PUBLIC LANDS -- The gate has been opened temporarily at Escure Ranch to allow motor vehicles to drive the road less than three miles into Towell Falls, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Spokane office has announced. 

The 14,000-acre BLM Rock Creek Recreation Area site south of Sprague is the realm of hikers and mountain bikers for most of the year, but the road is opened to the scenic falls in the window between the winter and spring mud season and the fire-danger season, which starts sometime in June.

BLM spokesman Steve Smith said:

The Towell Falls gate is now open at BLM's Rock Creek Recreation Site, and that Towell Falls Road has been very recently mowed.  As usual, the gate will remain open until we decide there is too much risk of wildland fire ignition for vehicle travel to continue on that road.