POCATELLO — A reward of more than $2,000 is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals who damaged a memorial stone at the Edson Fichter Nature Area in south Pocatello.

The stone memorial, which was erected last Wednesday near the Edson Fichter Pond, was knocked over and broken by vandals sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning.

The memorial was placed at the site to honor the late Roger Humberger, who donated $60,000 to help build Edson Fichter’s fishing pond.

According to Stacie Gebo, co-owner of Element Outfitters in Pocatello, Humberger worked as a chemist at the J.R. Simplot Company but was an avid fisherman during his spare time.

In 2010, Humberger donated $60,000 to the Edson Fichter Pond fundraising committee. His donation was the final amount of capital needed to construct the fishery.

However, Humberger never got to see the pond. A day after he made the donation, he died of cancer.

Gebo, who served on the Edson Fichter Pond fundraising committee, said getting a memorial dedicated to Humberger built at Edson Fichter had been in the works for years. Unfortunately, just days after the stone was finally erected, it was vandalized and broken.

“What’s infuriating is that this memorial to such a selfless man would get treated this way,” Gebo said.

Luckily, Classic Marble and Granite in Pocatello was able to repair the damage and get the stone pieced back together. On Tuesday, Humberger’s memorial was re-erected at its original location.

Officials with Fish and Game said the total cost of the damage is not available.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals was up to $2,050. Because the stone weighs 1,500 pounds, Gebo said it is highly unlikely that it was accidentally pushed over.

“I hope we can catch whoever is responsible for breaking the rock,” she said. “It’s so frustrating when you work on something for years, and within days it gets vandalized.”

The Edson Fichter Nature Area is near Indian Hills Elementary School in south Pocatello. According to Fish and Game, the nature area’s trails and 3.4-acre fishing pond are utilized by an estimated 100,000 visitors each year.

Anybody with information about the identity of the vandals who damaged the Roger Humberger memorial are asked to contact the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office at 208-236-7123 or the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Southeast Regional Office at 208-232-4703. Callers can remain anonymous.

POCATELLO — A moose paid a visit to some Pocatello homeowners on Tuesday morning.

According to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, a young cow moose was reported to be running loose near the intersection of Alameda Road and Monte Vista Drive in the east part of town at approximately 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

When Fish and Game officials arrived on the scene, the moose was in a residential backyard, enjoying the shade of a tree.

By approximately 9:45 a.m., officials had successfully tranquilized the animal and removed it from the area. Fish and Game said the moose was then transported to an isolated location near Soda Springs and let back into the wild.

No injuries or property damages were reported.

Fish and Game said there are two times a year when conservation officers respond to an increase in the number of calls involving moose wandering into urban areas.

The first time is during the spring, when pregnant cows begin to push away their yearlings. The second time is during the hot summer months of July and August, when the hills dry out and food and water became scarce. In response to the conditions, it is not uncommon for moose to wander into towns and cities looking for food, water and shade from the sun.

“This time of year we see a lot of moose on green lawns and under sprinklers,” said Merritt Horsmon, regional wildlife biologist with Idaho Fish and Game.

There have been multiple cases of moose wandering into Pocatello this year.

On Easter, a young bull moose caused a bit of a stir as it wandered around Old Town. The moose was spotted at Pocatello High School, near residences on West Halliday Street and at Centennial and Rainey parks. Eventually, the moose returned to its natural habitat on its own.

Two months earlier, numerous residents saw a moose wandering around the Casa Del Rio apartments on West Lewis Street before heading back into the wild.

POCATELLO — Volunteers and city officials who are working to construct a new bike stop in south Pocatello hope it will be the first of many throughout the Portneuf Gap area.

The soon-to-be-constructed Creekside Stop will be located at Shoshoni Trail and Bannock Highway just south of Indian Hills Elementary School.

The tentative grand opening of the bike stop is scheduled for Sept. 1.

The multiple features of the 5,340-square foot Creekside Stop are designed to appeal to the large number of cyclists, walkers and joggers who utilize Bannock Highway throughout the year.

These features include a large water station designed to easily refill empty water bottles, multiple bike racks and custom-built bench shelters that will provide protection from rain and give local residents shade from the hot sun.

Creekside will also have a maintenance station that gives cyclists the tools to perform quick work on their bikes. The station will have a tire pump, screwdrivers, hex wrenches and two small bars for hanging a bike while performing maintenance.

Landscaping work, which will include flowers and decorative boulders, will be performed by LD Wolfley with Flowers by LD. Decorative seasonal grass will be planted to boost the bike stop’s aesthetics.

“With so many people walking, jogging and biking on Bannock Highway, I think it’s a great asset to our city and community,” said Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad.

Dr. Ryan and Amanda Hope donated the land to the city of Pocatello so it could be converted into Creekside Stop.

“We love Pocatello, and we wanted to do something for the community,” Amanda said.

Kirk Lepchenske, an employee with Barrie’s Ski and Sports, said Creekside Stop is located on a key stretch of Bannock Highway, a road often used by cyclists to ride to Arbon Valley, Inkom and McCammon.

