Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... [ ♪♪♪ ] MAN: My rappel!

MAN: Oh, my gosh, it's beautiful.

MAN: Good morning, everybody.

Woo!

Let's do it again!

MAN: Nicely done!

MAN: Oh, yeah!

Fourteen and a half.

Yes, that was awesome!

[ people cheering ] There you go, up, up... ED JAHN: Tonight on Oregon Field Guide: At first glance, it's just a fox.

He's tucked himself up into the treeline up there.

But this fox has outfoxed even the best researchers.

Then, Portland mountain bikers used to have to drive hours to find great trails... until now.

Oh!

Want something less intense?

Todd Sonflieth has a peaceful visual treat for you.

MAN: I think I'll set one right down there.

But first, we return to the site of recent wildfires to find a reason to hope.

What happens after a wildfire rips through a forest?

It's a question that often conjures up images of devastation or destruction.

But after a wildfire, you also see life returning.

And Cassandra Profita found one man who's documenting that return on camera.

MAN: Ooh, it's a burned-out structure up here.

Let's go this way.

I think I'll set one right down there.

My name is Ralph Bloemers, and for the last four years, I've been capturing wildlife photography in severely burned areas.

Arm camera: yes.

Take pictures: yes.

Right now, I have cameras in seven different locations... from the Siskiyous all the way to Mount Hood, the Columbia River Gorge, and then some in the Santiam Canyon.

We're here in the Beachie Fire, and this burned about nine months ago.

So it's still kind of a blank canvas, a charcoal canvas for nature to paint green.

This will let off scent, and it'll travel up to two miles out.

If there's animals, we will get to see them.

There are so many strongly held beliefs about fire: fire destroying the forest, fire killing all wildlife, that all fires can and must be put out.

The reality is that this landscape has lived with fire since the retreat of the ice sheets.

And so, you know, for the most part the animals survive these big events and thrive afterwards.

This is in the Columbia River Gorge, and I picked this cougar up in three different locations.

And at this same location, I've got the mama and kits.

One of the other things that I do is time-lapse.

So this is an area where it's all stand-replacing fire.

This is one of my most favorite spots, because the sea of avalanche lilies there is incredible.

They're only there because this forest burned in high severity and they're sun-loving, and then you also capture the wildlife eating these flowers.

You capture the bees pollinating them, and there's just all this noise and activity in something that people believe, a lot of people believe, has been destroyed.

And then here's Lewis.

One of my favorite captures in that landscape is this big, lonely bull elk that I've named Lewis.

And in this particular shot, he turns and looks right at the camera, knows it's there.

I am going mostly to high-severity patches where everything is killed because there's the most bird life, there's the most regrowth of vegetation, there's the most food for the elk, which means there's more likely to catch the cougars there.

There's more food for the bears, because they prefer the fireweed and the young plants, and they're eating all of that stuff.

They're digging into logs and eating the bugs.

Really, it's a vast supermarket of tasty treats for them.

When I first started trying to capture wildlife out there, I didn't expect to capture as much with my camera as I have.

As we wrestle with intense fires and have this sense of mourning that we've lost places as we know them, they are changed.

But I think what I take away from it is that they're dynamic, these landscapes, and we love them because they're wild and dynamic and because we aren't in control of them.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Somewhere around here is a rare fox.

It's small and slender and the color of these rocks.

And all around is a million places for it to hide.

So if you're a scientist trying to study them, it's easy to be outfoxed.

IAN MCCLUSKEY: Here in Oregon's Central Cascade Mountains, wildlife biologist Jamie Bowles is in search of a tiny fox.

[ static over speaker ] There we go.

[ soft beeping over speaker ] I'm starting to pick it up a little bit.

I'm up here looking for a particular fox.

It's the SNRF, so the Sierra Nevada red fox, number 38.

Most folks are familiar with red foxes.

They're commonly found around the world.

But the species of red fox that Jamie is trying to find here, the Sierra Nevada red fox, is both rare and elusive.

There's very, very little known about the Sierra Nevada red fox.

In fact, the bulk of the research has been done here in Oregon just during the last three years.

The beeping antenna tool that Jamie is using is common to wildlife biology.

It's called radiotelemetry.

Telemetry is a lot like being a mountain goat.

She previously captured the individual fox she calls SNRF 38 and placed a transmitting radio collar on it.

Now she's trying to get close enough to the fox to be able to download the data that the collar has been recording.

He's tucked himself up into the treeline up here.

Telemetry, I think, is very fun to do, because you're having to adjust the gain on your receiver to find that exact tone that you're looking for.

The perfect tone when I'm in proximity sounds a certain way.

And so I've sort of cued my ear to that.

[ beeping ] And what I'm looking for is has the fox shifted in direction?

Am I still getting closer?

Or has the fox now turned and the fox is behind me?

[ whispering ] He is -- he moved.

Up around here.

And he's just skirting right beside us.

I'm always trying to figure out exactly what it is that they're thinking.

