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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 5, 2020)
The Nugget Vol. XLIII No. 32 P OSTAL CUSTOMER News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon www.NuggetNews.com Wednesday, August 5, 2020 New Peterson Ridge Trailhead dedicated By Sue Stafford Correspondent Peterson Ridge Trail, a popular destination for cyclists, hikers and runners across the Pacific Northwest, has a new trailhead. It took a concerted col- laborative effort to get a project approved, funded, designed, and to build the new 25-space parking lot with restrooms and a soon- to-be-completed kiosk for trail information and maps. The old trailhead, located on the south side of Sisters off Elm Street and Tyee Drive, has for a long time been inadequate to keep up with the popularity of the PRT. According to Sisters Trails Alliance member Gary Guttormsen, <It didn9t take long for the Sisters Trails Alliance, the Forest Service, and the City to start getting complaints from the residents on Tyee adja- cent to the trailhead parking area.= He went on to say, <The complaints were justi- fied because trailhead users started parking their vehicles wherever they could find room, often on the lawns of neighboring houses. Also, folks would park illegally on the undeveloped private PRE-SORTED STANDARD ECRWSS U.S. POSTAGE PAID Sisters, OR Permit No. 15 Schools will be online for six weeks By Charlie Kanzig Correspondent completion. Adam and Jana Novotny of Buck Run were instrumental in organizing In a letter shared with school district staff and families dated July 30, Superintendent Curtiss Scholl announced that school will be conducted under Comprehensive Distance Learning (CDL) model for the first six weeks of the 2020-21 school year, based on health metrics in Deschutes County. Scholl9s announcement came just two days after Governor Kate Brown9s press conference which outlined the latest state and county health guidelines that are required to allow in-person education. School districts throughout the state have made similar decisions and announcements since Brown9s press confer- ence, including Bend-La Pine School District, which additionally made the deci- sion to push its start date to September 14 in order to give See TRAILHEAD on page 6 See SCHOOL on page 16 PHOTO BY SUE STAFFORD Longtime trails advocate Gary Guttormsen was the symbolic first person across the threshold of the new Peterson Ridge Trailhead. property on the north side of the street. A huge issue (was) folks relieving themselves out in the forest closest to the trailhead and within view of the houses! Not a pretty picture.= It took many hands to do the groundwork to get the project from an idea to SAR teams recover body of climber Battling invasive weeds in Sisters Search and Rescue teams from across the region coor- dinated last Saturday to recover the body of a climber who fell to his death on Mt. Jefferson last week. According to Jefferson County Sheriff Jim Atkins, on Saturday, July 25, a group of experienced mountain climb- ers were traversing a glacier on the east side of Mount Jef- ferson. One of the climbers, David Freepons, 65, from Kennewick, Washington, slipped and fell. Freepons, who had decades of expe- rience, was unable to stop his descent. He fell several hundred feet downhill. His climbing companions found him dead. Due to hazardous There is a weed among us, and we need to be on the lookout for it because, left to its own devices, it will take over our fields, gardens, pub- lic rights-of way, and stream beds. Knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) fools some people because it looks like a wild- flower 4 but <wild= is the operative word. When the flowers of the weed are through blooming, which is about this time of the summer, they form fluffy white seed heads that blow in the wind, leading to approxi- mately five million acres in the U.S. infested with knap- weed. These groups of weeds (there are seven varieties) are highly competitive and Inside... conditions, distance, and the inability to safely move Freepons to a Life Flight heli- copter9s location, personnel returned to the airport. In the early morning hours of Saturday, August 1, expert mountain climbers from several counties recovered Freepons9 body from Mt. Jefferson. Sheriff Atkins reported that the recovery team started hiking into the remote wil- derness location on Friday afternoon, hiking approxi- mately 15 miles and climb- ing Mt. Jefferson until about 10 p.m. They spent the night on the mountain and began their day at 3 a.m. preparing See RECOVERY on page 22 By Sue Stafford Correspondent PHOTO BY MATT LAVIN Don’t let appearances fool you, Knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) is a destructive noxious weed... and it’s illegal to allow it to proliferate. invasive, crowding out native plants. They create havoc on Western rangeland and invade pastures and fields in the Midwest and Eastern states. See KNAPWEED on page 22 Letters/Weather ............... 2 Announcements ................ 8 Sisters Naturalist .............. 9 Bunkhouse Chronicle .......15 Classifieds .................. 19-21 Meetings .......................... 3 Entertainment .................. 9 Artisan Showcase ........11-14 Crossword .......................18 Real Estate .................21-24