Until her 36th year, Susan Ershler had never climbed anything more rigorous than a flight of stairs. Now she has climbed to the top of the world.

Phil and Susan Ershler enjoy the view from atop Mount Everest, the last of the couple’s “Seven Summits” ascents that they will reprise in a fundraising event Friday for Central Washington Mountain Rescue. The event begins at 7 p.m. at Hanford High School. (Courtesy photo)

Although she was physically fit, outdoors to Susan in those days was basically where her car lived.

“I had three brothers in Boy Scouts. They did a lot of hiking and stuff,” she says. “But it just wasn’t on my radar.”

Neither was Mount Rainier.

Nor, certainly, were peaks much more daunting like McKinley in Alaska, Aconcagua in the Andes or Mount Everest in Nepal.

The woman who had never been a climber has reached the summit of the tallest mountains on each of the seven continents, always alongside her husband, renowned expedition guide Phil Ershler, one of the directors of International Mountain Guides.

And, surprisingly, the driving force was not the guy with four decades as a mountain guide, the guy who will do a photographic presentation of the experience — and that career spent at high altitude — at 7 p.m. Friday at Hanford High School as a fundraiser for Central Washington Mountain Rescue.

Not even close.

“She had to do some convincing of me. It wasn’t the other way around,” says Phil, 58. “Make no mistake: Everest was not my idea.”

No, it came from the drive and vision of the woman who, that first year they met, spent some time thinking Phil might be dead.

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That was in 1992. It was the deadliest year on record upon Mount McKinley, with treacherous storms and accidents taking the lives of 11 climbers.

Earlier that year, Susan had met Phil on a blind date. They were already smitten when, that summer, he headed off to guide some clients up McKinley.

“I remember opening the paper, and people were dying like crazy,” recalls Susan, 53. “Phil always told me, ‘Don’t ever expect a call when I’m on a climb, because if you get a call, it’s gonna be bad news.’ That helped, because the worst thing would be expecting a call every day or any time and then not getting it.”

Phil’s reasoning was simply to keep her from sitting and waiting by the phone. If something bad happened, she was sure to find out anyway.

“Nobody’s busting their tail to get good news out,” he says. “Bad news, on the other hand, travels at the speed of light.”

The media reported the death on McKinley of an unidentified but well-known mountain guide, an American who was 40 years old — an apt description of Phil Ershler.

“Well, it wasn’t him,” Susan says. “But I didn’t get a call.”

Phil and Susan Ershler were the first husband and wife tandem to climb the Seven Summits. They will speak Friday in Hanford. (Courtesy photo)

“He really made an effort to make it as comfortable as he could for me, and he also made it exciting and fun,” Susan recalls. “He helped me a lot when I wasn’t feeling well. For us, what was so exciting was you get to the top and you’re there with somebody you love.”

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Two months later, they traveled to Africa and ascended Mount Kilimanjaro — not a particularly technical climb but, at 19,340 feet, certainly a trip into thin air. The next year, they climbed Europe’s highest peak (Elbrus, in Russia), and in 1995 they reached the top of McKinley.

Major peaks all. Susan Ershler, the erstwhile non-climber, was finding out things about herself — like, for example, that heights and exposure on mountain faces did not faze her.

“I have climbed with people who have a fear of heights and, boy, it’s just uncontrollable, and I admire what they’re doing because it must be very, very difficult,” she says. “But I really don’t have that fear at all, and my balance is pretty good. I was in gymnastics when I was growing up, and that’s helpful because in the mountains you sometimes have to cross crevasses on ladders.”

By the time they climbed Aconcagua, South America’s highest peak, in 1996, Susan had already decided she wanted to do the Seven Summits with her husband.

Phil, the one who had to be convinced, couldn’t come up with any reasons why she shouldn’t.

“Even the first trip, Kilimanjaro — the first summit, her first trip out of the country on any kind of climbing trip, and certainly her first trip to altitude — to see that she dealt with all of that well was a real A-HA moment for me,” he says. “I knew then: I can take Susan high, she can handle altitude, she’s comfortable with people of different cultures, and that was that first door opening.

“Both the McKinley and Aconcagua trips, again, were great reinforcers to me of her abilities at altitude … that she could persevere, could deal with storms, she could sit and wait in the tents. She had the patience and stick-to-it-iveness that make expeditionary climbs work.”

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Having crested the top peaks in Antarctica in 1998 and in Australia in 1999, Everest was all that remained.

Phil’s health issues — a bout with colon cancer, an operation and then post-surgical complications — kept the Ershlers from a planned attempt at climbing the world’s tallest peak in 2000. They tried in 2001 and got as high as 27,600 feet — within 1,335 vertical feet of the summit — before they were turned back by something Susan had never heard of and Phil had never believed.

His eyes froze.

“I’ve heard of it happening with a couple of people but never believed it could actually happen,” said Phil, who described the feeling as “like looking through wax paper.” They had reached a location known to Everest climbers as “the Balcony,” where climbers typically switch to a new oxygen bottle for the final push.

Phil couldn’t see well enough to put on a new bottle.

He confided with another guide and decided he and Susan would head down. She had mixed feelings about not reaching the summit, but was having such a hard time with the ferocious Himalayan winds that in some ways she was relieved.

“I wasn’t sure I could make it anyway,” she says. “We had that jet stream blowing, that snow, so you’re getting whipped in the

face with that wind, and it’s cold. He turned to me and said, ‘I can’t take you up in this storm, I need to take you down. And he said, ‘Can you live with that?’ He had already summited Everest (in 1984), but the way he is, it was probably everything for him to get me there.”

She didn’t know he was having vision difficulties until she saw him stumbling badly on the way down, clearly unable to assess his surroundings.

“He asked me if there was something wrong with his eyes,” she recalls. “He had these icicles hanging down from his eyelids, and his pupils were kind of this purplish, hazy color. It was strange. He could not see.”

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Phil’s eye issue having been temporary, the couple headed for Everest again a year later. This time, though, it was just the two of them, their porters and two climbing Sherpas, the high-elevation, strong-lunged Nepalese natives who assist Western climbers on Himalayan expeditions.

“We decided this is probably going to be our last chance, so why not stack the odds in our favor as much as possible,” Susan says.

And everything worked out. Their acclimation process to the thin-air altitude went smoothly; despite the numerous teams on the mountain, there were no backups at critical junctures; and the weather on summit day was still and sunny, not a howling windstorm.

As they took the final steps up the summit ridge, Susan’s years of climbing “flashed in front of me — everything I did to get up there. I was screaming on the inside, ‘You’re going to stand on top of the world.’

“And I thought, ‘This is for all the times in your life that you quit. This is for my parents.’ And, of course, it was for Phil. I really wanted to stand up there for him.”

So on the morning of May 16, 2002, Phil and Sue Ershler enjoyed 25 relatively balmy minutes taking in the view from the top of the world, as the first husband and wife to complete the Seven Summits.

And they had no idea they had achieved that status.

“The thought had never crossed our mind that this was a first anything,” Phil says. “After we got home, people started contacting us and saying, ‘Do you know that …?’ It was kind of irrelevant to us that it was a ‘first.’

“The big thing was, it was a first for us. The Seven Summits is a great excuse to go see the world. They’re not the seven most difficult climbs in the world. They’re not the seven most interesting climbs in the world.

“But it’s a great carrot to put in front of you to get you to go see some really interesting places.”

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

If you go

WHAT: A photographic presentation by Phil and Sue Ershler, the first husband-and-wife couple to climb the “Seven Summits,” the highest peaks on each of the seven continents.

WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday.

WHERE: Hanford High School, 450 Hanford St., Richland.

WHY: It’s a fundraiser for Central Washington Mountain Rescue.

HOW MUCH: $10 admission at the door.

HOW TO GET THERE: Follow Interstate 82 southeast and take Exit 102 (I-182/U.S. 12 toward Richland/Pasco). Take the Wellsian Way/Vantage exit, and after not quite 5 miles, turn left onto Stevens Drive; go 0.3 miles, turn right onto Snyder; go 0.6 miles, turn left onto George Washington Way, go another 0.6 miles and turn left onto Hanford Street.

OF NOTE: The Ershlers will be bringing copies of their book, “Together on Top of the World,” signed by both, that can be purchased at the event.

Used to be, every now and then you would stumble on an old shed elk or deer antler while hiking in the hills, or chasing a grouse around in September.