Many of the area’s most popular trail systems, such as Gibson Jack and West Fork of Mink Creek, are also easily accessible off Bannock Highway.

“(Bannock Highway) leads to places where everybody wants to ride,” he said. “That’s why you see so many bikers on the highway.”

With the land donated by the Hopes, the biggest expense for the bike stop’s workers was the installation of the water lines for the bike stop’s water station.

However, a $10,000 donation from the organizers of Spinderella took care of that expense.

Spinderella, a bike ride and fundraiser that caters to women and girls, is held every June in Pocatello. Since the first ride was held in 2012, the event has grown substantially, attracting thousands of female cyclists from around the world. There were 1,200 participants in this year’s ride, which was held on June 17.

Over the past six years, more than $100,000 raised by the Spinderella rides has been donated to the local community through various charities and causes.

A portion of the funds raised during this year’s ride has been donated to help fund the construction of Creekside Stop.

“It’s just a great little thing to have here,” Spinderella founder DaNae Young said. “We just believe it is a great addition to the cycling community.”

Idaho Central Credit Union will also be donating $10,000 toward the construction of the bike stop.

Lepchenske, who is serving as the project manager for the construction of Creekside Stop, said that the project has received strong support from multiple local city officials, including Blad, Councilman Michael Orr and Development Engineer Merril Quayle.

Even the Bannock County Commission has agreed to allow any construction debris to be disposed of at the county landfill for free.

With the water lines installed, now the next step is to have the land graded and to add some pavement. Then, the construction of the bike stop’s features will begin immediately afterward.

Though the bike stop is located on city property, Lepchenske said the overall goal is to construct Creekside Stop entirely through the work of volunteers and private monetary donations.

Donations to the construction of Creekside Stop can be made to the City of Pocatello at P.O. Box 4169, Attn. Finance Department, Pocatello, ID, 83205. Checks must include the memo “Creekside Stop Donation.”

Though geared to cyclists, Blad said that Creekside Stop will also be utilized by other members of the community, including walkers and joggers who also use Bannock Highway.

In the future, he said he hopes to see similar bike stops constructed throughout the Portneuf Gap area.

“The biking community came up with a great idea, and I’m glad the city could help make it happen,” Blad said.

Kristopher Novak said his family has had its share of cancer scares.

When his mother was 55, doctors discovered precancerous polyps while she was undergoing a colonoscopy. His stepfather had a similar incident occur when he was 35 years old. In both cases, doctors quickly removed the polyps.

Later on, his stepfather had to have a large portion of his nose removed after a suspicious-looking mole turned out to be cancerous. His nose was later reconstructed through plastic surgery using skin from his cheek.

Novak’s uncle has been treated for early-stage melanomas multiple times, while his grandfather was once diagnosed with Stage 1 prostate cancer.

Luckily, Novak’s family members who have had brushes with the “Big C” were able to receive medical treatment before it claimed their lives.

“The way I see it, I just have a great gratitude for people who have fought against cancer in the past,” he said. “My family can live a normal life today thanks to this preventative technology.”

This gratitude is what drove Novak, a senior electrical engineering student at the University of Texas, to participate in the Texas 4000, a grueling 70-day, 4,000-mile bike ride.

Beginning in Austin, Texas, and ending in Anchorage, Alaska, it is the longest annual charity bike ride in the world.

The trek has been held every summer since 2004 to raise money for cancer research. This year, the 70 participants have already raised more than $665,000. The goal is to reach $750,000 by the time they all pedal into Alaska’s largest city later this summer.

The 70 cyclists are broken up into three groups, with each team taking a different route to Anchorage.

The 25 participants taking the Rockies Route made a stop at Barrie’s Ski and Sports on Tuesday afternoon, where they were greeted with food and hosts who gave them a place to stay for the night. The previous day’s stop was in Logan, Utah.

Like Novak, all of the Texas 4000 cyclists who visited Pocatello this week have been affected by cancer in some way.

While growing up, Annabeth Bosworth, a nursing student at the University of Texas, said the fathers of three of her closest friends died of the disease.

“It was really heartbreaking,” she said. “People that young shouldn’t have to deal with such heavy matters. My friends matured really fast after that.”

The local host families who gave the Texas 4000 cyclists a place to stay for the night were employees of Barrie’s Ski and Sports. They said their houseguests’ efforts to rid the world of cancer were awe-inspiring.

Katie Nelson, the event coordinator at Barrie’s, said one of the cyclists told a story about donating bone marrow to a 9-year-old boy who was stricken with a rare form of leukemia.

“I can’t say enough good things about them,” Nelson said. “They are just so positive.”

Ironically, Novak said that before taking on the physically demanding bike ride through North America, most of the participants were, at best, casual cyclists.

“Most of us had never ridden five or six miles at one time,” Novak said.

Novak said the group received their carbon fiber road bikes last October and began an intense training regimen soon afterwards. This regimen included progressively harder and harder climbs.

