WHISTLER, B.C. -- This 13-year-old kid looking like Mad Max in full pads has just whistled by your ear, so you step a bit more away from the trail and look up again at the 10-foot rock face on the A-Line trail. Rider after rider, one after the other, is dropping off the rock as if it were nothing, like it was just a snack of sharp nails before a breakfast of rusty bolts.
It feels like you're stuck between the frames of a "New World Disorder" mountain-biking video.
By Greg Johnston | August 26, 2004
Short Trips
North Pend Oreille County is like a small world unto itself. In fact, that part of the county is so special that the main thoroughfare, state Route 31, is designated as a scenic byway.
The mighty Pend Oreille River, which slices through the Selkirk Mountains into Canada at the county's northern boundary -- one of only a few rivers in the continental United States that flow north -- is by far the most dominant feature of the region.
By Jeff Larsen | August 26, 2004
PORT ANGELES For a warm-up or postmortem to a tide-pooling trip, visit the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary's new Olympic Discovery Center here, next to the Victoria Ferry terminal.
The $430,000 center designed by Bainbridge Island-based BIOS, an aquarium and exhibit designer whose other projects include the Seattle Aquarium and the Oregon Coast Aquarium, is likely the slickest 800 square feet in Port Angeles. It opened last month.
By Jim Downing | August 26, 2004
Hike of the Week
I can't think of a better place to be confused than in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Take a recent hike to Lake Lillian, for example. Lake Lillian is a hikers' favorite, but if you have not been there before, you may end up somewhere else. Of course, being lost and being confused are two different things. If you can find your way back to the car, you are not lost, only confused. If you cannot get back to your car, you are lost.
By Karen Sykes | August 26, 2004
JOYCE, Clallam County On a cloudy summer morning, a gray whale and her calf cruise around the small bay to the west of Tongue Point, spouting every few minutes, just a few dozen yards offshore. Two instructors with the Olympic Park Institute are at the Tongue Point tide pools with three families on the last day of a weeklong field course.
By Jim Downing | August 26, 2004
ToursFor guided tours of the pools, you can contact Port Angeles-based Olympic Park Institute, which runs weekend and weeklong courses for school groups and families. Olympic Park Institute site or 800-775-3720.
Field guides
A good tide-pool field guide can help you figure out what you're looking at. These three get excellent reviews:
"The Beachcomber's Guide to Seashore Life in the Pacific Northwest" by J. Duane Sept. Harbour Publishing, 1999
August 26, 2004
Take a Walk
Location: Maple Falls, Whatcom County.
Length: Several miles of trails.
Level of difficulty: Level-to-moderate dirt/gravel trails.
By Cathy McDonald | August 26, 2004