I remember as a kid finding a shed antler here or there and thinking it was pretty neat. That doesn’t happen much any more. Most shed antlers are found by shed hunters long before anyone might casually come across one.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think shed antler hunting would become a pursuit that draws just about as many avid participants as does the hunting of the animals themselves.

In fact, shed hunting might draw the most avid participants of any outdoor pursuit.

I was at the elk feeding station in January and as I looked at the dozens and dozens of branch-antlered bulls munching away on their daily feeding of hay, I automatically had visions of one of the big bulls sneaking through a patch of timber next fall with me close behind, a special any-bull tag in my pocket.

As I stood there daydreaming about those possibilities, I overheard a couple of guys discussing their plans for the upcoming shed-hunting season. They drooled over several of the big bulls and hoped they might get a shot at finding a set of horns like those when they hit the hills this spring.

“Man, I’d give my right arm to get my hands on one of those,” the first guy said, pointing to a rather heavy-horned bull standing in a pile of straw.

“You mean, your hand,” the other guy said.

“What?”

“You said you would give your right arm to get your hands on those antlers,” the second guy said. “But if you gave your right arm, you would only have one hand, so you couldn’t get your ‘hands’ on it. Besides, I would have probably found it first. ”

They argued back and forth for a few more minutes, and then relived a few tales of past shed-hunting trips — like the time they spotted a shed across a canyon and almost killed themselves running to get to it before it was spotted by some other avid shed hunter.

They told of waiting at the gate of one of the roads leading into the Oak Creek Wildlife Area in the dark hours before midnight on May 1, when the area officially opens to shed hunting.

Listening to these guys talk, I started thinking about maybe giving shed hunting a try for myself. A few years ago I was walking along a little overgrown road while turkey hunting up by Colville and stumbled across a matching set of five-point elk antlers. The big bull dropped one, and then walked about 30 yards and dropped the other. They are beautiful, heavy antlers that sit on my fireplace hearth to this day.

And I have found dozens of shed deer antlers of various sizes over the years while out hunting deer. It is always fun to find those.

But I’ve just never gotten caught up in the craze of specifically going out and hunting sheds. I know — for deer, anyway — it can be a great way of determining what size and quantity of deer might be in the general vicinity come hunting season. And some shed hunters do it for profit, selling the shed horns to buyers who in turn make them into chandeliers and tables and belt buckles and knife handles.

Some areas are open for shed hunting right now. But others, including the Oak Creek, L.T. Murray, Wenas Wildlife Areas in Yakima County and Whiskey Dick and Quilomene Wildlife Areas in Kittitas County are closed until May 1, to protect the animals from being bothered coming out of winter.

Some people are so into it they teach their dogs to help find the antlers. Others ride horses or four-wheelers to cover more ground. But, according to some shed hunters I’ve talked with, the best way to find sheds is to cover the ground on foot.

It does sound like a good way to spend a day outdoors. I’m just not sure I’m willing to give up one of my turkey hunting days, or my spring salmon fishing days to go out looking for shed antlers.

I don’t when shed hunting became so popular. It seems to have happened overnight. The elk and deer are just now starting to drop their antlers. And there is one thing for sure, the shed hunters won’t be far behind.

• 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.

• Area and road closures at Oak Creek Wildlife Area remain in effect until May 1 to limit disturbance to elk and other wildlife. There are also vehicle gates at other entry points to the wildlife areas that remain closed through April 30, including Mellotte Road into the Wenas, the Robinson Canyon and Joe Watt Canyon roads into the L.T. Murray, and certain roads into the Whisky Dick and Quilomene wildlife areas.

Open house today on controlled burns

The rationale behind controlled burns, as well as a discussion on the when, where and why such prescribed burns will take place, will be the focus of a “prescribed burning” open house today at the Naches Ranger Station.

Wenatchee National Forest fire specialists will be present from 2 to 7 p.m. at the station (10237 Highway 12 in Naches) to explain the reasoning behind the prescribed burning process and answer questions from the public.

Last year, smoke from a large prescribed burn on the slopes of Bethel Ridge triggered complaints to several local agencies, after which the Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency fined the Naches Ranger Station

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Triploid plants to be bumped up this year

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is bumping up its stocking of triploids this year, with 58,118 of the sterile, oversized rainbow trout — up from about 41,000 last year — going to 104 lowland lakes statewide.

Roughly 45 percent of those will go to Eastern Washington waters, with the stocking schedule will be posted on the WDFW’s Web site later this month.

Yakima County waters in line to receive these heftier triploid plants include Clear Lake, Dog Lake, Leech Lake, Mud Lake, Myron Lake and Tim’s Pond (across from the Oak Creek headquarters), while Mud Lake off Highway 410 will also receive a smaller number since it’s essentially a walk-in lake now. North Fio Rito Lake, Mattoon Lake and Lost Lake in Kittitas County will get some of the triploids, as well Columbia Park Pond in Kennewick and Dalton and Powerline lakes in Franklin County.

Yakima-based WDFW fisheries biologist Eric Anderson said most of the stocking would be done in April, but that Dog Lake and Kittitas County’s Lost Lake probably won’t be stocked until May because the snow at those higher-elevation lakes makes lakeside access more difficult.

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Film chronicles Columbia swim, past

In 2003, Christopher Swain became the first person to swim the entire 1,243-mile length of the Columbia River, with more than 30 Northwest filmmakers working together to incorporate both his effort and the river’s history into a film, “Source to Sea.”

The Yakima Environ-mental Learning Foundation will sponsor a showing of the film at 7 p.m. March 18 (a week from Thursday) at Wesley United Methodist Church, 14 N. 48th Ave., at the corner of 48th and Chestnut avenues.

The 90-minute film, called by one review “ a heart-wrenching tale of a man and a river,” includes pre-inundation footage of Celilo and Kettle Falls, plus wide-ranging interviews from tribal members, agency representatives, anglers and others on the natural history and the past and present-day impacts of the Columbia River.

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Dale’s 25×25 takes last button shoot

Dennis Dale hit 25 straight targets to capture the men’s division button Sunday in the finale of the Yakima Valley Sportsmen trap club’s 10-week Button Shoot.

Jerry Hielde, Jim Dixon and Tom Rogers each tied with 21×25 to take the Senior division buttons. The club’s telescope score was 100×100.

This Sunday at 10 a.m. will be a button shootoff in each of the five classes, followed by an Annie Oakley (miss and you’re out), with all button winners lining up for a chance at the club championship trophy. All targets for button winners will be free, with a potluck to follow.

On Saturday, the club held its first non-registered Lucky Dog 50 bird shoot last Saturday, with 50 targets each at 16-yard and 50-handicap and 25 pairs of doubles and payouts on the Lewis system. The 16-yard winners — First flight: Jim Turnbull, DJ Blankenship and Sean Daily. Second flight: Tom Rogers. Third flight: Darrell Robertson and Paul Klingele. Handicap winners — First flight: John and Paul Klingele. Second flight: Norm Baird and DJ Blankenship: Third flight: Scott Jones. Doubles winners were John Steklenburg and Norm Baird.

Night shooting under the lights starts at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

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BIRD ALERT

Gray-crowned rosy finches flitted about the bunchgrass slopes near the rocks on a beautiful afternoon on Selah Butte. The raucous courtship call of the chuckar, the lovely chant of the canyon wrens and the screams from a pair of prairie falcons echoing off the cliffs, testified to the nearness of spring. Red-tailed hawk, rock pigeon, black-billed magpie, common raven and horned lark were also noted, while the brush along the river contained golden-crowned sparrows and song sparrows.

Other signs of spring this week included reports from all around the Valley of killdeer, as well as singing dark-eyed juncos, evening grosbeaks and pine siskin arriving at Kittitas County feeders and the winnowing call of a male Wilson’s snipe near Tampico.

One local birder reported being nearly “run over” by a juvenile northern goshawk on the Poppoff trail, while another spotted a great horned owl on the nest at the Toppenish golf course.

A northern mockingbird has been causing some excitement in the Pasco area on road 76 at the Columbia River. Over 2,000 snow geese and 1,000 or more white-fronted geese were noted at the McNary National Wildlife Refuge and long-billed curlews and sandhill cranes were observed in the Tri-Cities.

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

— Kerry L. Turley

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AROUND AND ABOUT

DRANO BANK FISHING: The immediate area around the outlet of Drano Lake will be limited to bank-fishing-only beginning April 16, essentially to minimize conflicts between bank and boat anglers. The bank-fishing-only area will be west of a line projected from the easternmost pillar of the Highway 14 Bridge to a posted marker on the north shore. In addition, the anti-snag rule will be removed from the entire area, as well as on the lower Wind River, beginning next Tuesday, March 16.

