Polar explorer Will Steger to speak on climate in Spokane

ENVIRONMENT – Polar explorer Will Steger will be in Spokane this month to present a free program, “Eyewitness to Climate Change.”

Steger, who lives in Minnesota, has a wealth of experience and perspective in arctic environments. He led the first dogsled journey without resupply to the North Pole and the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica in a seven-month expedition covering 3,741 miles.

He completed a 1,600-mile trek across Greenland to log the longest unsupported dogsled expedition in history.

The free program is set for April 28 at 6:30 p.m. at St. George’s School, but seats should be reserved at sgs.org/rsvp. Steger will deliver the school’s second annual Dragon Talks presentation.

Steger has founded Climate Generation, a nonprofit organization to engage students, teachers and the public in climate literacy and action.

Weekend lines common at Palouse Falls Park

PARKS – Palouse Falls State Park gets a lot of buzz during spring when the 185-foot falls thunder with runoff. This year’s flood-stage flows have attracted even more crowd-creating attention.

Chase Copeland of Mica tried and failed on Sunday to visit the Palouse River waterfall that’s between Washtucna and Starbuck.

“My wife and I were driving home from Walla Walla yesterday and decided to take the highway route that passes by Palouse Falls State Park,” he said. “We planned to stop at the park for an hour or so to do some hiking and have a late picnic lunch. The drive north from Walla Walla had very little traffic. However, once we got to the park turnoff, we saw over 25 cars on the side of the highway, each waiting its turn to get into the park.

“A park ranger told us the park was full and he was allowing one car to enter for each car that left. He estimated our wait time to be 1 1/2 hours and at times could be much longer. He said it was like that every weekend in the spring and that they had talked about putting in a shuttle service, but that might never happen.”