Outdoors

Washington’s top wildlife officials are set to meet this week.

GIFFORD PINCHOT NATIONAL FOREST – Craving a novel Evergreen State adventure this summer? Saddle up your bike and ride the Loowit Tier, a 197-mile mountain bike route in the state’s southern Cascades range that was unveiled to the public on Wednesday.

BILLINGS – Want to see two of the largest land-based predators in North America in the wild?

Chris Donley loves fry plant trout.

In the months after she claimed a silver medal in sport climbing at the Paris Olympics, Brooke Raboutou returned to the place where she had once competed as a child prodigy: Arco, Italy. Just outside of town, Raboutou set her sights on a sheet of rock called Excalibur, a steep and powerful 40-foot route just two other climbers had ever solved.

For two years, I’ve been in landscaping limbo, unable to plant a garden as we’ve been busy building a house. This has served as an emotional rehabilitation period during which my memories of horticulture carnage have been erased or replaced with revisionist history in which I recall only the four delicious asparagus I harvested and that year the anonymous tree produced dozens of delightful plums.

Fly fishing

A group of dunlin hangs by the shore of Swanson Lake in Lincoln County in this April photo by Kim Thorburn. The shorebirds breed in the Arctic and make stops at nutrient-rich alkaline lakes, wetlands and potholes in the intermountain West on their way north in the spring.

Washington fisheries officials want brook trout out of a creek in Pend Oreille County to make more room for native westslope cutthroats.

Several fishing and boating access sites in the Idaho Panhandle will be closed briefly this month for improvements.

SEATTLE – Just in time for the summer tourist season, the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park will reopen Thursday.

Washington’s annual northern pikeminnow reward fishery on the Columbia and Snake rivers opened on Thursday, offering anglers a chance to bring home cash for catching the predatory species.

CLINTON, Mont. – The Rock Creek Fisherman’s Mercantile has anything an angler might want. Cold beer, fresh flies, tippett, leader, other miscellany that’s easy to leave at home. It’s the perfect store in the perfect spot – right off the interstate and at the opening of a canyon full of fish and possibility.

In 2024 the peak flow on the Shields River in Park County was on Sept. 19 – not during spring runoff – following a heavy fall rainstorm that boosted flows to 1,300 cubic feet per second.

Anglers will get a crack at catching spring chinook from the lower Snake River in Washington, but the opportunity will be limited to two days a week.

Fly fishing

On the northwestern edge of the island of Oahu, a dirt road meanders along the coast like a ribbon of red soil and rock, dipping toward the ocean, spreading out like a fine net of trail between the rubbery alien flora of the island.

Washington hunters and anglers are preparing to pay more for licenses after a pair of bills that increase fees cleared the Legislature in its closing days last week.

A pileated woodpecker hangs out on a log in the Deep Creek area in this photo by Melanie Williams.