PAC MEETING TODAY: The Eastern Washington Cascades and Yakima Provincial Advisory Committees (PACs) are meeting at from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. today in Wenatchee at the Rural County Fire District No. 1 Sunnyslope Fire Station conference room, with public comments set for noon.

The agenda includes information-sharing and updates regarding the Forest Restoration Strategy, Wilderness Society North Cascades Project and the federal decision against listing pikas as a threatened and endangered species.

RAZOR-CLAM DIGS: The WDFW has tentatively scheduled razor-clam digs on ocean beaches for March 26-April 1 and again in mid-April, provided marine toxin tests show the clams are safe to eat.

BEAR PERMIT DEADLINE: Friday is the last day hunters to purchase and submit applications for spring black bear hunting permits. A drawing will be held in mid-March for 185 permits in specific areas east of the Cascades (and others on the west side of the state).

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ON THE CALENDAR

TODAY: The Cascadians’ Tuesday group will probably do a cross-country ski/snowshoe trek to Sand Lake off White Pass, and with recent snow dustings in the high country it’s possible there may be a couple or three more weeks of such outings. The group meets at 8 a.m. at the 40th Avenue

Bi-Mart parking lot and carpools from there. Bring a lunch.

WEDNESDAY: The Yakima Valley Audubon Society will host a bird walk beginning at 9 a.m. at the south end of the Yakima Greenway (at the east end of Valley Mall Boulevard). Anybody is welcome.

WEDNESDAY: The Nordic Ski and Snowshoe Council will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Naches Ranger Station.

THURSDAY: The Cascadians’ Pokies will do a hike at Snow Mountain Ranch. For meeting time and place (and non-Pokies are invited to participate), call Roger Short at 509-469-9906.

MARCH 21 (a week from Sunday): Hiking/outdoors photographer Alan Bauer will be giving a presentation on “Best Desert Hikes: Washington,” a Mountaineers Books guidebook he co-authored with Dan Nelson, at 7 p.m. at Inklings Books, at Chalet Mall off 56th and Summitview in Yakima.

APRIL 15: Just an early heads-up for something you won’t want to miss: Explorer Helen Thayer will be at the Capitol Theatre to give a photographic presentation of her adventures around the world as a fund-raising event sponsored by the Cascadians and the Cowiche Canyon Conservancy.

What a difference a year makes. Last year at this time, most of the lakes in the region were either just free of ice, or they were still partially covered with ice. This year the ice has been off of virtually all of the lowland lakes for a month or more. This is good news for local anglers for a couple of reasons.

First, it means most, if not all, of the lakes in Eastern Washington that opened for fishing yesterday will, in fact, be open for fishing. And it means the water in those lakes will have warmed somewhat in the mild temperatures of the past 45 days, hopefully putting the fish in those lakes in a biting mood.

As most anglers know, virtually all of the lakes and ponds in our region are open for fishing on a year-round basis. But many other lakes throughout the eastern part of the state annually open March 1. Some years those lakes are iced over and unfishable. Other years, like this one, they are ice-free, providing ample opportunities for anglers to break out of cabin fever mode.

Every year several fishing buddies and I try to hit a lake or two on opening day, and such was the case Monday. We headed up to some of the lakes in the Quincy/George area. I’d like to tell you the fishing was fantastic, with quick five-fish limits being the norm for the day.

But since I am writing this to meet a deadline the day before the opener, I can’t make any firm reports on the fishing, good or bad. I can tell you, though, in virtually every year for the past five or so we have found good fishing in one or more of the lakes on the opener and in the days that followed.

Biologists are again predicting good things for Martha Lake, along I-90 just east of George. Some 15,000 rainbows have been planted in Martha in advance of the opener, in the form of spring fry and catchables. Burke and Quincy Lakes each received over 30,000 trout fry last spring. Depending on how the little fish survived the predatory birds, the two lakes should provide some good fishing for trout that have grown to 11 to 13 inches, and there should be some carryover fish in the 17- to 20-inch range as well.

Other Columbia Basin lakes that opened Monday on Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Quincy Wildlife Area include: Upper, Lower and West Caliche lakes, southwest of George; Dusty Lake, south of Quincy; and the small “walk-in” lakes — Cascade, Cliff, Crystal, Cup, Dot and Spring.

All but Cascade and Dot received plantings of rainbow fry last spring. Dusty also received some brown trout fry and some tiger trout fry, a total of nearly 12,000 fish. While most of these lakes are open to fishing with any type of gear, Dusty falls under the selective gear regulations, meaning no bait is allowed, and only barbless, single hooked lures and flies can be used.

The most common bait setups include the use of floating Power Bait on the hook, and a slip sinker on the main line to get the bait down near the bottom. A good old-fashioned marshmallow and worm combo will work too. Casting and retrieving a spinner like a Rooster Tail will often entice strikes.

Lenice, Nunnally and Merry lakes, on WDFW’s Crab Creek Wildlife Area just east of Beverly in southwest Grant County, opened Monday under selective gear rules. These lakes are popular fly-fishing lakes and usually provide good fishing. This past spring Lenice and Nunnally received plantings of rainbow, brown trout and tiger trout fry, so they should again provide some decent fishing this spring.

And even though these lakes are considered fly fishing waters, the rules allow anglers to use both fly-fishing and spinning gear as long as they use flies or lures with a single barbless hook.

I have had excellent luck at Lenice and Nunnally over the years by slowly row-trolling small FlatFish in green, brown, black or yellow colors. Rigged with a barbless, single hook, small FlatFish are both legal and lethal.

Another lake that opened yesterday and may be worth trying is Lake Lenore. Fishing for the unique Lahontan cutthroat trout that are planted in the long, shallow lake near Soap Lake should be good. The WDFW planted some 55,000 of the cutthroat as fingerlings in the lake last fall, and with the many carryover fish in the lake, the fishing there should be quite good.

Lenore is also a “selective gear only” lake and gas-powered motors are prohibited. Fly casters are the predominate fishers at Lenore, but again, anglers throwing small single-hooked spoons and spinners can and will catch fish.

Lakes in the Columbia Basin are now open and should be providing some excellent fishing. If you don’t want to travel that far, local lakes like Myron, Rotary, Fio Rito, Mattoon and I-82 ponds Nos. 4 and 6 have also recently been planted. March is here. Many of the lakes are now open. It is time to go fishing.

• 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.

In early March the first swallows arrive in Yakima from the south. Swallows eat insects, so, you ask, are there really enough bugs out in early March? It turns out there are, especially near water — certainly enough for both tree and violet-green swallows to arrive and go on bug patrol.

These birds are among our earliest returning birds from the tropics, along with flycatchers, vireos, warblers, orioles and tanagers. Hundreds of millions of birds migrate north from their tropical wintering homes to take advantage of the seasonal explosion in insects, seeds and fruits that come with our warmer temperatures of spring and summer in the United States and Canada.

WHERE AND WHEN: Look for swallows fluttering gracefully low over a pond when they first arrive. Evidently, that’s where the most bugs congregate during cool days in early spring. Look for them on the Yakima Greenway ponds or over the Yakima River. As the temperature warms, the swallows fly ever higher. Sometime in April they return to their nesting habitat about marshes, in woodlands along the Yakima River, and into the lower Cascades (as in the Wenas Valley or Nile areas).

Do not expect swallows before mid-April in the mountains, though, as spring arrives later there.

A pair of tree swallows perch atop a post in the Nile area off State Route 410, west of Naches, in May 2006. You can see more of Denny Granstrand’s bird photographs online at www.granstrand.net/gallery. (Photo courtesy DENNY GRANSTRAND)

CHOW TIME: Flying insects make up their entire diet. In cold weather, they may pluck insects from the surface of a pond or even resort to berries in emergencies.

SOCIAL LIFE: Tree swallows nest in holes in trees, stumps and bird houses. The popularity of bluebird box “trails,” like the one built and monitored by volunteers in the Wenas Valley, has also been a great boon to tree swallows, as these two groups of bird like the same type of box in the same habitat.

As this species arrives when nights still regularly fall below freezing, they wait until the weather warms (April in the Yakima Valley, May in the Cascades) to begin nesting. The female does most of the building of the nest, a cup of grass, roots and twigs, lined with feathers in the cavity. The female does almost all the incubation of the four to six eggs, for 14 to 15 days. The hatchlings are fed by both parents for a little over three weeks. Then the youngsters take their first flights.