Eventually, the participants had to successfully complete a century test, in which they had to prove their mettle by biking 100 miles in 10 hours while climbing 6,500 feet.

“Every person who rode the century test passed,” Novak said.

To participate in the Texas 4000, each rider has to raise $4,500 before hitting the road. These funds were raised through a variety of sources, including sponsorships from companies, individual donations and fundraisers. One participant even held a concert in their backyard to meet the financial requirements.

The fundraising continues throughout the ride every time they arrive in a new town.

By the time the cyclists made their way into Pocatello, they had already logged more than 1,700 miles through six states in 25 days. Novak said they have pedaled up seemingly never-ending mountains, battled hordes of mosquitoes and dealt with some incredibly difficult weather conditions.

Though the group is looking forward to visiting Yellowstone and Glacier national parks in the coming days, the route will not get any easier.

Soon they will be in Canada, where they will trek through Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon Territory before they enter Alaska. In terms of total mileage, the group has not even reached the journey’s halfway point yet.

However, their spirits haven’t waned because they know this undertaking is for a cause bigger than themselves — to find a cure for cancer.

“Some had saddle sores and were really hurting from the ride,” Nelson said. “But we got the impression that they weren’t doing this for themselves. They knew they were doing this for a bigger cause.”

On Wednesday morning, the Texas 4000 team banded together in a circle to determine who they were going to dedicate the day’s ride to. Each day’s ride is dedicated to somebody affected by cancer, whether it’s a family member, friend or somebody they met during their 70-day journey.

Then they began the journey to their next stop in Idaho Falls. Some of the employees with Barrie’s Ski and Sports even rode with them part of the way.

INKOM — When Mary Reichman first invested in the Pebble Creek Ski Area in the 1980s, she had no idea it would lead to a 30-year career as the Inkom resort’s general manager.

Initially, Reichman and her husband, John, were a part of a group of 10 investors who bought into Pebble Creek in the early 1980s. The investors wanted to develop the backside of Bonneville Peak, a popular location commonly utilized by backcountry skiers.

However, Pebble Creek suffered from numerous financial problems, and by the late 1980s, the resort almost shut down.

Ultimately, in early 1988, the Small Business Administration gave Pebble Creek’s investors an ultimatum.

“The SBA said if we didn’t have new leadership, they were going to put a lock on the door,” she said. “That’s because we were making interest payments on our notes but hadn’t made a principal payment in a long time.”

To help turn the dire financial situation around, the investors placed Reichman in charge halfway through the 1987-1988 ski season. A former social worker from St. Louis, Missouri, she said the adjustment to her new job was difficult.

“I really did not know what I was doing, except making sure the ski area stayed here for the community,” she said.

Reichman said the ski resort management industry tends to be male-dominated. When she was appointed general manager in February 1988, she was one of only two women in the United States who were running ski resorts. The other female manager was at Pomerelle Mountain Resort, which is an approximate 115-mile drive west of Pebble Creek.

At the end of that season, Reichman said she went to her first Intermountain Ski Areas Association meeting. She didn’t even pre-register for the event, but she was still welcomed with open arms.

“They said, ‘We are so glad that you are here. We heard there were problems at Pebble Creek, but we will help you in any way,’” Reichman said. “It was nice to know that the big resorts in the region were willing to help.”

Years later, she became the first woman to serve as president of the Intermountain Ski Areas Association.

It was during the 1988-1989 ski season, which was her first full season as general manager, that she started to implement changes. Though she initially invested in Pebble Creek years before to develop the backside of the mountain, the ski area’s dire financial position made such a large endeavor impossible.

Instead, she felt that the best way for the resort to become financially solvent was to rebuild the resort’s image as a family-friendly community ski area. Her background in social work proved beneficial in helping build connections in the area. 

Soon, events were added to entertain the ski bums each March, which is normally a time when resort attendance tends to dwindle. Multiple ski runs were added to appeal to beginner and intermediate skiers and snowboarders.

And, in what Reichman said has made a major impact on Pebble Creek, was the implementation of school skiing programs, where local elementary and middle schools would bring students to the resort to learn the finer points of navigating the slopes.

“School programs serve a dual purpose,” she said. “One is to make it so incredibly affordable that the schools would keep coming up. But we also wanted to create new skiers who would grow up and then bring their families to Pebble Creek, and that’s what happened.”

In the end, the rebranding saved the resort. Approximately six to seven years after she began her tenure, Pebble Creek was financially solvent, and the SBA was no longer threatening to put a lock on the door.

This upcoming ski season will mark Reichman’s 30th year as Pebble Creek’s general manager, and she said it will be her last. Once the ski lifts are shut down next spring, Reichman will retire.

In September 2016, Pebble Creek was purchased by Shay Carl, a popular Internet celebrity from Pocatello. At the time of the sale, Reichman said she would stay on for an additional two seasons to help with the transition of ownership.

