Outdoors & River/September 25, 2026
Why the White River is white: a glacier grinding Rainier
The White River begins under the largest glacier in the lower 48 and moves 550,000 tonnes of sand and silt a year. Why it is milky, and why Pacific floods.
Outdoors & River
Trails, river conditions, parks, foothills, weather-adjacent recreation, and getting outside.
Outdoors & River/September 24, 2026
Wilkeson sandstone: the Capitol bill a town says is unpaid
The Washington State Capitol is skinned in Wilkeson sandstone from a quarry nine miles from Enumclaw. The town says a 1925 bill was never paid. The whole story.
Outdoors & River/September 24, 2026
Lake Tapps history: the White River's 92-year detour
A Boston firm dammed the White River at Buckley in 1910 and ran most of it into Lake Tapps to make power. The plant closed in 2004. Who owns the detour now.
Outdoors & River/September 23, 2026
The town owns a golf course, and it just gave a creek back
Enumclaw owns its golf course. It was built in the 1940s, the county handed it to the city, and in 2024 Boise Creek was moved back for the salmon.
Outdoors & River/September 21, 2026
Enumclaw burn permits: the rules, and what may end them
Enumclaw's burn ban ends Sept 30 and free permits resume in October. Here are the rules in full, plus the rulemaking that could end rural burning.
Outdoors & River/September 18, 2026
First bugle to first frost: the six weeks when the plateau does everything at once
Week by week, mid September to November 1: elk rut, Boise Creek salmon, pumpkin patches, Sunrise Road, Chinook Pass closing, first frost, sunset times.
Outdoors & River/September 16, 2026
Mud Mountain Dam: the pile of rock you cannot see
Mud Mountain Dam is 432 feet tall, was briefly the tallest of its kind on Earth, holds no lake, and spends most of the year doing nothing. Then it rains.
Outdoors & River/September 15, 2026
Enumclaw to Sunrise: the highest drive in the park
Fifty miles and 6,400 feet, with the fall color and the first snow due any day. As of the Park Service's September 24 update, Sunrise Road is closed to cars for the rest of 2026 and open to feet and bicycles only. What NPS says this week, what the drive normally is, and how to know the moment the gate opens.
Outdoors & River/September 15, 2026
Boise Creek salmon: the ditch that outfishes the river
A straightened farm stream south of town holds the densest wild Chinook and steelhead spawning in the thousand square mile Puyallup watershed. Here is who comes back, when, and where to stand without wrecking it.
Outdoors & River/September 14, 2026
Green River Gorge: the canyon the coal towns looked into
A river sawed 300 feet into Eocene sandstone a few miles north of Enumclaw. Then came the mines, a one-lane bridge, a resort, a state law, and a swimming hole that keeps killing people.
Outdoors & River/September 14, 2026
The elk came by cattle car: a field guide to Enumclaw's herd
Eighty animals arrived from Yellowstone on New Year's Eve, 1912. Their descendants are in the fields between SR 164 and SR 410 every winter, if you know when to look.
Outdoors & River/September 14, 2026
Enumclaw to Crystal Mountain: forty miles and one road
How far it really is, where SR 410 climbs, what WSDOT means by chains, and why the pass beyond the ski turnoff closes for half the year while the resort does not.