As the summer progresses into fall, these swallows join others of their kind into flocks, sometimes numbering over 300, and head south. While in spring they hug close to water at low elevations, where the insects are most abundant, in fall many travel south in the mountains, sometimes above the Cascade crest.

Evidently, warm late summer winds drive lots of flying insects (especially winged ants but probably others) to high altitudes, making a mountain migration route an easy way to get a meal.

WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW: Mankind’s knowledge of migration took a long time to clarify. Aristotle’s word was law among educated men until late in the Middle Ages. He asserted the reason swallows and many other birds disappeared in fall was they hid themselves in the ground or underwater all winter in marshes. The belief in aquatic swallows persisted as late as the 18th century.

• Wildlife Moment, focusing on native wildlife, typically runs in Outdoors on the first Tuesday of every month, with the cooperation of the Yakima Valley Audubon Society.

XC ski-snowboard event set Saturday

A second cross-country ski and snowshoe jamboree — a repeat of the one put on in December by the Nordic Ski and Snowshoe Council — will be held Saturday at the White Pass Nordic Center.

The jamboree, for people who want to learn how to or simply improve their technique with cross-country skis or snowshoes, will run from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Because the Cascadians are helping finance the event, White Pass’ already-reduced $8 trail-pass price for jamboree participants will be cut by yet another $2 per participant, making passes just $6 (half the normal price).

For more information, call Ted Gamlem at 509-697-5051 or Mike Gunderson at 509-972-2615.

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Open house to focus on prescribed burns

Hoping to inform the public about why and when controlled burns will be used this year to minimize forest fuels on Wenatchee National Forest lands in the Cascade foothills west of Yakima, the Naches Ranger District will host a “prescribed burning” open house next Tuesday at the ranger station in Naches.

Fire specialists will be available at the event from 2 to 7 p.m. at the ranger station (10237 Highway 12) to explain the reasoning behind the prescribed burning process and answer the public’s questions.

Last year, smoke from one of the district’s largest-ever prescribed burning projects generated complaints and concerns from area residents and the Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency.

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Mule deer banquet planned for March 13

Live and silent auctions, raffles, games and a “brag board” will be among the attractions on Saturday, March 13, when the Yakima Chapter of the Mule Deer Foundation hold its 14th annual fundraising banquet at the Yakima Convention Center.

Among the prizes to be given away will be 10 rifles, a shotgun, a muzzleloader and a pistol, while kids’ auction items will receive a ticket for a chance to win a youth rifle.

Attendees are invited to bring photographs of their own successful hunts, regardless of the prey, to put up on the “brag board,” with all those bringing photos receiving a chance for a random prize drawing. (Photos will be returned at the end of the evening.)

Banquet tickets are $65 for a single (includes one yearly membership and one meal), $95 for a couple (one membership, two meals), and meal-only tickets for life members are $30 adults, $20 ages 13 to 17, and $15 for 12 and under. A “family pack” ($90) includes dinner for two adults and one membership, with each child ticket going for an additional $15 (ages 3 to 12) or $20 (13 to 17); the family pack must include at least one child.

For more information, call Robin Simmons at 509-653-2847 or Tara Mize at 509-653-2025.

Doors open at 4:30 p.m. with dinner starting at 6.

*****
Ellensburg shooters top button series

Jeff Mitchell of Ellensburg started the day off with the first of numerous 25×25 rounds Sunday as Ellensburg shooters captured four of five buttons in the ninth week of the Yakima Valley Sportsmen trap club’s 10-week Button Shoot at the Pomona range.

Mitchell and Ken Sanden took the two buttons in the men’s division, while Dave Thacker and Norm Baird took the buttons in the senior class. The long Yakima shooter to take a button was Dakotah Eims in the juniors.

With Mitchell, Ken Smith, Dale Klingele, Rick White and Tom Schmitt also posting 25-target rounds, Yakima’s score in the state Telephonic competition was 100×100.

This Saturday the lcub will hold a non-registered 50-bird shoot, with 50 16-yard, 50 handicap and 25 pairs of doubles. Cash payout will be on a modified Lewis system. Signup is at 9 a.m. with shooting at 10.

*****
BIRD ALERT

Perhaps the most regular species found at Hanford, it appears that the Say’s phoebe is also a pretty predictable insectivore (insect-eater) arriving on the last week of February for several years now. This week they did not disappoint, arriving on the Hanford site this past Monday.

Visitors to Whitcomb Island in Benton County were thrilled last week by the spectacular view of 2,000 snow geese flying overhead in the fog. The birders also observed Canada geese and some greater white-fronted geese, northern shrike, savannah sparrows, a whopping 10 golden-crowned sparrows and 24 other species.

Birders searching the Horse Heaven Hills were treated to quite a flight show as a mature golden eagle was being pursued by 10 common ravens. Also noted were rough-legged hawk, rock wren and lots of horned lark.

A morning hike turned up thousands of robins feasting on unpicked vineyard grapes and old apple trees at the south base of Rattlesnake Ridge near Wapato. There was a report of a lone turkey vulture observed gliding over South Naches Road in Naches.

Six Yakima Audubon members birded the McNary National Wildlife refuge and racked up a respectable 45 species, including 1,000 or more Canada geese, cackling geese, greater white-fronted geese, American widgeon, northern shovler,  green-wing teal, over 500 northern pintail, both common and Barrow’s goldeneye, bufflehead, wood duck, both lesser and greater scaup. They also noted three herring gulls and horned and western grebe.

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

— Kerry L. Turley

*****

AROUND AND ABOUT

NO TWIG IN MARCH: There won’t be a March meeting of the Trails and Wilderness Interest Group at the Naches Ranger Station. The next TWIG meeting at Naches will be April 6.

TRAIL CONDITIONS: With the recent warming trend and some periodic rain in the higher elevations, trail conditions aren’t too great in many areas. The North Fork Tieton and Pleasant Valley Loop trails have 20 inches and less of snow, and what’s there is very hard — OK for snowshoeing, not so great for cross-country skiers. According to groomers, though, grooming those trails would lead to a rapid meltoff.

The lack of snow at lower elevations, though, has most Sno-Parks void of any snow and most roads leading out of them bare. Because of the lack of snow, groomers have stopped grooming Spring Creek off State Route 410, Soup Creek, Rattlesnake and the Tieton Airstrip.

WINTER LOGGING: Winter logging operations are underway in the Wildcat area off Forest Service Road 1306, which will be cleared to its junction with the 1362 road. Users should pay particular attention to signs and truck traffic, especially during mid-week. The 1702 road is opened to four-wheel vehicle traffic only, while the Rock Creek Sno-Park has been moved to the upper Sno-Park location because of ongoing logging operations. The 1701 is open to motorized vehicles, but drivers should be watchful for logging truck traffic on the road.

*****
ON THE CALENDAR

TODAY: The Cascadians’ Tuesday group meets at 8 a.m. at the 40th Avenue Bi-Mart parking lot for carpooling to whatever hike or ski/snowshoe trek the trip leader has determined is a good one for weather and trail conditions. Come prepared with proper clothing, lunch and lots of water.

THURSDAY: The Cascadians’ Pokies group will go to the Central Washington University “Chimposium,” and will follow that with a walking tour of the campus. For meeting time and place, call Nancy Hein at 509-698-3547.

Sometimes in fishing, we don’t always catch the type of fish for which we are fishing. Or, a more grammatically incorrect way to say this is — we don’t always catch what we are fishing for.

Every now and again it happens. You drop your lure, bait or fly in the water with intentions of catching brand X, and a hungrier brand Y grabs it instead.

It happened to Bo Lybeck, a Selah fly fishing fanatic, a couple of weeks ago.

Lybeck was fishing in one of his favorite holes in the Yakima River above the Rosa Dam, when a nice fish hit his black sculpin fly. When he got the fish to shore he did a double take. The long, somewhat skinny fish looked nothing like the fat, colorful rainbows that inhabit the Yakima.

After snapping some quick photos, Lybeck sent the white and brown mottled fish back into the river, and then went to try to get some positive identification on what it was he had just caught.

Fishing buddies at Red’s Fly Shop figured the fish was a lake trout, but how could that be?  Lake trout, or Mackinaw as they are often called, are, well, lake trout. Actually, they aren’t really even trout. They are of the char family. But they almost always are caught in lakes.

