OUTSIDE
East Oregonian
Page 8C
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Bryce Mumford wins 200-mile Iditarod qualifi er
What lies
beneath
the sea
S
Photo by Ellen Morris Bishop
Brett Bruggeman, 46, of Great Falls, Montana, and his team race from the starting line in a heavy snow for the Eagle Cap
Extreme 200-mile event. Bruggeman, a two-time winner of the event, took second place in the 2017 event, fi nishing one
minute behind Bryce Mumford of Preston, Idaho, who fi nished the course in 35 hours and 35 minutes.
Mushers fi ght poor weather
— on and off ECX course
Ice coated most of the
route; some struggled
just getting to the event
By ELLEN MORRIS BISHOP
For The Chieftain
T
he 13th annual Eagle
Cap Extreme brought
24 mushers to Wallowa
County — 10 to run the
200 mile, Iditarod-qualifi er
course, six for the 100-mile
race, six for the two-day
62-mile POT race, and two entrants in the
Junior’s race for mushers under the age of
18.
Just getting to the race was an adven-
ture. Snow, freezing rain, and closed roads
made the mushers prove their mettle just
to reach the starting line.
Although race conditions were
predicted to be ideal, the weather’s turn for
the worse on Tuesday coated much of the
course with ice.
Biting winds with hurricane-force
gusts built deep drifts, obscuring the
trail and forcing dogs to fl ounder in deep
snow. Mushers rated the course extremely
challenging.
“I learned,” said musher Gabe Dunham,
“why they call it the Eagle Cap Extreme.”
The premier 200-mile event winner
was 36-year-old musher Bryce Mumford
of Preston, Idaho, with a time of 35
hours and 35 minutes on the icy, drifted
course. Mumford won the red-lantern last
year — the musher’s traditional award for
last place.
Photo by Ellen Morris Bishop
Bryce Mumford, 36, of Preston, Idaho, and his team cross the fi nish line in a
time of 35 hours and 35 minutes in the 200-mile Iditarod-qualifi er event of the
Eagle Cap Extreme.
Double Arrow Clinic Veterinarian and
ECX Director Randy Greenshields
gets checked out himself at the
Enterprise vet check.
RACE RESULTS
200 Mile Race - 12 Dogs
1. Bryce Mumford 35:35
2. Brett Bruggeman 35:36
3. Mark Stamm 35:46
4. Laurie Warren 35:48
5. Jennifer Campeau 48:37
6. Neil, last name unknown 51:04
7. Brenden Jackson 52:05
8. Jason Campeau 52:43
100 Mile Race - 8 Dogs
1. Clayton Perry 22:52
2. Bino Fowler 22:54
3. Gabe Dunham 24:52
4. Steve Madsen 24:59
2 Day Pot Race
31 Miles Each Day - 6 Dogs
1. Morgan Anderson 7:53
2. David Hassilev 8:20
3. Jane Devlin 8:23
4. Connie Starr 10:06
Cascades ski patrol has been rescuing since 1970s
By CAITLIN MORAN
The Seattle Times
SKI REPORT
Spout Springs
Tollgate, Ore.
CLOSED
Anthony Lakes
North Powder, Ore.
New snow: 14” since
Sunday
Base: 66”
Conditions: Excellent,
with light wind
Ski Bluewood
Dayton, Wash.
New snow: 3”
Base depth: 58”
Conditions: Machine
groomed soft snow
Ski Fergi
Joseph, Ore.
New snow: Some
Base depth: 28” on top
Conditions: Open
Saturday and Sunday
Mt. Hood Meadows
Government Camp, Ore.
New snow: 2”
Base depth: 86”
Conditions: Groom is
packed powder. Off
piste is skier-packed
pow.
SNOQUALMIE
PASS,
Wash. — Dylan Currie knows
what it’s like to get into trouble
in the backcountry.
About a decade ago in
British Columbia, on Currie’s
very fi rst day of backcountry
skiing, another group of skiers
set off an avalanche from above
that partially buried one of his
partners, causing him to break
his leg. While the other group
went to get help, Currie used
basic fi rst-aid skills to stabilize
the injured skier and attached
ski poles to his backpack so his
partner could hang on and ski
out behind him on one ski. They
reached a road, where rescue
crews were waiting, about two
hours later.
Currie’s partner recovered,
and, as far as avalanches go,
their ordeal had a favorable
outcome. But for Currie, the
experience was a wake-up
call, and he decided to pursue
more medical and emergency
training.
“It was kind of like, ‘Oh
wow, that’s what can happen
out here,’” he said.
Today, Currie is part of
the Cascade Backcountry Ski
Patrol, a group of 70 volun-
teer ski patrollers who cover
out-of-bounds areas around the
Central and North Cascades.
On a typical winter weekend,
Caitlin Moran/The Seattle Times via AP
In this Dec. 11 photo, Cascade Backcountry Ski Patroller
Chris Stoll, right, leads a group on a ski tour near Snoqualm-
ie Pass, Wash. The Cascade Backcountry Ski Patrol is a group
of 70 volunteer ski patrollers, who cover out-of-bounds ar-
eas around the Central and North Cascades.
at least a dozen radio-carrying
patrollers are available at
Stevens and Snoqualmie passes
to assist with emergencies
involving skiers or snowshoers.
In their backpacks, they carry
much of the same fi rst-aid gear
that’s available to patrollers at
inbounds ski areas: medical
tape, gauze and splints for
stabilizing broken bones.