Her staff at Pebble Creek, some of whom have worked with Reichman for 20 years, are sad to see her go.

Mike Rodriguez, the ski lift supervisor and the resort’s director of possibilities, said one of his fondest memories is the casual atmosphere during staff meetings in Reichman’s office. It’s not uncommon during these meetings for staff members to take off their shoes to help relieve the pressures of work and to help get the creative juices flowing.

“I have had the pleasure of working on and off at Pebble for Mary for 20 years,” Rodriguez said. “She has been one of my favorite bosses during my working career. Working by her side, I have learned how dedicated she is to the livelihood of the hill and to winter sports recreation.” 

Reichman will be on hand at Saturday’s Idaho Music and Wildflower Festival, which will be held at Pebble Creek. The festival serves as a fundraiser for the Pebble Creek Ski Patrol.

POCATELLO — How much money does biking bring into the Pocatello’s economy?

There’s no official statistic measuring the sport’s local financial impact, but many local business owners and event organizers say it is substantial.

Aside from the multiple bike shops in Pocatello, tourists from around the world have visited the area just to take advantage of the local trail systems and to participate in the numerous biking events held every spring and summer.

“I have people in my restaurant from all over who tell me they come here just to ride the trails,” said Corey Wight, the owner of the SandTrap restaurant and one of the organizers of the annual Pocatello City Creek PedalFest.

There are multiple reasons why Pocatello’s profile in the international biking community has surged in recent years. Here are a few:

PedalFest

Every June, the Pocatello City Creek PedalFest brings hundreds of competitive mountain bikers to the area to race on the trails along the city’s West Bench. The most recent PedalFest event was held this past weekend, but this year a new feature was added to the usual festivities.

On Sunday, the Idaho Enduro Series held a competition in the Mink Creek area as a part of its 2017 race series. Popular in Europe, enduro races time the competitors by how fast they descend on the downhill portions of the trails.

Even before the enduro race was held, PedalFest organizers said it was a success. On Saturday, a day before the new race was held, registration for the competition was almost sold out.

For the event’s organizers, the purpose of hosting an enduro race is twofold — it brings a new type of mountain biking event into Pocatello and it provides extra exposure to the trails in the area.

That extra exposure came earlier this week, when the event was profiled on Pinkbike.com, one of the world’s top mountain biking websites.

For more information on the annual event, visit www.pocatellopedalfest.com.

Spinderella

On Saturday, the sixth annual Spinderella bike ride for women and girls will be held at Ross Park.

Since it was founded, the bike ride has grown substantially, attracting thousands of bike riders from around the world, including Canada and multiple countries in Europe.

But perhaps its biggest impact has been the money it has generated for various local charities and causes. In total, more than $100,000 raised by Spinderella has been donated back into the community.

“When I calculated the amount we’ve raised, it was a happy moment for me,” Spinderella founder DaNae Young said. “I shed a tear.”

The money raised from the upcoming ride on Saturday will be primarily donated to two causes. A portion will be given to Bloom, a group that provides postpartum support to new mothers.

Another portion will help fund the construction of a bike service station off South Bannock Highway near Indian Hills Elementary School. The station will provide cyclists with water, tools for bike maintenance and shade from the sun.

Smaller donations will also be given to the Acorn Fund, which helps people at the Aid for Friends homeless shelter get back into the workforce, and the Pocatello Bike Kitchen, which provides low-income families with a place to perform maintenance on their bikes.

The bike routes at Saturday’s event have not changed from the previous years, with 10-mile, 22-mile, 50-mile, 70-mile and 100-mile rides available. However, Young said participants can expect more volunteers at the water stations this year.

“We’re upping the ante,” she said. “We’re going to have more volunteers to pamper the ladies.”

Though online registration is closed, participants can sign up tonight from 5 to 8 p.m. at Lower Ross Park.

For more information about the event, visit www.spinderellaride.com.

Trails Galore

There’s a joke in the local biking community that there are more trails in the Pocatello area than there are mountain bikers.

There might be some truth to this anecdote. The quality and variety of the local trails is expansive, with plenty of places for beginner, intermediate and advanced riders. City Creek, Mink Creek, Gibson Jack and Blackrock-Chinese Peak are just a few of the most popular places to ride in the area.

And soon, another massive trail system could be added to the mix.

A group of local trail users are currently working with the Bureau of Land Management to create a new system near the Highland area tentatively called the Pioneer Ridge Trail System. The proposal is to create 20 miles of hiking, biking, horseback riding and limited ATV use trails on BLM’s 1,400-acre East Bench Recreation Management Zone east of Pocatello.

BLM said last month that it could be a year before any land development begins in that area.

Weather

Though rainstorms struck the Gate City area last Friday, it didn’t dampen the spirits of any of the competitors participating in PedalFest on Saturday.

In fact, the previous night’s precipitation actually created ideal conditions for the racers, according to Wight.

“It was dream dirt, there was no mud,” he said. “The trails weren’t as dry as usual and the cloud cover was perfect.”