After sending the photos to Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists Eric Anderson and John Easterbrooks, it was confirmed that the fish was in fact, a lake trout.

Turns out once every two or three years some angler will happen into a wayward Mackinaw that has been washed out of Cle Elum Reservoir during high irrigation releases and the fish ends up in the Yakima River. Normally they don’t make it down as far as the Yakima Canyon and most of the time they are very skinny because they have trouble adjusting to the fast water and can’t find enough to eat.

“Too bad our upper Yakima River catch and release regulation prevents anglers from harvesting these exotic char” Easterbrooks said. “We would really like to remove them from the river, but we can’t risk a misidentification and having an angler kill an ESA-listed bull trout.  The casual angler could have problems distinguishing between the two char species.”

Of course, bait and lure anglers will get hooked up with fish that they aren’t fishing for once in a while too. This is especially when using a worm for bait. It seems in fishing, pretty much anything that swims will bite a worm.

Like the time I was fishing with local guide Bob Barthlow in one of his favorite walleye spots on the Columbia. We had already caught several nice walleyes in the 5 to 10 pound range, when a fish hit my Spin-N-Glo walleye worm harness rig and immediately started peeling line off my reel. As the line sizzled off of the reel I just knew I had hooked the new state record walleye.

Wrong. After a battle of several minutes on the light walleye rod and reel, I finally was able to work a beautiful spring chinook salmon to the side of the boat. Now, I know that a salmon will bite a Spin-N-Glo, but why it would eat a six-inch long night crawler is beyond me. But it did.

Some times you never see what it is that you hook, but are sure that it is not the fish that you are trying to catch.

We were fishing for smallmouth bass on the lower Yakima one spring when I hooked something that took off back towards the Columbia and never did stop. I know it wasn’t a smallie. Catfish, maybe. Sturgeon, possibly. Salmon, probably, but not a bass.

And sometimes the thing you hook is not even a fish.

Good fishing buddy Doug Jewett figures he hooked a beaver while fishing for steelhead at the White Salmon a few years back. It was at night and whatever it was he hooked was not made of fins and gills,  because the beast he battled swam to shore, climbed out of the water, and trundled up the bank with Doug’s lighted lure blinking along as it went.

Then there was the guy from Texas I was fishing with up in Northern British Columbia a few years back who hooked a whale. Actually he hooked a salmon first, but a killer whale moved in, grabbed his salmon, and took off for the depths of the Pacific.

“All I could do is hold on,” the Texan drawled as he retold the story. “Dang thang took ma fish, but at least I’ll be able to tell ma kids someday that I actually fought a whale.”

That’s the fun of fishing. Most the time you actually catch what you are fishing for, but then there are those times when you just never know!  Like catching a lake trout in the Yakima River. That’s probably a once in a lifetime deal.

Audubon program to feature bats

A presentation on “Bats, Our Misunderstood Friends,” will be the focus of Wednesday’s Yakima Valley Audubon Society monthly program.

The 7 p.m. event at the Yakima Valley Arboretum, free and open to the public, will be presented by Ken Bano, a natural-resource specialist who has authored numerous articles and technical reports relating to ecological sciences. Bano will provide a basic understanding of bat biology and share his experience with the discovering of the largest-known maternity colony of bats in eastern Washington in a retired Hanford facility that was destined for demolition. Gano and his team studied the colony for two years, providing the U.S. Department of Energy with a recommendation that would preserve the colony.

Hunter ed classes coming up in March

Early signup is critical if you hope to get into either of two hunter education classes coming up next month in Selah.

The first one will be held March 8-13 at the Selah Civic Center, with the weekday classes running 6 to 9 p.m. and the Saturday finale running from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Advance registration is taking place at the Civic Center, with class size limited to the first 30 to sign up and no first-day-of-class registration. Fee is $5.

The second class will be two weeks later, March 22-27, with weeknight class sessions running from 6 to 9 p.m. and Saturday’s session lasting from 9 a.m. to noon. Class sessions will be at the Wakuwa Archery Club in Selah, but you have to preregister by calling Dave at 952-9005 or signing up on the list at Hammer’s Outdoor World in Union Gap. Fee is $5. The instructor also plans another class tentatively scheduled for late April. Watch this column for the announcement.

Birders shouldn’t miss ‘birdsong’ class

If you’re a birding enthusiast or have interest in becoming a birder, next week’s “Learn That Birdsong” class at the Yakima Area Arboretum’s Jewett Interpretive Center should be on your calendar.

The March 6 (Saturday) class will be presented by renowned local birding-guidebook author Andy Stepniewski and the Yakima Valley Audubon Society. The class will introduce students to the bird-song aspect of bird identification — recognizing birds by their songs — using slides of local birds and their recorded songs.

Following the 9 a.m. class session, the group will venture out for a short walk in the Arboretum to put the students’ new knowledge to practice. Bring binoculars for the outside session.

Cost for the class is $12 to Audubon members and $15 for non-members. Expect a two-hour lecture and a walk lasting 30 to 60 minutes. To register or for more information, call the Arboretum at 248-7337.

Horsemen to focus on access, permits

A presentation by Naches Ranger District spokesman Doug Jenkins will be the focal point of Wednesday’s membership meeting of the Backcountry Horsemen of Central Washington, set for 7 p.m. at Round Table Pizza (across from Fred Meyer) off 40th Avenue.

Jenkins will discuss the various permits available for trailhead access, including at Sno-Parks, and where each is applicable.

BHCW sponsors trail rides and activities such a campouts and trail-work projects. For more information, call Faye Bradford at 972-4707.

2nd snowshoe-XC ski event slated March 6

December’s cross-country ski and snowshoe jamboree put on by the Nordic Ski and Snowshoe Council was such a hit with the attendees — but was not all that well attended — that its organizers have decided to put on another one at the White Pass Nordic Center.

The next jamboree — at which people who want to learn how to cross-country ski or snowshoe, or simply improve their technique, at reduced trail-pass prices — will be set for March 6 (a week from Saturday), from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. The Cascadians are helping finance the event, thereby reducing White Pass’ already reduced $8 trail-pass price by another $2 per participant, making passes just $6 (half the normal price).

For more information, call Ted Gamlem at 509-697-5051 or Mike Gunderson at 509-972-2615.

Jorgensen, Eims top Button shooters

Kerry Jorgensen and Al Eims came away as men’s division button winners in Sunday’s eighth round of the Yakima Valley Sportsmen’s trap club 10-week Button Shoot at the Pomona range.

Sarah Phipps took the women’s division button, while Dale Hoffman and Tom Pratt took top honors in the seniors and Jake Switzer came away with the juniors’ button.

The Annie Oakley pot was split between Dale Hoffman and John Klingele, and Yakima’s score for the statewide Telephonic competition was 97×100.

All shooters are welcome, and shooting runs from 9:30 a.m. to noon each Sunday. Hearing and eye protection is required.

BIRD ALERT

Birding around noon at the south end of the Greenway turned up more birds than expected for local birding enthusiasts, who spotted around 150 yellow-rumped warblers, a couple dozen American robins, several red-winged blackbirds, a half dozen downy woodpeckers, an astounding 250 cedar waxwings, a black-capped chickadee, nine northern flickers, a Bewick’s wren, a spotted towhee, a white-throated sparrow, three white-crowned sparrows, six song sparrows, 80 dark-eyed juncos, a red-tailed hawk, an American kestrel, half a dozen mallards and three wood ducks. Not a bad list for a middle of the day urban walk.

Just a quarter-mile above the Canyon Road (S.R. 823) on the Selah Butte Trail, one local birder encountered a flock of approximately 300 gray-crowned rosy finches foraging in weedy vegetation near talus on south-facing slopes. That species, while widespread, is uncommon here and rarely seen. The experience was enhanced when an adult golden eagle soared over and a canyon wren chanted from the cliffs west of the river.

Other birds of note included a varied thrush spotted on south 26th avenue and a ring-billed duck mixed in with 14 mallards on the pond near Costco.

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

— Kerry L. Turley

AROUND AND ABOUT

SLAB CLEANUP: Several reputable off-roader groups  — Dust Dodgers, All Wheelers and ORV Trail Watch — are putting together a cleanup at the Slab, the Zillah trail system also known by some user groups as Ranks or Rankville. If you’re interested in taking part, thereby helping keep this ORV area open, e-mail Clay Graham at ceg@aworc.com. Future cleanups are also being planned for May 1 at the Beverly Dunes and July 24 at a number of trail circuits, including Sedge Ridge, Whites Ridge and Foundation Ridge.

