Bob Woodward

Hiking up the trail along the east fork of the Lostine River into the Eagle Cap wilderness in the Wallowas is one of the most perfect fly fishing pools imaginable. Enough off the trail that you might miss it, the pool comes at the base of a short rocky drop in the river. After the drop, the water flows quietly in a 20-yard-long by 10-yard-wide pool that’s no more than four feet deep at most. Since the river bottom here is sandy, wading barefoot is easy. There’s also no fear of snagging on a backcast as the trees are well set back from the pool’s edges.
The only reason I made a recent trip into the Wallowas was to fish this pool and to bask in the joy of wading deep in cold water and casting to eager Brook Trout. Note that the pool’s brookies aren’t huge but are ready to take traditional dry fly patterns, like an Adams, Royal Coachman, elk hair caddis and humpy floated on the surface, or pheasant tail and bead head nymphs.
Arriving at the pool after a two-and-a-half-mile uphill hike, I took my boots off and rigged up my four-piece backpacking rod. Reel on, I reached into my pack for my fly box and found it missing. Despair ensued. I’d forgotten to pack the box.

Ten years ago during an interview at an outdoor industry trade show, a kayak manufacturing company president somewhat sheepishly admitted that, while a high percentage of his company’s ad budget went to promoting whitewater kayaking, for every one whitewater boat the company sold his company moved another 40 recreational kayaks. Today, that ratio is probably more like 200 to 1. Recreational “rec” kayaks and their longer and faster brethren (day touring and ocean/touring kayaks) seem to be everywhere from lakes, to lazy rivers, to bays, marshes and estuaries.

For the Belden family – Chip, Julie and their three children – outdoor adventure outings are an integral part of family life. Over the past several years some of their outings have started with a canoe ride across the Crooked River to the Deschutes Land Trust property adjacent to The Ranch at The Canyons and Smith Rock State Park. Safely across, the family hikes up into the pinnacles area to, as Chip Belden puts it, “explore, see cool geological formations and keep an eye out for rare plant species.”
While combing the area this spring, Julie Belden stumbled onto something unusual – an aged, yellow film canister. After discovering it and gathering the family around, Chip, a photographer, shook the canister to see if there was any film in it.

Back in the early 1970s when the cross-country skiing really began to make an impact on America's winter sports scene, the only way to ski was to make your own tracks. Skiers made them anywhere there was enough snow to open skiing along marked hiking trails. Machine groomed trails were, well, not even considered.
That is until Johannes von Trapp of the Sound of Music family fame saw some groomed trails in Norway and brought the idea to the states. Eventually he began setting snowmobile-groomed tracks to his Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont. These early groomers were a bit rough but it didn't take long for the groomed grooves idea to catch on and the sportto become highly machine reliant.

A stop on almost every whitewater kayaker and rafter's Northwest must-do itinerary is a run on Washington's White Salmon River. It's a river loved by top-end kayakers for its Class V upper sections, by veteran paddlers for its busy Class III-plus, BZ Corner-to-Husum run, and by boaters of all abilities for its no-so-busy, but fun, Husum-to-Northwestern reservoir run. In short, it's a river that has something for everyone.
This time next year there will be more to the latter run because the Condit Dam that creates the Northwestern Reservoir will have come down.