MOUNT BAKER – A man from Vancouver, B.C., suffocated when he fell into a tree well while skiing in the Mount Baker backcountry, the Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office said Thursday.
Henning Faust, 36, his brother and two other companions spent Saturday near Table Mountain in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, outside the Mount Baker Ski Area.
The group lost track of Faust when he separated from the other skiers during their last run of the day, the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office said.
The three other skiers found Faust within 30 minutes using avalanche beacons. They pulled him out of the tree well and tried to revive him, but he already had died, said deputy Mark Jilk, the county search and rescue coordinator.
“They have some serious snow up there,” Jilk said. “Anywhere they stepped out of their skis, they were sinking into the snow up to their armpits.”
Oroville: Hearing set on gold mining operation
The state has scheduled a public hearing on a proposal that would allow Crown Resources Corp. to discharge water it uses in a gold mining operation near Chesaw into nearby streams and groundwater.
Construction of the Buckhorn Mountain Project began in September. Officials with Toronto-based Kinross Gold Corp. have said they plan to begin extracting 1.2 million ounces of gold and silver from the mine next spring.
To do so, it still needs a water quality discharge permit. The state Department of Ecology issued a draft permit in November, outlining steps the company would have to take to discharge water.
The environmental group Okanogan Highlands Alliance has filed appeals to several permits, and last month the Colville Confederated Tribes passed a resolution opposing any mining on Buckhorn Mountain.
Yakima: Reservoir costs would exceed benefits
Despite an initial analysis that shows the costs of building and operating two proposed reservoirs in the Yakima Valley exceed potential benefits, state and federal authorities will continue to study the proposals, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Thursday.
Critics of the larger reservoir, known as Black Rock, immediately said that proposal should be abandoned, calling it “a loser.”
However, state and federal officials announced they would begin developing environmental impact statements for the two proposals in hopes of gathering more information about them. They’re also seeking more suggestions from the public, agencies and tribes on improving water supplies.
“There’s a limit, obviously, to what we can spend, but we think there’s some additional work needed to determine if we have a viable solution for the Yakima basin,” said Derek Sandison, Central Washington regional director for the state Department of Ecology.
Seattle: Fort Lewis to get 3rd Stryker brigade
The Army is in the early stages of establishing a third Stryker brigade at Fort Lewis as it nears its goal of creating seven of the units named for the eight-wheeled armored vehicles.
About 200 senior leadership members for the newly named 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division have been arriving at the Army post south of Tacoma since September, said Joseph Piek, a spokesman for the post.
The completion of the new brigade will realize the Army’s goal of creating seven of the combat teams to serve as medium-weight, rapidly deployable units to fill the gap between lighter infantry and heavy forces. Four other brigades are in Alaska, Hawaii, Pennsylvania and Germany.
The 5th Brigade joins two other Stryker Brigade Combat teams stationed at Fort Lewis, the 3rd and 4th brigades. While at the post, they report to I Corps.
Yelm: Elderly man found dead in fire
A man in his eighties was found dead following a fire that destroyed a house and a trailer, Thurston County officials said.
The body of Jack Wallace was found in the trailer Wednesday afternoon in a sparsely populated area south of town.
“My guess is that he was overcome by smoke pretty quickly,” Southeast Thurston County Fire Chief Rita Hutcheson said.
Neighbors said Wallace moved to the area a few months ago, adding that the one-story wood house was the residence of his daughter and son-in-law, who were away when the fire started. Neither would comment to The Olympian newspaper after they arrived while firefighters were at the scene.
The fire apparently started in the rear of the home or in the nearby trailer, and the cause remained under investigation, Hutcheson said.
Tracyton: Missing woman found dead
A woman who walked away from the Kitsap Recovery Center has been found dead in the back yard of a distant relative more than a mile away.
Other relatives found the body of Mary Reyes Diaz, 60, who was lying on her stomach on an outdoor table beneath a makeshift tent fashioned from a tarpaulin Wednesday evening, Kitsap County sheriff’s Deputy Scott Wilson said.
Diaz was wearing the same pajamas and bathrobe in which she was last seen at the recovery center in Bremerton before she vanished Monday, Wilson said.
The temperature dropped to 17 degrees in Bremerton early Wednesday morning and hadn’t been above freezing since a few hours after Diaz was last seen alive.
Time and cause of death were not immediately determined. An autopsy was pending.
Wilson said authorities had not been told about the distant relative, who was on vacation overseas.
Diaz was discovered after another relative who went to the house periodically to feed the family pets noticed a pair of socks in front of the house Tuesday, then read in the Kitsap Sun newspaper the next day that Diaz was missing and had last been seen wearing only nightclothes and socks, Wilson said.
Ritzville: DNA tests fail to identify child’s skull
DNA tests have failed to establish the identify of a child whose skull was found last summer in a field by U.S. 395, and Adams County Sheriff Douglas Barger hope the FBI can do better.
Scientists at the health sciences laboratory of the University of North Texas in Forth Worth were unable to extract enough DNA from the bones, Barger said Wednesday.
“The FBI thinks they might be more successful,” he said. “I hope they are, because we’ve got to identify who it is.”
Associated Press
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