FLY-FISHING WORKSHOP: Noted fly-tying expert and how-to fishing author Skip Morris will present a 31?2-hour workshop, “Tying and Fishing Flies for Trout Lakes,” on March 27 at the Yakima River Fly Shop in Cle Elum. Pre-registration fee is $35, or wait until the last minute and pay $45 at the door. Space is limited. Call the shop at 509-674-2144 to reserve a spot.

SPRINGER HOW-TO GUIDE: The March issue of Northwest Sportsman (nwsportsmanmag.com) will be a big one for anglers hoping to target some of that anticipated record return of spring chinook, with how-to info fishing the Lower Columbia, Cowlitz and Lewis rivers, including spec sheets on the top boat and bank rigs to use.

STURGEON CLOSURE: Sturgeon retention in the John Day pool of the mid-Columbia River will close beginning March 1, by which time state biologists project the sport catch target of 165 will have been reached. Catch-and-release fishing will continue. Sturgeon retention in the Bonneville pool closed on Sunday, the earliest closure ever.

COWLITZ STEELHEAD: A rule change on the Cowlitz River is allowing anglers to keep late-winter steelhead with a clipped right ventral fin and a healed scar at the location of the clipped fin, as those fish are surplus to broodstock needs.

RAZOR CLAM DIG: The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) has approved a razor-clam dig for this weekend, with Long Beach and Twin Harbors running on evening tides Friday through Monday, Copalis and Mocrocks open for evening digging Friday through Sunday and Kalaloch open Saturday and Sunday.

BEAR PERMITS: The WDFW is accepting applications through March 12 for spring black bear hunting permits, for which hunters must purchase a special permit application and a 2010 hunting license that includes bear as a species option. A drawing will be held in mid-March for 345 permits in western Washington and 185 permits on the east side of the state.

ON THE CALENDAR

TODAY: The Cascadians’ Tuesday group meets at 8 a.m. at the 40th Avenue Bi-Mart parking lot and heads out from there to whatever hike or ski/snowshoe trek the trip leader has figured out. Come prepared for anything, with proper clothing, lunch and lots of water.

WEDNESDAY: The Yakima Valley Audubon Society will lead a bird-watching walk beginning at 9 a.m. along the new Zirkle Path at Sarg Hubbard Park’s concert pond and over into the Yakima Area Arboretum, visiting the Sparrow Patch location before a return trek to Sarg Hubbard. Participants should contact trip leader Richard at 965-1134 or e-mail to rich712@aol.com. Parking will be at the lower parking lot.

THURSDAY: The Cascadians’ Pokies plan a snowshoe-hiking trip on the Round Mountain Road near Clear Lake, where the preview hikers found a mix of soft snow, ice and bare ground. Participants should call leaders Jackie and Jim Hertel for details, then meet at 9 a.m. at the 40th Avenue Bi-Mart parking lot. Participants will need to bring their own equipment, including trekking/ski poles, lunch and water. An alternate outing will be a hike in the Cowiche Canyon uplands to look for early-spring wildflowers. For meeting time and place on that one, call Eulalie Short at 469-9906.

SATURDAY: The Cascadians will host an easy hike for beginners, with the group to meet at 9 a.m. at the 40th Avenue Bi-Mart parking lot before heading out to hike the Oak Creek Road, a good opportunity to see bald eagles, sheep, elk and deer. Participants should call Claudia at 388-9307 to sign up, and bring lunch, water and camera.

SATURDAY: The Yakima Valley Audubon will host a birding trip to the McNary National Wildlife Refuge, with expectations of being able to study a variety of waterfowl, including geese, dabbling, and diving ducks at McNary Pool at the refuge at the height of waterfowl migration, as well as raptors, gulls and songbirds at a variety of locations in Benton County. Participants should call trip leader Bill at 965-5808 in advance, then meet at 7:30 a.m. at the Sears parking lot to the west of IHOP on Valley Mall Boulevard.

Buzz Ramsey turns 60 today, and though he looks two decades younger, that’s one of those benchmark years at which a man takes stock of his life.

Columbia Gorge-based fishing guru Buzz Ramsey will be one of the most popular guest speakers at this weekend’s Central Washington Sportsmen Show in Yakima. (Courtesy photo)

Not a chance.

For one thing, Ramsey has done what precious few people in this world get to do — make a living out of doing something he loved and would have done anyway, fishing, and passing along the little secrets to fishing success he has learned along the way.

And for another thing, it really wasn’t a choice Ramsey made when he left that union gig and took a 50 percent pay cut to go full time into the fishing industry. He had been in it full time since his adolescence — from the moment he woke up thinking about fishing and into those long nights when he couldn’t sleep for, well, thinking about fishing.

“I had the fishing bug so bad I couldn’t think about anything else. Those early years, I was nutso about fishing,” says Ramsey, whose “Steelhead Presentations That Work” seminars at this weekend’s Central Washington Sportsmen Show will mark his first visit to the SunDome event in a decade.

Those seminars — at 3 p.m. Friday at 2 p.m. Saturday — figure to be popular draws, too, considering Ramsey’s status as an icon in Northwest fishing circles. And that popularity isn’t just because all the fishing gear out there he has helped develop (as well as the many that bear his name), or his current status as brands manager for Granger-based Yakima Bait, one of the region’s tackle leaders.

It’s because the thing he does best — besides catching steelhead and salmon, something he learned the hard way, by trial and error — is teaching others how to do the same thing.

And it’s always come naturally, all the way back to when he was teaching community-college classes on steelhead fishing while still in his teens.

“They didn’t pay a lot, but I did it more because I loved it,” Ramsey says of teaching those early classes as a young man. “I developed an understanding of it, and because I had struggled figuring it out, how to catch them — the steelhead tributary thing — that I was able to convey to people what it was all about. I’ve always been very grounded in how to teach people how to fish, because of how much I struggled with it back then.”

Teaching others how to fish made him, in some ways, ahead of his time.

“Back then, at least in this (Pacific Northwest) area, there were just a few people — like Jim Conway (then host of the old TV show “Outdoor Sportsman”) — that were kind of recognized, but there just weren’t seminars then.

“The how-to thing was just absent in the market. If you went to a sporting goods show, there might be somebody there who could explain it to you, but there wasn’t all the Internet stuff and the people out there doing this kind of thing.”

Almost immediately after starting at Luhr Jensen & Sons at the age of 24, he began writing little how-to tips that would make customers more successful with the gear they purchased from the Hood River, Ore., tackle company.

“These weren’t just product-specific (tips), they were technique-specific,” Ramsey says. “If you can perpetuate technique, you can perpetuate product sales.”

And, of course, you can catch a lot of fish, like the two line-class record steelhead he pulled out of the Thompson River in British Columbia in 1984, the first one a 25-pound, 13-ouncer and then a 30-pound monster that further cemented his reputation as a freshwater angler nonpareil.

Decades as an on-camera personality/expert on countless fishing TV shows has made Ramsey such a recognizable guy in outdoor circles that his long-awaited return to the SunDome will come as a welcome addition for the dozens or perhaps hundreds of angling enthusiasts who will turn out for his presentations.

Maybe one or two will wish him belated happy birthday greetings. Just as long as they don’t sing it. Talking about fishing, and how to do it, that’s Buzz Ramsey’s tune.

As usual, the experts — the guys whose advice can help make better anglers and hunters of us all — will be the big draw at this weekend’s 21st annual Central Washington Sportsmen Show.

Northwest fishing icon and steelheader extraordinaire Buzz Ramsey (see story above) will return to the show for the first time in a decade, but he’ll be just one of many go-to gurus worth the trip to the SunDome.

Also on line are such luminaries as walleye guide (and former state record-holder) Kimo Gabriel, Shane Magnuson and Bob Barthlow talking about chinook tactics, fly-fishing expert Jim Teeny, Stew Waldrop on elk hunting, Steve Schultz on waterfowl and turkey hunting techniques, Gary Fairbanks on fly-casting and Tim Gavin, Paul Anderson, Norm Shively, Adam Koenig and the guys from Red’s Fly Shop providing the how-to’s at the show’s fly-tying theater.

Some of the other highlights — like the Northwest Big Game Display (which this year will feature “Mule Deer Legends of the Northwest”), the kids’ fishing pond and air rifle range, the casting pool (complete with a fly-casting competition) and the outdoor-cooking and horse-packing demonstrations — will be familiar to the outdoors enthusiasts who have been packing the SunDome for this show for the last two decades.

