRE SAFE, A2
INSIDE ... OPINION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A4 HARTS PASS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A4 ARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A5 SPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A6 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B2 COMMUNITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B5 VALLEY LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B6