Even when the Gate City area is affected by inclement weather, the local trails still usually dry out faster than other areas in the region.

Though it is halfway through June, some of the more popular trails in other parts of the state are still either buried under snow or impassable due to mud. That has not been the case for most of the trails in Southeast Idaho, even though the region was hit especially hard by snowstorms this past winter.

In fact, this year’s PedalFest attracted riders from Sun Valley and the Teton Valley who were just looking for a dry place to ride.

POCATELLO — Hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected to travel to East Idaho later this summer for a rare solar eclipse.

It’s anticipated that this unprecedented influx of people will put massive pressure on the region’s infrastructure, with heavy traffic gridlock and disruptions in cellphone communications expected for the Great American Solar Eclipse on Aug. 21.

However, local officials said they are preparing for any problems that might arise during the astronomical event.

Kerry Hammon, public information officer for the city of Idaho Falls, said an instant management team was created last December to ensure there is maximum police and emergency unit coverage throughout the area during the eclipse.

The team, which consists of law enforcement, public health and emergency personnel from eight East Idaho counties, is coordinating with other state agencies, such as the Idaho Transportation Department, to prepare for any emergency situations that could occur on Aug. 21.

Portions of East Idaho, particularly the Rexburg area, are being considered as some of the top locations in the United States to view the upcoming eclipse, which is expected to provide a major economic boost to the region. Already, most of the hotel rooms and campsites in East Idaho have been reserved for the event.

But planning for so many people has not been easy considering that the eclipse might attract more people than East Idaho has ever seen before, with as many as 500,000 visitors pouring into the region.

“This has never happened before,” Hammon said. “We know how to plan for the Fourth of July, when Idaho Falls doubles in size. But we’ve never been through anything like this eclipse.”

Officials all across the region said to expect heavy traffic gridlock, particularly on Interstate 15 once the eclipse ends and the visitors begin to head home.

Law enforcement officials are working with the Idaho Transportation Department to ensure that all of the lanes on I-15 will be open to traffic during the eclipse. The Idaho State Police also said it will be out in full force, with troopers being forbidden from taking vacation time on that day.

“If traffic is heavy, we will have somebody in the area to respond if an incident arises,” said Lt. Fritz Zweigart of the Idaho State Police.

Another concern for local officials is that the large influx of people visiting the area could cause a massive disruption of cellphone communications.

According to the Associated Press, local emergency managers are developing plans to deal with potential outages, while AT&T representatives are working on building more infrastructure, including adding a mobile cell tower.

The Associated Press also said that emergency responders have radios that do not use cellphone coverage. However, they are preparing to use ham radios and pagers as backups.

Officials also said that both area residents and eclipse tourists need to prepare themselves for possible traffic jams and the obstruction of cellphone communications.

For one, anybody who will be out on the roads on Aug. 21 should carry plenty of water, food and emergency supplies in their vehicle in case they get stuck in a long traffic jam. These could last multiple hours on some East Idaho roads and highways.

Hammon said one astronomer who consulted with emergency management officials in Idaho Falls spent 10 hours in a traffic jam immediately after viewing a solar eclipse in Bangkok, Thailand.

Motorists should also ensure that they have a full tank of gas in their vehicles on the day of the eclipse. Because of traffic congestion, travelers should also give themselves plenty of extra time to get to their destinations.

“What we want to get across is that people in prime viewing areas should not expect to be home in time for dinner later that evening,” said Timothy Marsano, public information officer with the Idaho State Police. “The roads are expected to be extremely congested, which poses a challenge to all of the law enforcement agencies.”

Residents who will be staying home should also stock up on food and water and make sure they have plenty of medication in case traffic gridlock prevents them from driving to a grocery store or a pharmacy.

To prepare for cellphone outages, Hammon said residents should try to stay close to a landline phone in case of emergencies. She also said residents and visitors should not bog down dispatch lines with non-emergency calls.

“911 is going to have its hands full dealing with emergency calls,” Hammon said.

A public meeting regarding public safety during the eclipse will be held on July 26 at 7 p.m. at the Idaho Falls Civic Auditorium at 501 S. Holmes Ave. in Idaho Falls.

A surprising guest showed up at a Pocatello couple’s campsite this past weekend.

As Ben Cotter and his girlfriend, Journal employee Danae Lenz, sat around a campfire late Sunday afternoon, a black bear emerged from the woods.

“The bear was about 15 feet away,” Cotter said. “It was a pretty large bear. I would say it was about 300 to 400 pounds.”

At the time of the encounter, the couple was enjoying the day at Big Spring Campground, which is located near Bonneville Peak approximately 30 miles southeast of Pocatello. Though they spend a lot of time camping throughout the state, this is the first time a bear has actually paid them a visit.

However, the encounter was brief.

Cotter quickly alerted Lenz, who laid her eyes on the bear right before it ran off.

“I think it heard me,” Cotter laughs.

The couple attempted to follow the animal as it rushed toward a nearby creek, but it soon disappeared into the woods.