For something different, check out the “trailer-backing contest” to be held outside the SunDome at 1 p.m. Saturday. Sponsored by Bob Hall and KXDD radio, the contest will be a timed event through an obstacle course, with a $350 cash prize for the quickest time through the course.

For a full schedule of seminars and the rest of the attractions, go to www.shuylerproductions.com.

If you go
What: 21st annual Central Washington Sportsmen Show.
When: Friday through Sunday.
Where: Yakima SunDome.
How much: $8 adults, $4 ages  6 to 12 (under 6 free). Friday is Seniors Day, with $4 admission for ages 60 and up; a Sunday Family Day admission package will allow two adults and two children for $18. A $1-off coupon for Friday will be available in Thursday’s Herald-Republic.  
Hours: 1 to 8 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m. to  5 p.m. Sunday.
Early bird special: The first 150 people through the door each day receive a bag of goodies compliments of Hammer’s Outdoor World.

Fly fishers to hear about basin fish runs

A presentation on the history of salmon in the Yakima Basin — from their decline to the cooperative efforts designed to bring back the runs — will be the focal point of tonight’s 7 p.m.

meeting of the Yakima Fly Fishers at Bert’s Pub in Glenwood Square (5110 Tieton Avenue, Yakima).

Rebecca Wassell of the Mid-Columbia Fisheries Enhancement Group will be the presenter, with a PowerPoint presentation covering the various projects and entities working toward bringing fish runs back to historic levels, including opportunities for involvement by club members.

Yakima Fly Fishers meetings are always open to the public.

*****
Froehlich’s 24×25 tops 7th Button Shoot

Joel Froehlich broke 24 of 25 targets to capture the first men’s division button in last Sunday’s seventh round of the Yakima Valley Sportsmen trap club’s 10-week Button Shoot.

Bob Scheffelmaier took the second button in the men’s division, while Darrel Robertson and Don Seipel took the two buttons in the seniors and Kyle Malesich topped the juniors with a nice 23×25. Jody Taylor took the Annie Oakley competition.

All shooters are welcome, and hearing and eye protection is required. Shooting runs from 9:30 a.m. to noon.

*****
BIRD ALERT

American robins are being noted by the thousands near the Suntides golf course with an impressive 19,125 robins being counted in 100 minutes. Numbers are not nearly as impressive as in previous years, but it is fun none the less to see wave after wave of robins heading to their night roost.

Fort Simcoe State Park is the place to see the large and colorful Lewis’s woodpeckers, with more than 90 observed there last week.  There was also an abundance of spotted towhees throughout the brushy undercover of the park.

The marshes and ponds along Marion Drain Road south of Toppenish held an impressive amount of waterfowl including: over 200 Canada geese, three trumpeter swans, eighteen tundra swans and a Mute Swan, which is a very large all-white Eurasian “pond” swan and considered an invasive species to North America. There was also large numbers of mallards, northern pintails, American wigeon and four ring-necked ducks.

A small farm pond between Outlook and Granger held lots of mallards, a couple of killdeer and a lone dunlin. Dunlins are sparrow-sized sandpipers with long, black, droopy bills and relatively long, black legs. In the nonbreeding season, they are plain gray-brown on their upper parts and white below.

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

— Kerry L. Turley

*****
AROUND AND ABOUT

BOATING SAFETY: The Coast Guard Auxiliary will have a booth at this weekend’s Central Washington Sportsmen Show at the SunDome, where volunteers will be selling at a $5 discount the text for the state’s boating safety class (“About Boating Safely”), which is scheduled for March 19-20 at the Mount Olive Lutheran Church. For information about the class or to register, check out the booth at the show or call Jeanne Cook at 678-4268.

STURGEON CLOSURE: After this Saturday, Sturgeon anglers will no longer be able to retain any sturgeon caught on the Columbia River and its tributaries between the Bonneville and The Dalles dams. The closure will continue through 2010.

WOMEN AND WATERFOWL: Washington Outdoor Women, which annually puts on a weekend workshop to introduce women to hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities, will host a one-day “introduction to waterfowling” on March 27.

The $85 registration includes instruction, equipment, shotguns, ammunition, clays, a light breakfast and hearty lunch and a WOW shirt. The workshop takes place on a private hunt club in the Snohomish Valley, near Monroe. You must be 18 to participate.

Also on the WOW calendar are the Sept. 17-19 annual workshop and a shotgun/clays workshop at a date yet to be determined in May or June. For more, go to www.washingtonoutdoorwomen.org.

*****
ON THE CALENDAR

TODAY: The Cascadians’ Tuesday trekkers will meet at 8 a.m. at the 40th Avenue Bi-Mart parking lot and head out to whatever hike/ski/snowshoe trip the trip leader has decided upon. Come prepared for anything.

THURSDAY: The Cascadians’ Pokies will snowshoe/ski in the Bumping Lake area. For meeting time and place, call Virginia Foley at 388-5575. An alternative outing for non-snow lovers will be a hike along the north end of the Greenway. For that outing, call Jeanne Crawford at 966-8608.

FEB. 24: The Cascadians’ monthly meeting a week from Wednesday at the Living Care Center’s Meyer Auditorium will include a demonstration of the club-sponsored yakimaoutdoors.net site, with longtime Cascadians hiking guru Ted Gamlem — one of the pioneers of the interactive site — giving a demonstration (at about 8 p.m.,

following a short business meeting) of some of the site’s features, along with its new database full of outings that folks can check out.

MAY 1: That’s the date the Kittitas Environmental Education Network and its partners have set for the 11th annual Get Intimate With the Shrub Steppe event at the Yakima River Canyon’s Umtanum Recreation Area and Helen McCabe Park. Just a note: This year the event’s most popular field trip, “Snake Sneaking” led by snake/gila monster expert Dan Beck, will be by pre-registration only.

Pneumonia has spread across river, but disease appears less severe ||

YAKIMA, Wash. — The bighorn sheep pneumonia outbreak in the Yakima River Canyon has gotten worse in one way while, in another, is turning out to be not nearly as bad as it might have been.

The outbreak didn’t remain confined to the west side of the Yakima River as state wildlife biologists had hoped it might, with just a very small number — “one or two,” said one expert — of infected bighorns found in recent weeks on the Selah Butte side east of the river.

But while the majority of bighorns west of the Yakima River and north of Umtanum Creek have exhibited pneumonia symptoms, a massive dieoff similar to the one that happened 15 years ago in Hells Canyon simply hasn’t happened.

“This kind of disease outbreak among bighorns has occurred periodically throughout the West,” said Donnie Martorello, who oversees bighorn sheep management for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “There seem to be two scenarios that play out.

“You have ones like Hells Canyon where you have a pneumonia outbreak that’s swift and very lethal, and before you can do anything the sheep are just dying left and right. In the other one … you may have a large percentage of your sheep with acute pneumonia, you lose 10 to 20 percent and the rest kind of shake it off. They have the bugs, the pathogens, but they survive the outbreaks.

“I believe we’re in the latter scenario.”

Eighteen bighorns in the Yakima River Canyon are known to have died since the outbreak began — 15 of them in one square mile north of Umtanum Creek, most of them near the railroad tracks. But that’s only a small percentage of the number of sheep that would have come in contact with the disease, with about 165 sheep on the west side of the Yakima River and about 85 on the Selah Butte side.

State wildlife officials expect to decide in the next day or two which of three basic approaches they will take to deal with the outbreak — to let it run its natural course;  to kill each of the animals in the impacted areas, thus removing the possibility of the disease spreading to other herds; or remove only the animals that still have showing signs of the disease.

The surviving animals might still pass the lethal pathogens on to each ensuing lamb crop, perhaps depressing the herd for generations — or they might not. The science in this area is still evolving, and Yakima-based WDFW biologist Jeff Bernatowicz, who has been following the breakout since it was first documented in early December, said other states have already had experience in dealing with circumstances just like this one.

Veterinarians and wildlife biologists from Colorado and Montana, he said, now believe the animals that have recovered from the initial breakout are no longer spreading — or “shedding” — the bacteria.

“The best analogy,” Bernatowicz said, “would be if people get the flu, once you’re over it and recovering, you’re no longer spreading the germs to somebody else. But there’s a certain percentage of people who, for whatever reason, maybe their systems aren’t as strong as other people, they … (remain sick and) continue to shed the bacteria.”

