Eli Francovich

An annual ritual for Spokane rock climbers, Reel Rock, is returning to Spokane following a two year break.On May 15, the Bower Climbing Coalition will host the Reel Rock Film Festival at the Washington Cracker Building. Doors open at 4 p.m. and the films start at 5 p.m.

Web extra: Submit your own outdoors-related photographs for a chance to be published in our weekly print edition and browse our archive of past reader submissions online at spokesman.com/outdoors.

MAYEN, GERMANY – Traveling in Europe, in any capacity, is an exercise in embodied history. When looking at World War II-era bullet holes in Parisian church façade, staying in a 500-year-old farmhouse or touring a cathedral that’s older than our country, it takes little imagination to feel the heft of history.

Hunters can submit special hunt applications through May 19 for 2022 deer, elk, mountain goat, moose, bighorn sheep and fall turkey seasons.

The minimum known count of wolves in Oregon at the end of 2021 was 175 , an increase of two wolves over the 2020 minimum known number of 173, according to the Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management 2021 Annual Report released Tuesday.

Washington State Parks is looking for parks hosts. Hosts volunteer at least 28 hours a week helping park aides, answering questions, explaining park rules and performing groundskeeping tasks, according to an agency news release.

WARSAW, Poland – On March 28, as bombs fell on the then-besieged city of Kyiv, Jared Malone was livid and confused

A long-neglected bridge over the Columbia River opened on April 8, connecting key sections of the cross-state Palouse-to-Cascades Trail.

“Wood ducks are stunningly beautiful with the best sense of smell and the largest eyes of any duck species in North America,” writes photographer Angela Marie.

WARSAW, Poland –  On Feb. 24, Helena Gladkaya looked out the window of her home in Kyiv and saw smoke coming from one of the first buildings to be bombed in the Ukrainian capitol. Then the phone rang. A friend calling to tell her the Russians are invading.

ISACCEA, Romania – With a tug and a jerk, Greicy, a lanky and muzzled Doberman who’d spent the past two days fleeing the war in Ukraine, was free and running.

There were a minimum of 206 wolves and 33 packs in Washington state in 2021, according to an annual survey conducted by state and tribal biologists.

Rich Zywiak took this photo of a porcupine climbing a pine tree on Friday at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge . “They are nocturnal and are often seen sleeping high up in trees during the day at Turnbull,” he wrote.

A state carnivore research scientist will present information on the ecology and behavior of cougars in the Pacific Northwest’s increasingly urban landscape at the April 13 online Zoom meeting of the Spokane Audubon Society.

WARSAW, Poland – Inside a warehouse in an industrial neighborhood, a handful of Americans packed and organized body armor destined for Ukraine. The armor, which was purchased in Europe, needed work. The steel plates were too close to the body, explained one ex-Marine who is now a firefighter in Texas, as he pulled the gleaming plates out and rearranged them so there was more padding between steel and flesh. It was mid-March, and Russian attacks on ambulance drivers and other noncombatants seemed to be increasing.

WARSAW, Poland – Early in the morning on Feb. 24, Yaryna Valkov and her two children, Lukian, 10, and Solomiya, 7, fled from their home in Irpin, Ukraine, as Russian tanks and soldiers surged into her home country. Valkov said she’d been planning the escape for a few days, gathering documents, obsessively watching the news and packing the bare necessities.

WARSAW, Poland – Two women, one from Ukraine and one from Poland, will temporarily share legal custody of the 62 Ukrainian orphans who are staying in Poland with controversial former Spokane Valley state Rep. Matt Shea.

WARSAW, Poland – The first thing he noticed upon arriving in Ukraine’s shattered capital of Kyiv was the stationary train.

MEDYKA, Poland – They traveled for two days. Weaving in and out of a war, the line of their escape intersected by Russian checkpoints, 25 in 60 miles.

The Spokane region is full of master bass anglers, so much so that The Spokesman-Review overlooked one of the best: Taylor Smith.And that, Smith said, is a testament to the quality of angling here in the Inland Northwest (but also an editorial oversight). 

In December, Melissa Nowicki and her family decided to host an 11-year-old Ukrainian orphan for one month at their home in Rochester, New York. Things went well. “We just absolutely fell in love with him,” she said of Oleksii. “He was the missing piece of our family that we didn’t know we were missing.”

WARSAW, Poland – In 2005, along the Iraq-Syrian border, Jared Malone was on his second combat deployment with the Marines as a tank crewman when insurgents fired on his unit.

As bombs fell in Mariupol, an eastern Ukrainian city ravaged by fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, Spokane pastor and former legislator Matt Shea launched a rescue mission for 62 orphans. In a video and post to Facebook on March 8, Shea said he could hear machine guns firing in the background as he talked to his “prospective daughters.

Many of the 3 million people who have fled Ukraine don't have passports, creating an additional burden as they determine their next steps.