But rescuing someone in
the backcountry isn’t always as
simple as loading the victim into
a rescue sled and skiing down
to the base area. Professional
medical help can be several
hours or even days away, so
backcountry patrollers are also
equipped with the gear and
skills to make an improvised
sled or hunker down for a night
in the snow.
A group of cross-country
skiers started Cascade Nordic
Ski Patrol in 1976 with the
support of the U.S. Forest
Service. Jonathan Olds, whose
father was a patroller at Hyak
(now Summit East) in the 1970s
and ‘80s, was fi rst drawn to the
Nordic patrol because it was
seen as a counterculture alter-
native to the inbounds crew. He
joined in the early ‘90s.
“It’s a way of contributing
and doing something you love
doing,” he says.
ome visitors to the North Coast describe
them as “little fi ngers” on the beach. Others
describe them as “plastic pickles.” Their
name in Greek means “fi re body.” In Australia
giant pyrosomes can grow to 90 feet and could
consume a human being. In a sense they are like
a Frankenstein monster of hundreds of animals
coming together to make one organism.
“They’re all over this year
for some reason,” Tiffany
Boothe, administrative assistant
at the Seaside Aquarium, said
early this month. “As soon as I
saw one I picked it up and put it
in my bucket and brought it to
the aquarium.”
“Pyro” is the Greek word for
fi re and “soma” means body,
R.J.
Boothe said, and are known for
Marx
their brilliant bioluminescence
Comment
— pink, yellow or bluish —
and are not typically seen along
Seaside beaches. Like jellyfi sh, they cannot
survive when air gets in their lungs.
A fi eld guide, “Tidepool and Reef,” by
Rick M. Harbo, presents a fascinating array
of sponges, mollusks, sea stars and tunicates.
According to Harbo, tunicates are “encrusting
colonies of distinct individuals in a stiff gelatin-
like tunic.”
Orange social sea squirts — their real
name — divide asexually to form numerous
rounded individuals that often cover intertidal
and subtidal rocks. Other species like the stalked
hairy sea squirt, the sea peach and sea pork, are
found encrusting rocks, barnacles and shells.
Pyrosomes are classifi ed as a colonial tunicate,
a member of the only group of chordates —
animals possessing a dorsal nerve chord — able
to reproduce both sexually and asexually, with
hundreds of animals coming together to make
one organism.
While author Harbo writes that tunicates
are not edible, Boothe said turtles and sunfi sh
consider them a “delicacy.”
“It’s not necessarily something whales and
dolphins are going to fi nd delicious,” Boothe
said. “I’ve heard dogs are eating them — that’s
not a great thing, but they’re not poisonous.”
Like sea cucumbers, “When you squeeze
them, water shoots out,” Boothe added. “They’re
very confusing little creatures. I don’t like talking
about them.”
Davidson Current
Visitors to our beaches in winter never know
what they might fi nd, whether it be a sea lion,
bloated gray whale or even a salp, a transparent
invertebrate that looks like aspic.
“In the summer we have a current that comes
down from the north that cools our water down,”
Boothe said. “In the winter, the Davidson Current
comes up and warms our water up a little bit, so
we tend to stay at the same temperature all year
round.”
According to the Oregon Coastal Management
Program, the Davidson Current begins 600
feet below the surface in Baja, California. In
winter, southwesterly storms drive the Davidson
Current’s warmer, saltier fl ow northward along
the coastline 6 to 12 miles per day, displacing
currents offshore, even at the surface.
If winds change, warm weather animals may
be stranded in cold water.
Results are apparent on our beaches. Over
the past year and a half, at least fi ve sea turtles
washed to shore dead on arrival.
Last winter two olive ridleys, Thunder, which
washed ashore in Gearhart, and Lightning, in
Pacifi c City, were malnourished, hypothermic
and comatose — but still alive.
A U.S. Coast Guard escort and rehabilitation
team transported the turtles to San Diego’s
Sea World. Sadly, Thunder was discovered
fl oating in her rehabilitation pool a few weeks
later, but Lightning continues to receive care.
Curator of fi shes Mike Price said Lightning
remains in SeaWorld’s care, rehabilitating in a
12-foot deep, 90,000-gallon holding pool along
with two other rescued olive ridley turtles.
Sea turtles — olive ridleys, green turtles
and leatherbacks — may continue to wash to
Seaside’s sand beaches this winter, putting the
aquarium on “sea turtle watch.”
“They don’t have to die,” Boothe said. “They
can just get stressed out.”
‘Marvel!’
Like the western snowy plover, which leaves
its subtle nest among 19 acres of Gearhart dunes,
the message may be to pay close attention to the
world under our feet, what Seaside naturalist and
photographer Neal Maine calls “a carpet of living
phenomena.”
“These are living, dynamic systems,” Maine
said at a December lecture celebrating Haystack
Rock. “They’re just not as conspicuous as some
systems like fi sh in the stream or elk coming
across the meadow.”
In a year dedicated to the 50-year anniversary
of Oregon’s Beach Bill, Maine said he hopes
to help recast Oregon beaches as an ecosystem
and “reconnect the beaches to the landscape.”
He suggested citizen-level efforts to expand the
discussion on beaches.
With General Manager Keith Chandler,
Boothe is among those leading that effort as the
Seaside Aquarium continues to foster education
and awareness.
While she’s yet to collect any live pyrosomes,
she goes exploring every day so visitors “know
what we’re fi nding on the beach and talking
about.”
And if you’re lucky enough to fi nd a
pyrosome, what should you do?
“Marvel!” Boothe said. “They’re kind of
cool!”
■
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s South
County reporter and editor of the Seaside Signal
and Cannon Beach Gazette.