Jennifer Jackson, regional conservation educator for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said bear sightings in Southeast Idaho are rare but they do occur.

Fish and Game said grizzly bears can be found close to Yellowstone National Park. The most southerly place grizzlies have been found in East Idaho has been near Palisades Reservoir, but black bears are located throughout the state.

The black bear population near the southeastern corner of the state is even large enough to support some hunting seasons.

But every now and then, a bear sighting will cause a stir in other parts of Southeast Idaho.

In 2013, Fish and Game officials trapped a 2-year-old black bear that had been making frequent visits to Lava Hot Springs to pluck apples from a tree. The tree was located a block and a half from an elementary school.

Two years later, a black bear was struck and wounded by a car on Interstate 15 near the McCammon exit. The animal was later euthanized by a state trooper due to its injuries.

Both Lava Hot Springs and the location of the wildlife collision are within 20 miles of Big Spring Campground, where Sunday’s sighting occurred.

There has even been the occasional sighting in the Pocatello area. Last year, a juvenile bear broke into the basement of a residence in the Buckskin area east of the city. The bear returned to the home soon afterwards and scratched a hot tub cover.

Fish and Game officials attempted to trap the bear but eventually ceased operations after wildlife biologists concluded that the animal had moved out of the area.

Bear attacks on humans are even less rare than the occasional sightings in Southeast Idaho. However, one attack did occur in 2015, after a Bancroft woman accidentally stumbled across a cub while deer hunting with her family east of Soda Springs.

The mother bear attacked the woman, who sustained minor injuries.

Before the 2015 incident, the last time a bear attacked a human in that area was in September 2002, where a 29-year-old man was mauled on Stump Peak north of Soda Springs. Though seriously injured, he eventually recovered.

“When we have an attack, the bear is usually startled, protecting a cache of food or defending their young,” Jackson said, also noting that bears usually try to avoid humans.

Luckily, the bear that roamed into Cotter and Lenz’s campsite on Sunday didn’t seem to create any problems, except causing a bit of a scare.

“The camp host told us there hadn’t been any bear sightings at the campground in five years,” Cotter said.

Jacqueline Malloy said her devastating bike crash on May 11 was mostly a blur.

The Pocatello resident was biking on West Buckskin Road near ON Semiconductor in preparation for three upcoming 100-mile road cycling races. After pedaling ahead of her boyfriend, she began to descend a hill she had ridden many times before. In fact, reaching speeds of about 50 mph on this particular descent was not unusual for her.

Suddenly, she felt a bug land on her neck. She took one hand off her handlebars to swat the insect away.

After that, she doesn’t remember much.

Her boyfriend soon found her lying in the loose gravel off the shoulder of West Buckskin. A police report noted that skid marks from Malloy’s bike tires were present on the road, stretching for 30 feet and ending near her injured body.

“At first my boyfriend thought I was playing a joke,” she said. “But then he saw blood coming out of my mouth. I wasn’t breathing.”

BACKBONE

Emergency medical units quickly responded to the scene. Ironically, one of the paramedics also tunes skis at her place of employment, Barrie’s Ski and Sports.

In a concussed daze, Malloy kept asking him to tell her boss that she would be late for work that day. She did not know the extent of her injuries at the time — two shattered vertebrae, five fractured ribs, a broken nose, a concussion and a dislocated shoulder.

“It’s not something you expect to happen, that’s for sure,” she said.

The injuries were so severe that after Malloy was transported by ground ambulance to Portneuf Medical Center, she had to be airlifted to the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City. After she arrived, doctors performed a 6 and 1/2-hour surgery to repair her spine.

Luckily, Malloy was wearing a helmet at the time of her accident, and it took a beating. When she later examined her headgear, she found it covered with dents, with a large chunk torn out from the impact of the crash.

As a single mother to 9-year-old Raiken, Malloy said the outcome of the May 11 biking accident could have been far worse. 

“Thank God I was wearing my helmet,” she said.

MIRACLE

It’s only been a few weeks since the horrific crash, but Malloy is already making a strong recovery. In fact, many of her friends, family and co-workers are amazed she wasn’t paralyzed.

“It’s a miracle she’s still able to walk,” Kirk Lepchenske of Barrie’s Ski and Sports said.

Even the doctors who treated her are shocked by her mobility.

After returning home fresh off of her spinal surgery, Malloy started to feel uncontrollable pain in her back. She was taken to Portneuf Medical Center, where she was met by the emergency room doctor who first treated her immediately following the May 11 accident.

“He had another doctor come into the room and they had me wiggle my toes because they could not believe I was not paralyzed,” Malloy said.

BILLS

Despite the miraculous physical recovery, Malloy’s finances are suffering due to the medical costs for her treatment.

She received one bill from the University of Utah Medical Center totaling $150,000, and another one for $20,000 from Portneuf Medical Center. She still has not received the bill for the air ambulance that transported her to Salt Lake City after the crash, and she still has to be treated for a severed ligament in her shoulder.