Unhealthy ewes, Bernatowicz said, “probably aren’t going to have lambs, or aren’t going to have healthy lambs. Only the ones that recovered will have lambs, and then you still have the minority of ewes and rams that are still carriers that will continue to shed the bacteria, and … they’ll affect the lambs that are born.”

Bernatowicz said that in previous outbreaks, three times in Colorado and once in British Columbia, officials have culled from the herd the animals that were still exhibiting symptoms of the disease two months or more after the initial outbreak.

“They try to clean out the ones that have not recovered, get them out of the population,” he said. “And from what they’ve told us, that has worked really well at increasing the lamb survival.”

Waterfalls on display along trails at Gorge’s Beacon Rock ||

LONGVIEW, Wash. — There’s a lot more to Beacon Rock State Park than the 848-foot-tall pinnacle of basalt it’s named after.

Yes, that towering rock is a landmark in the Columbia River Gorge, some 30 miles upstream from Vancouver.

But 5,100-acre Beacon Rock State Park also includes several stunning waterfalls and a couple of ridges that are more than 2,300 feet high, all served by a network of hiking trails. Even if you’ve hiked there before, several new routes built in the past few years invite exploration.

Winter is a good time for a hike in the park. The falls gush harder during the rainy season, the trails are typically snow free and the crowds are thinner.

Winter rains make Rodney Falls at Beacon Rock State Park on the Columbia River even more impressive. (Tom Paulu/The (Longview) Daily News)

Park ranger Vivian McNeil said park trails are popular with those getting in shape for longer trips later in the season.

Beacon Rock park is served by two parking lots. For hikers, the main lot a short distance off Highway 14 is most attractive. In winter months, the quarter-mile-long access road to the parking lot is closed to motorized vehicles Mondays through Thursdays, though hikers may park near the base of Beacon Rock and stroll up the road.

A rock summit called Little Beacon Rock (more about that later) looms above the trailhead. From the trailhead, which is about 400 feet above sea level, the wide trail heads into the woods for a half mile or so, then crosses under twin power lines. The open gash in the forest for the power lines offers a view down to Bonneville Dam, five miles distant.

The trail heads back into the mossy woods. From the parking lot, it’s 11/4 miles, with a 450-foot elevation gain, to the twin torrents of Hardy Falls and Rodney Falls. A side trail leads down to a viewpoint over the top of Hardy Falls, which tumbles over a cliff about 100 feet below. There’s no official trail to the bottom of the 90-foot-tall Hardy Falls, but it’s possible to reach them by scrambling down the hill. With the dropoffs, venturing off the main trail isn’t a good idea for small children.

A few yards farther up the trail is the much more accessible Rodney Falls. The trail crosses below the falls’ major step on a very sturdy wooden bridge. Rodney Falls descends about 80 feet.

The upper part of the falls foams through a chasm in the rock called the Punchbowl. A side trail cut into the cliff leads to the edge of the Punchbowl, which would be a good place to cool off with spray on a hot day.

The waterfalls make a good turning-around point for a short hike, but there are plenty of opportunities for additional trekking.

One of the high points of Beacon Rock State Park is Hamilton Mountain, elevation 2,438 feet. To get there, keep going past Rodney Falls.

The trail soon forks, with both directions eventually leading to Hamilton Mountain.

The shorter — and steeper — part of the loop goes to the right. It climbs sharply, with steps cut into the rock in places. The trail winds through rocky cliffs, with dropoffs here and there. On a recent hike, the upper parts of the trail were covered by 2 to 3 inches of fresh snow and bathed in fog.

The summit is something of an anti-climax, a flat expanse with heavy brush blocking the views in some directions. However, there’s a good view upriver to Table Mountain and, on clear days, across the Columbia to waterfalls dropping over Oregon cliffs.

From the summit, either retrace your steep steps back down or continue ahead down the more gradually sloping ridge top for a mile to a saddle where four trails convene.

Major trail junctions like this are well-marked with signs pointing the way back to the parking lot. Maps are displayed behind glass, too, though some are too waterlogged to be useful.

From the saddle, the route joins a network of old logging roads where horses and mountain bikes are allowed. Or take “Don’s Trail,” a hiker-only alternative.

On the way back, after you’ve once again passed the waterfalls, yet another trail offers a different twist.

The unmarked but hard-to-miss trail to Little Beacon Rock starts by a bench under the power lines. That trail eventually leads through a jumble of boulders to Little Beacon Rock, which is only a few hundred feet shorter than its bigger twin.

Past Little Beacon Rock, the trail descends to the campground, which is closed in winter. The road leads back to where you started.

The trail between the campground and Little Beacon Rock is ADA accessible.

The entire loop to Hamilton Mountain and back is 8 miles.

— Tom Paulu/The (Longview) Daily News

If You Go …

What: Beacon Rock State Park.

Where: At milepost 35 on Highway 14, west of Stevenson and Bonneville Dam.

How to get there: Follow Highway 97 to the junction with Highway 14 and follow 14 west.

Of note: A separate parking lot off of Kueffler Road serves the old logging roads that now are trails open to mountain bikers and horseback riders. A trail finished last year makes a steep jaunt over the top of Hardy Ridge, which is actually higher than Hamilton Mountain. Yet another trail is too new to be on maps.

For more: Detailed information on Rodney and Hardy falls can be found at www.waterfallsnorthwest.com. To make sense of the trail maze, see a map posted at www.portlandhikers.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2331

YAKIMA, Wash. — When it comes to trying new recipes for the game and fish I get, I have the greatest intentions in the world. In fact, right now, in my office I have a stack of magazines you couldn’t jump over. They’ve been collecting for months because each one contains a recipe that, when I read it, made me think I’d really like to try it sometime. So into the “recipe stack” it went.

You know how it goes with good intentions. I’ve not cooked up one of the recipes yet, and the stack of publications just continues to grow.

If nothing else, I should go through and at least tear the different recipes out and put them in a folder or something. Then this mountain of magazines could go to the recycling bin and out of my office.

But I can’t quite find the time to do even that, let alone get motivated enough to actually try one or two of these delicious-sounding concoctions for duck, pheasant, walleye and steelhead.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to fix a dish such as Venison Bourguignon? Even I peruse the recipe, my mouth starts to water and I think this would be a great way to fix up a couple of the deer roasts in the freezer from the fat buck I shot in Montana last fall.

Especially when it’s described as “absolutely delicious and tender,” and “one your hunting club will enjoy.”

Which, of course, makes me think about how sad it is I don’t belong to a hunting club.

Am I not good enough? Are all my buddies in a club and they just haven’t told me? Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be in a club of some kind. I love to hunt, so why can’t I be in a hunting club?

But I digress.

In this same publication pulled randomly from its precarious perch on the pile of publications, there are several other great sounding recipes including Grilled Salmon Pacifica,  Fillet of Dover Sole Arian, and Blackened Redfish.

Mmmm, they sound good enough to eat.

Also among the many recipes in this southern magazine is (those of you with squeamish stomachs might want to just skip over this one) a recipe for Squirrel Head Stew. Pardon me while I erp.

I kid you not. The recipe calls for 20 to 30 squirrel heads along with some onions, potatoes, garlic, parsley and powdered sassafras leaf. Throw all the ingredients into a pot and cook until the potatoes are done. It doesn’t say anything about the squirrel heads but I would assume if the spuds are cooked so are the rest of the ingredients.

Turns out these recipes come from some famous chef in New Orleans. Now, I have been to New Orleans and have eaten in many fine restaurants there, but never have I seen on the menu anything that included squirrel heads, or any other parts of a squirrel for that matter.

I have found and tried many other unusual menu items in that great city, including ostrich, alligator, rattlesnake, turtle, frog, crawdads, and snails, to name a few. So, those Cajuns will cook and eat just about anything. But I think I would draw the line on small animal heads.

Besides the fact that I have not shot 20 to 30 squirrels in all of my life, and wouldn’t know where to get that many squirrels if I wanted them, the chances of me cooking up such a stew is wildly remote.

Even if I was lost in some remote wilderness and I was starving and all there was to eat was squirrels, I believe I could find several other parts of the little animal I would prefer to eat over the heads.

Anyway, in my stack of magazines are more ways than you can imagine to cook a goose, a moose and everything in between. If you are looking for a special recipe, give me a shout, because I probably have it.

And, if you happen to have some squirrel pieces and parts you were wondering what to do with, I can help you there, too. Just don’t invite me over to partake in it. Even if it means I might get to join your hunting club. Because I will most likely pass.

• 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.