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ARTS Page A5
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Methow Valley News
PUBLISHED WEEKLY SINCE 1903
T WISP, WASHINGTON
VOL . 121 NO. 52
W W W.METHOW VALLEYNEWS.COM
APRIL 23, 2025
$1.50
All clear: Highway 20 is open for business ‘Low snow year’ enables another April opening for road BY RALPH SCHWARTZ
The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) calls it “one of the prettiest work zones in the world.” It’s also one of the more treacherous. The avalanche beacons strapped to everyone’s midsection during a tour up North Cascades Highway on April 15 were enough to prove that point. The air got warmer that morning as WSDOT-issued pickups climbed in elevation — what meteorologists refer to as an inversion, and what avalanche forecasters call worrisome. “We have a little bit of an elevated risk,” said Harlan Sheppard, avalanche supervisor for the agency’s north central region. He was standing on the highway near one of 11 avalanche paths along Cutthroat Ridge, about 5 miles above the closed Silver Star gate. “Today we’re calling for ‘small avalanches possible, large avalanches unlikely,’” he said. All was quiet, however, except for the occasional snow blower, plow or road broom conducting a final mop-up of Highway 20 in preparation for the warm-season tourists and the rest of the traffic that uses the northernmost cross-
QUICK FACTS:
North Cascades Highway first opened to general traffic on Sept. 2, 1972, only to close for the winter on Nov. 26. The pass has closed due to severe weather and avalanche risk every year since, except for the drought winter of 1976–77. Earliest opening: March 10, 2005 Latest opening: June 14, 1974 Earliest closing: Oct. 17, 2003 Latest closing: Jan. 3, 1990 2024–25: closed Nov. 18–April 22 Sources: WSDOT, alpenglow.org ing over the Cascade Mountains. It’s a calculated risk with a high reward. The road opened one week later, at 10 a.m. on Tuesday (April 22). “This is something I enjoy,” said Jesse Gurney, a highway maintenance supervisor based in Twisp. “It’s the connection between eastern and western Washington, and so it’s a integral part for commerce and the public. And it doesn’t hurt that the scenery is great.”
Quick work
Snow-removal crews ran into their usual hassles since beginning work on March 17. Early-spring snow storms are inevitable, and on some days the avalanche risk was so high that workers avoided the chutes entirely. But in the end they had finished in five weeks, about one week ahead of schedule.
Photo by Steve Mitchell
Washington State Department of Transportation workers opened the Silver Star gate west of Mazama at 10 a.m. Tuesday (April 22), making the the North Cascades Highway available to through traffic. The simple explanation for the rapid work pace was that this was a “low snow year,” Gurney said. When crews first reached the road’s highest point — Washington Pass, elevation 5,477 feet — they found 62 inches of snow. During big winters, Sheppard said, the pass will have twice as much accumulation. Good fortune played a part, too, in
SPRING RE NE WAL
securing North Cascades Highway’s second consecutive April opening date after a run of four straight years when the gates at Silver Star and Ross Dam had remained closed until May. “The equipment’s been working great,” Gurney said. “We’re always one breakdown away from being a long ways away.”
BY MARCY STAMPER
Photo by Steve Mitchell
Pearrygin Lake was decorated by a seasonal outburst of arrowleaf balsamroot on Easter Sunday. Campgrounds at the park were scheduled to open April 15, according to the State Parks website.
