The daily Astorian., April 15, 2019, Page A7, Image 7

A7
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, APRIL 15, 2019
Trails: Future plans envision a network of trails down into Seaside
Continued from Page A1
Clatsop County initiated
upgrades at the parking lot
and access to the trails.
Local forestry giant
GreenWood Resources pro-
vided access and help “at
every stage,” said organizer
Steven Blakesley of Arch
Cape.
The cyclists’ goal will
be to reach the top of Twin
Peaks at an elevation of
between 1,500 and 1,600
feet, “where you can see
the whole coastline up to
the north,” Chris Quacken-
bush, the operations direc-
tor, said.
Future plans envision a
network of trails from Twin
Peaks down into Seaside.
The trails could empty out
near the new school campus
in the Southeast Hills.
The hardest paths will be
at the top of the mountain,
he added, with an interme-
diate trail in the middle and
a beginner trail at the bot-
tom to the parking lot.
Forester David Dough-
erty,
of
GreenWood
Resources, joined volun-
teers with shovels, chain-
saws and brush cutters.
“We’re working together
to make sure we meet a cer-
tain set of standards, reduc-
ing sedimentation, trying to
keep everything in its natu-
ral form to last and be sus-
tainable, to have a good col-
laborative process,” he said.
The Northwest Trail
Alliance, based in Portland,
provides insurance and acts
as the North Coast Trail
Alliance’s fi scal agent.
Northwest Trail Alli-
ance president Bob Lessard
described the enthusiasm
for the new trails.
“People in Portland are
incredibly excited about
this,” Lessard said. “There’s
nowhere else that I know of
in Oregon where you can
ride and see the ocean.”
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
Operations director Chris Quackenbush provides instructions for the clearing.
Camp Rilea: This spring has been a soft opening for Starbase’s academy
Continued from Page A1
The state paid more than
$400,000 to buy the school-
house and surrounding
12 acres of fi eld, wedged
between the eastern edge
of Camp Rilea and the Fort
to Sea Trail on the Clatsop
Plains. The Seventh-d ay
Adventists had acquired
the property and opened
a school in 1980 halfway
between churches in Astoria
and Seaside, taking in stu-
dents from the fi rst through
eighth grades.
Greg Kabanuk put sev-
eral of his children through
the school, served as a board
member and still lives in
an apartment of the school-
house as a caretaker. Kaba-
nuk has resigned himself
to the sale, which he said
was decided by the church’s
regional leaders in Glad-
stone and is still a sore spot
for locals.
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
From left to right, Micalynn Rowton, Amadeus Stowers and
Aaliayah Kost learn about the weight of air Thursday at Camp
Rilea using pumped-up and defl ated marshmallows.
“It was not our decision,”
he said . “We did not support
the decision. The local pop-
ulation wanted to reopen it
as a school.”
The state military’s pur-
chase of the campus lined
up with an expansion of
Starbase, short for Science
and Technology Acade-
mies Reinforcing Basic Avi-
ation and Space Explora-
tion. The program started in
1991 through a grant from
the Kellogg Foundation and
was later included in federal
appropriations. There are
fewer than 70 Starbase cam-
puses nationwide, including
two at airbases in Portland
and Klamath Falls .
“It took me a few years to
get the funding approved,”
said Denise Kortes, state
director of Starbase.
Starbase’s mission is to
get fi fth-graders interested
in technology-based careers.
Classes from around Clatsop
County have been coming
for fi ve hours once a week
to Camp Rilea. Two feder-
ally funded, state-employed
teachers take them through
a series of science experi-
ments and technology proj-
ects spread over fi ve weeks.
The classrooms are
equipped with iPads, Lego
interactive white boards,
Lego robotics kids, GPS
units, a full computer lab
with computer-aided draft-
ing software and other tech-
nological resources beyond
the funding capabilities of
local school districts.
“We do some labs, but
nothing like the resources
these guys have,” said
Glenn Stelson, a fi fth-grade
teacher at Warrenton Grade
School whose class was at
Camp Rilea on Thursday.
Camp Rilea was chosen
as a new Starbase in part
because students around
the county are considered
low-income.
“We’ve
had
entire
(classes) come here who
have never touched an
iPad,” said Jeremy Hand, an
instructor with the program.
Kids work in teams and
aren’t tested or graded.
Aside from short lectures,
Starbase’s teachers largely
let students experiment with
solving hypotheses and get
creative with the program’s
technology, much of which
they wouldn’t be able to
access anywhere else in the
county, Hand said.
“It’s mostly hands-on —
90 percent hands-on and 10
percent lectures,” he said.
“The kids seem to get more
from it when they get to
experiment. It’s just letting
them have it.”
This spring has been a
soft opening for Starbase’s
new academy. The pro-
gram is planning an aero-
nautics camp in the summer
and a full slate of fi fth-grade
classes in the fall, along
with after-school programs
for middle schoolers.
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