At the time of the crash, Malloy did not have health insurance, and though she applied for aid, she is still facing a debt of at least $100,000 stemming from her health care costs.

FUNDRAISING

Every June, the Tour de Lava is held in Lava Hot Springs, and the proceeds from the bike ride are donated to a charitable cause in Southeast Idaho.

The money raised from the 2015 Tour de Lava ride was donated to Peyton’s Mission, a fund set up to provide financial assistance to Grace- and Bancroft-area teens who are about to head out on their missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The fund was named after Peyton Rindlisbaker, a 15-year-old teen who died in a motorcycle crash on March 10, 2015.

Last year, the ride’s proceeds were donated to help cover the medical expenses of Dustin Pace, who had been diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. According to the ride’s organizers, Pace’s cancer is currently in remission. 

The money raised from this year’s Tour de Lava, which will be held on Saturday, will be donated to Malloy to help pay for her medical bills.

“Jacqueline is such a kind and generous person,” said Darla Workman, one of the event’s coordinators. “We love her very much, and we want to support her in every way we can.”

The Tour de Lava ride begins and ends at the Lava Hot Springs Senior Center, with three routes available — a 16-mile option to Whisky Mike’s and back, a 34-mile option to Bancroft and back, and a 50-mile option from Bancroft and Chesterfield and back.

On-site registration is at 9 a.m. and the ride begins at 10 a.m. Water stations will be located at Whisky Mike’s, Bancroft and Chesterfield. Water, fruit and road support will be provided.

Participants can register online for $30 until Saturday at www.barriessports.com. On-site registration on the day of the event will be $40. A post-meal ride will be provided to the ride’s participants.

RECOVERY

Due to her injuries, Malloy will not be riding in this year’s Tour de Lava. Plus, competing in the three 100-mile road races she was prepping for at the time of her accident is now out of the question.

But despite surviving such a horrific crash, she says she is anxious to get back in the saddle.

“The crash is definitely not going to deter me from getting back on my bike,” she said.

Lisa King’s journey to the world’s tallest mountain began in 2015, when she received news nobody ever wants to hear.

Her doctor said she had breast cancer.

The diagnosis left the mother of two reeling. There wasn’t a history of cancer in her family. Plus, she always took extra steps to ensure she was living a healthy lifestyle, even going as far as using aluminum-free deodorant.

Lisa, who lives in Idaho Falls, also had concerns about what would happen to her husband, Kevin, and their two young girls, Clara and Elena, if the illness got the best of her.

“It was a shock, that’s for sure,” she said.

Doctors performed a lumpectomy to remove the cancerous lump. Then King underwent radiation treatment for an agonizing seven weeks.

The doctors also gave Lisa the option of getting a mastectomy. Luckily, it wasn’t needed to rid the cancer from her body.

“I didn’t want to do it if I didn’t have to,” she said.

Now, approximately a year and a half later, the 43-year-old King is a bona fide cancer survivor.

Radiating Hope

As a registered nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls, King works on the front lines of the health care industry. But her own health scare made her search out a way to help others fight cancer.

She found it with Radiating Hope.

Radiating Hope is a Utah-based nonprofit 501©(3) organization that raises money to provide cancer-treating radiation equipment to developing countries. What makes the organization different from other nonprofits is that it is geared toward mountain climbers.

Since she was a child growing up in western Pennsylvania, King has always been fascinated with mountain climbing. Before moving to East Idaho, she and her husband Kevin, a financial adviser with Edward Jones, lived in Colorado and would often hike up the state’s towering peaks.

“I’ve always been interested in mountaineering,” she said. “It’s always been on my bucket list to trek in the Himalayas.”

So when she discovered that Radiating Hope was going to take a group of cancer survivors to Everest Base Camp, located on Mount Everest, she jumped right in and began raising money for the organization.

The Kings were part of a group of 38 people from around the country who raised a total of $100,000. Of that total, Lisa and Kevin raised almost $15,000.

With EIRMC sponsoring her trip to Mount Everest, the Idaho Falls couple had punched their plane tickets to Nepal.

The Trek

With Clara and Elena staying with family, Lisa and Kevin’s big trip to Southeast Asia began on April 11. After spending two days in Kathmandu, the Kings left Nepal’s capital city with 35 others from Radiating Hope for the trek to Everest Base Camp.

The Kings would not be reaching the very top of Everest, which peaks at 29,029 feet. However, the hike to the base camp, which is located on the mountain at 17,575 feet, was a physically demanding journey in its own right.

With the help of a herd of yaks carrying their backpacks and gear, Lisa and Kevin made their way to the base camp via a long trail running up the side of the mountain. To the Kings’ surprise, the trail looked like rush hour, with local residents, yaks, burros and other trekkers often crammed side-by-side.

“When there’s a traffic jam on the trail, it bottlenecks with people and animals,” Lisa said.

Small villages dot the journey up the trail, and the Radiating Hope group would spend their nights at various teahouses along the way. One stop was particularly rewarding for the group.

