Sam Hill

1 week ago | sfgate.com | Sam Hill

“There is no funding available to replace the bridge at this point,” Mitchell wrote. “Years of deferred preservation work due to limited preservation funding resulted in the updated weight restrictions and now the indefinite closure.”According to a June 2024 report from the department, approximately 8.1 million square feet of steel on state-owned bridges was either due or past due for painting, a 22.7% increase from 2023.

1 week ago | sfgate.com | Sam Hill

In early March, a 30-year-old female skier was injured in Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park while skiing Panorama Point at an elevation of about 6,000 feet, and later rescued by a team of park rangers and Mount Rainier Nordic Patrol volunteers. On the same day, a 62-year-old male snowshoer sustained injuries at around 9,600 feet while trekking alone toward Camp Muir. Two climbing rangers endured winds exceeding 60 mph and freezing temperatures while rescuing the man as the sun went down.

1 week ago | sanluisobispo.com | Sam Hill

Grizzly bears roamed the North Cascades region for thousands of years, digging for roots and wild berries, occasionally hunting small mammals and keeping the alpine ecosystem balanced. It's been nearly 30 years since the last confirmed grizzly bear sighting in the U.S. portion of the mountain range, though. In the 19th and 20th centuries, settlers moving west hunted the region's population, leaving it hanging by a thread.

1 week ago | sfgate.com | Sam Hill

After decades of efforts to get a grizzly reintroduction plan rolling, a big announcement came in 2024: Grizzly bears were coming back to the North Cascades. The National Park Service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service released a joint plan to move up to seven grizzly bears annually from Canada or the Rockies to a remote portion of the North Cascades in the U.S., with the goal of establishing a population of 25 bears.

2 weeks ago | sfgate.com | Sam Hill

Ice Peaks was meant to be an alpine sanctuary. In the 1930s, the National Park Service was eyeing this unbroken corridor of glaciated Cascade mountains, deep valleys carved by wild rivers and dense forests stretching over hundreds of miles for national park status.