State’s gray wolf count declined in 2024 BY ANN MCCREARY
The number of gray wolves in Washington decreased last year for the first time since state wildlife officials began counting them 16 years ago. Although the overall population dropped statewide, the number of wolf packs increased by one — including a new pack identified in Okanogan County northeast of the Methow Valley. The population of gray wolves, which are listed as an endangered species under state law, decreased by 9% in 2024 compared to 2023, according to an annual report released each spring by Washington Department of
Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). That’s the first decline since the annual wolf count began in 2008 after discovery of the Lookout pack near the Methow Valley — the first documented wolf pack in Washington since the early 1900s. The Lookout pack, which occupies territory southwest of Twisp, had grown to 13 members at the end of 2024, an increase of three wolves from the previous year’s survey. That made it the largest pack in the state last year, according to WDFW’s survey. Over the past 16 years the Lookout pack has survived poaching and wildfires. The new pack in Okanogan County is called the Reed pack, with territory located east of Loup Loup pass. The Reed pack has two members, the minimum number to constitute a pack. One is a collared wolf that dispersed from the Loup Loup pack and traveled up to
ADDRESS LABEL
See OPEN, A2
Fired USFS workers may be back on the job this month Seasonal employees reinstated in March
New pack found in Okanogan County
But the blowers made relatively quick work of the snow covering Highway 20, even though it had been hardened by months of freeze-thaw cycles and snowmobile traffic. If a blower is making good time, it will cover two miles in an hour.
British Columbia before returning to its current territory. In addition to the Reed and Lookout packs, three other packs have territories around the Methow Valley. They include the Loup Loup pack, which had three members at the end of 2024, compared to five at the end of 2023; the Sullivan Creek pack, with eight members compared to seven the previous year; and the Chewuch pack, with 10 members at the end of last year, compared to five at the end of 2023. WDFW partners with tribes to estimate the number of wolves in the state at the end of each year. The survey counted 230 wolves as of Dec. 31, 2024, compared to 254 wolves in the 2023 survey. The state had 43 wolf packs at the end of 2024, compared to 42 packs in 2023.
See WOLF, A3
THURS.
FRI.
SAT.
Despite a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, seasonal employees of the Methow Valley Ranger District (MVRD) expect to report for work at the end of this month, after being fired in February and then reinstated in March. The Supreme Court justices stayed a March 14 order by a U.S. district judge to reinstate the workers, but on technical grounds. The high court found that the nonprofit associations that filed the original lawsuit didn’t have standing to sue because they weren’t directly harmed by the firings. Plaintiffs in that lawsuit include the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks and the Western Watersheds Project, who argued that the firings would harm national parks, environmental protection and recreational fishing, among other impacts. The 16,000 fired employees worked for six federal agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of the Interior. MVRD is part of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. In its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration asked the justices to block the order to reinstate the workers. The judge had ruled that the agencies had violated procedure because they had been directed to fire those employees “under the pretense of ‘performance,’” based on a suggested template, even though no actual job performance issues were specified. There have been multiple lawsuits about whether the government had the right to fire the federal employees. But even the initial orders blocking the firings are potentially tenuous, since the judges acknowledged that federal agencies have the right to dismiss workers by creating a formal plan for restructuring or reduction in force.
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April 24
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Mostly sunny
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70° 38°
73° 43°
73° 41°
68° 39°
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WEATHER DATA BASED ON ACCUWEATHER.COM FORECAST FOR T WISP
72° 41°
In one related case, a U.S. District judge issued an injunction, saying, “The government can terminate probationary employees en masse (i.e., dismiss them via a reduction in force, or “RIF”), but when it does so it must follow certain laws and regulations.”
Barring unions
The situation is complicated by an executive order issued by the White House in late March ending collective bargaining for a broad list of federal agencies. The executive order covers agencies with national-security missions, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Food and Drug Administration — but not the Forest Service. Some of the agencies that no longer have union representation did re-fire employees a second time, but the Forest Service has not followed that route, according to a union steward for the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents employees at MVRD. Forest Service employees are still waiting for details about the RIF process. The deadline for a plan was Monday (April 14), but the union hadn’t received any communication as of press time, the steward said. NFFE has filed a grievance on behalf of the terminated employees. The MVRD employees were officially on probationary status because they had been at their current job for less than a year (for some jobs, less than two years), even though most of the seasonal employees had worked for the Forest Service for many years. They had recently had their status converted to permanent seasonal positions. Although everyone was told they were fired for substandard job performance, several MVRD employees told the Methow Valley News that they had received superlative evaluations and that their supervisors made it clear that their firing wasn’t performance related.
See USFS, A3
INSIDE ...
OPINION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A4 HARTS PASS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A4 ARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A5 SPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B1 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . B2 COMMUNIT Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . B5 VALLEY LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B6