In one of the teahouses, they met an elderly sherpa who is the last surviving member of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s legendary 1953 climb up Everest. On this ascent, Hillary and Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached Everest’s summit.

“He answered our questions,” Lisa said. “He told us there were 400 sherpas who supported the group. It took those 400 sherpas 16 days to go from Kathmandu to base camp. They pushed wheelbarrows filled with their gear the whole way.”

After a few days of hiking, the base camp was within eyesight. But Lisa, Kevin and approximately 10 others from their group decided first to take a detour to Kala Patthar, a mountainous landmark that provides hikers a closeup view of Mount Everest. In those early morning hours, the group watched in awe as the sun rose over the world’s tallest mountain.

“That was our favorite time of the hike,” Lisa said. “We started the day out with a bang, but the day didn’t end well.”

Sickness

Everest Base Camp is used to help mountain climbers acclimate to the high-altitude conditions before they make their ascent to the top of Everest. Lisa said seeing the camp in person is quite the sight.

“It’s a city of tents that sits on a glacier,” she said. “There’s a thin layer of rocks on top of the glacier.”

However, not everybody in Lisa and Kevin’s group had finished the trek. During the hike, numerous group members had to stop and head back down when they began to suffer the telltale signs of high altitude sickness — nausea, headaches, fatigue, nose bleeding, shortness of breath and dizziness.

The lack of oxygen at such high elevations is well-documented to bring on this type of illness, which in turn can lead to either high-altitude pulmonary edema or high-altitude cerebral edema, both of which can be fatal.

Initially, the Kings were doing just fine at base camp. However, a bout of altitude sickness soon stuck Lisa. Because of the dangers posed by illness, a doctor at base camp told her she needed to descend the mountain by way of helicopter. Lisa did not take the news well.

“I cried when they told me I would have to go down the mountain in a helicopter,” she said. “I wanted to do the entire trek by myself.”

However, heavy snows had grounded the helicopter, so Lisa was put on oxygen and given medications to deal with the sickness. As she laid in her tent, she kept hearing something she described as both remarkable and terrifying.

“I heard more avalanches than I could count,” she said. “I kept laying in my tent telling myself that they built the base camp in this location for a reason, so we wouldn’t get buried under an avalanche.”

By the early morning hours, Lisa was feeling better, so she and her husband left the tent and went to watch a group of mountaineers ascend the nearby Khumbu Icefall, which is considered one of the most dangerous obstacles toward Everest’s summit.

Lisa remembered a particular story the last surviving member of the Hillary/Tengay expedition told her days earlier. When the sherpas first encountered the icefall, they had to descend to a pine forest near the mountain’s base.

There, they assembled makeshift pine ladders and hauled them back up Everest to bypass the Khumbu. Nowadays, permanent ladders have been constructed to aid mountain climbers past the treacherous icefall.

As the Kings watched the climbers’ headlamps glowing in the distance, Kevin collapsed. Now he was suffering from altitude sickness.

At daybreak, the Kings began their descent, though Kevin had to ride a horse a portion of the way down while being administered oxygen. Eventually, he felt better and was able to get back on his feet.

For Lisa, she was now able to cross off a line on her bucket list.

Treatment

One memorable part of the trip to Nepal for Lisa was a visit to a cancer treatment center in Kathmandu. The building was relatively new, having been constructed a few years ago.

It was a place where she saw how health care in third-world countries is drastically different than the medical care in the United States. Lisa said that per capita, Nepal’s population needs 100 cancer radiation machines. The country currently has eight, and two do not work.

“A lot of people in Nepal who have cancer die because they don’t have treatment available,” she said.

Groups such as Radiating Hope are working to change those statistics. For a cancer survivor like Lisa, it was important to see how the $15,000 she raised was going to positively impact places like Nepal.

“It was rewarding to see where the money was going,” she said.

Prayer Flags

According to Radiating Hope’s website, prayer flags were originally used by Tibetan shamans during healing ceremonies.

“As the fragile flags are blown in the high mountain winds, they slowly unravel, the threads blowing away into the wind,” the website says. “Each thread that unravels represents a prayer of hope, strength, and health for the person it honors.”

Whenever trekkers from Radiating Hope take on the challenge to hike up the world’s tallest peak, it is customary for each group member to bring 25 Tibetan prayer flags with them.

Each flag has a prayer for somebody back home who has been affected by cancer, whether it’s a survivor or somebody who lost a loved one to the illness.

Between the two of them, Lisa and Kevin brought 50 of these prayer flags representing East Idahoans who stared cancer directly in the face.

It is considered bad karma to hang a prayer flag unless it is done by a Buddhist lama. Unfortunately, when the Kings were at base camp, a lama was not present.

The flags were hung two days after the Kings left the base camp. Lisa said she is currently awaiting photos of the prayer flags from a Radiating Hope representative.

Now that those flags are blowing in the mountain wind, Lisa isn’t the only East Idaho resident affected by cancer to make a mark at the top of the world.