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Rebecca Rusch Summits Everest Via Trail Creek, Snow Leopard Sightings Rise
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Wednesday, May 27, 2020
 

BY KAREN BOSSICK

With the Memorial Day Run at Redfish Lake postponed to fall, a number of hardy Wood River Valley residents took up Rebecca Rusch’s COVID Relief Challenge, also known as the Giddy Up for Good Challenge.

The idea: To bike or run all or part of the equivalent of 29,029-foot Mt. Everest indoors or outdoors.

Rusch pedaled up the road to Trail Creek Summit 22 times beginning on Sunday and finishing on Monday to amass the number of feet in 29,029-foot Mt. Everest.

Friends Karoline Droege and Muffy Ritz joined her on the last lap. Her husband Greg Martin, Monica Catalano and dogs Diesel and Gracie were there to welcome her at the end.

“The best part was not my personal #Everesting satisfaction,” she said, also acknowledging how the ride honored military personal, including her own father Capt. Steven Rusch. “But of the overwhelming achievement of almost 900 athletes from around the globe who have collectively raised over $110 thousand and climbing to help Be Good Foundation Support COVID relief.

In fact, athletes’ $20 entry fees and other donations will go towards the COVID relief work of World Bicycle Relief, PeopleForBikes.org and the Centers for Disease Control Foundation. Those organizations are supplying bicycles for frontline healthcare workers in many countries, among other things.

Jeri Howland, who is currently riding out the pandemic in northern California, said she and other friends of Rusch’s who are top competitors at Rebecca’s Private Idaho every Labor Day Weekend took part on  bicycle.

“It’s one of the biggest days I’ve had on the bike. The weather was perfect and because of COVID and the route I chose we had no cars,” she said. “We all cheered each other on, which was so fun and made the challenge much less painful.”

Life is good for cyclers in her part of California because there are so few cars on the road right now, Howland added. She and her friends get up early every day and ride mountain road and trails for two to three hours. Then at 5 p.m. they shut off their computers and go for 2- to 3-hour hikes.

“Life is good for us, but I really worry about the economy and the people who have lost so much,” she said.

Closer to the Wood River Valley, Chrissy Gove, Susan Robinson and Muffy Ritz rode the back side of Galena Pass. They made seven laps, racking up 1,380 feet per lap up the 8,700-foot pass to make their goal of 10,590 feet—a third of Everest.

MORE COMMUNITY SPREAD DETECTED

Idaho gained 15 new cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, bring it to 2,699 cases. It gained three new deaths—all in Twin Falls County.Twin Falls now has as many COVID-related deaths as Ada County, which has five times the population. Eighty-one Idahoans now have died of COVID-19.

Blaine County had no new cases.

Community spread has been detected for the first time in Cassia County. That means health officials have not been able to trace a case to out-of-state travel or identifiable contact with another person with confirmed COVID-19.

Health officials expect to see more confirmed cases in that county in the next few days and advise residents in that county that the virus can be anywhere in the community.

MORE HOLES MEANS MORE SOCIAL DISTANCING

Sun Valley Resort has now opened all 45 holes on its Trail Creek, Elkhorn and White Clouds courses. The resort is the 2020 Golf Digest Editors’ Choice Award for the Best Pacific Northwest Resorts.

America, population 330 million, neared the grim milestone of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday. But six Asia-Pacific nations—Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan and Vietnam—have just over 1,200 coronavirus deaths in a combined population of 328 million, noted Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

On Saturday, when Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker showed 1,208 new deaths in America, those countries recorded 13 deaths—12 of them in Japan, said CNN.

DOOR TO DOOR TESTING ADDS UP

The Chinese city of Wuhan conducted more than 6.5 million nucleic acid coronavirus tests in nine days—from May 15 to 23-- in order to prevent a second wave of infections. The city has 11 million people.

Tests identified 198 asymptomatic people who carried the virus without exhibiting symptoms, according to CNN.

On one day alone the city conducted 1.47 million tests, with testers even going door to door. America’s highest daily number of tests has been 416,183, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The United States has performed 14.131 million tests since the pandemic began. That number also includes antibody tests, which determine whether someone has been exposed to the virus in the past.

STOCK EXCHANGE REOPENS BUT WITH A CAVEAT

The New York Stock Exchange partially reopened Tuesday after having closed on March 23. But traders are not allowed to take public transportation to work. And they have to sign a waiver that returning to the floor could result in them contracting COVID-19, respiratory failure, death and transmitting COVID-19 to relatives and others. Those others could suffer the same effects, the waiver said.

The Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem has reopened, as well, but only to 50 people at a time.

VACCINE CANDIDATE ENTERS NEXT PHASE

The U.S. biotechnology company Novavax began injecting a coronavirus vaccine candidate into 131 Australians on Tuesday. Officials hope to know the results in July. They’re already making doses in anticipation of deploying it by the end of the year.

LEOPARD SIGHTINGS RISE AS CORONAVIRUS EMPTIES STREETS

Several snow leopards, including a mother and her cub, have been hiking a usually popular hiking trail within the city limits of the Kazakh city of Almaty. The trail has been off limits to human hikers due to a coronavirus lockdown.

With just 150 of the leopards left in Kazakhstan, the cats are rarely seen in the wild, let alone within city limits.

~  Today's Topics ~


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