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