I think they're at least, you know, four steps ahead of me.

I know which direction the fox is in and the proximity that it is from me -- is he close, is he far, is he moving away, is he moving closer -- but somehow he just keeps managing to get away from me or hiding in plain sight.

One of the reasons that Sierra Nevada red foxes are so hard to see is because of their small size.

They're only six to ten pounds.

Now, I think this is really fascinating, because my cat is larger than these foxes.

The other thing that makes Sierra Nevada red foxes so hard to see is their color.

Although Sierra Nevada red foxes are red foxes by species, they're not necessarily red in color.

They're often black, gray, and tan, blending perfectly into the forest.

They do know that they are small enough and they're dark enough.

They know what to blend into.

But if they don't want to be seen, they're not gonna make themselves known.

SNRF 38 has quietly slipped around Jamie and headed to higher ground.

They certainly don't lack for escape up here.

These foxes are montane, meaning they live in mountains.

There are three subspecies named for the major mountain ranges of the West: Rocky Mountain red foxes, Cascade red foxes, and the Sierra Nevada red foxes.

Biologists knew that there were montane foxes in the Central Cascades, but it was assumed that they were Cascade red foxes until DNA tests of hair samples revealed that the foxes were actually Sierra Nevada red foxes.

In 2016, a trail camera captured what is likely the very first image of a Sierra Nevada red fox family at their den.

The dad, called the todd, has returned with a meal while the young kits play and the mother vixen keeps watch.

Of the three montane subspecies of red foxes, the Sierra Nevada red fox is the one with the smallest population size, and so it was really special to find out that here in the Cascades of Oregon, that we have this particular subspecies.

The population that lives in the Sierra Mountains near Yosemite is estimated to be as few as 15, putting them on the Endangered Species list.

But no one actually knows how many Sierra Nevada red foxes live in Oregon.

Up to now, so little has been known about them that anything Jamie can learn is new information.

You know that they're somewhere around you, but somehow -- I'm just never prepared.

Like I'll have my phone with me and I'll just catch something out of the side of my eye, and there will be the fox, and I'll be fumbling to get my camera out, and if I'm lucky, maybe I'll be able to get a video or a very blurry shot of a critter just boot-scooting just right out of range.

You do end up with all these videos, and it's like sasquatch.

You know, they're all shaky, and you're like, "No, I swear, it's a fox.

I know it looks really blurry, but I promise."

Other people sometimes catch unexpected glimpses of montane red foxes.

MAN: You're not gonna believe this.

Look what I'm looking at right now.

Look at him.

What a beautiful animal.

JAMIE: And these are the photos that get submitted to me.

Like this was a photo from somebody that was driving down the Cascade Lakes highway, and there's a fox, hanging out on the side of the road.

Crazy, huh?

Camouflaged.

Here's a good example of how different they look during the summer.

I mean, shorter pelts for sure, not a poofy tail.

The data that Jamie downloads from the radio collars are helping fill in the map, revealing new scientific insights about the foxes.

And the first question: where are they and where do they go?

Where are they hanging out at?

Are they staying concentrated in one area, or do they go and find other areas for prey sources or in search of a mate or another territory to disperse to?

And these are sort of their routes that they're going.

So each of these angles would be one data point moving to another data point.

And so now what we're discovering is that they do move long distances.

I mean, we'll see, in a day, a particular individual move 14 to 16 miles in one day, and that's something we didn't know before.

And I think we're just at the tip of really discovering exactly what these foxes can do.

My dream would be, you know, to start filling in those areas, to really see how many foxes we might have here in Oregon.

If Jamie can capture another fox and place a radio collar on it, she increases the chances of collecting more valuable data.

But the Sierra Nevada red foxes are just as hard to trap as they are to track.

It's not as easy as you just set a trap out and put some bait in it, and the next day, bam, you're gonna have a fox.

I mean, it could be months in between captures.

All right, that one's ready.

As Jamie makes her rounds, she finds several of her traps have failed or have been sprung by other animals.

You know, came to the very last trap of the trap line, and there's something in it, but it wasn't a fox.

[ growling ] Instead of a fox, Jamie finds another small carnivore of the forest, a feisty martin.

[ growling ] Which is exciting to see, because you get to see one of those up close, which was cool, but, you know, I just went through all that effort and a big walk around, and yet outfoxed again.

Hi, dude.

Go ahead.

So out of about 5-- 600 trap nights that we had up until the end of June, we had captured about 15 foxes, so a 3 percent success rate?

Yeah, typical day.

[ antenna beeping ] After miles and miles of walking in circles, it's nearing the end of the day.

This is one of the very last days of the summer field session, and Jamie is still trying to pinpoint the only fox that currently has a collar on, SNRF 38.

So he's down here in this thick stand of trees.

He's not far from us.

I can hear it both directions.

[ whispers ] He's not far from us.

[ antenna beeping ] He's right there.

You can see the bush moving.

Oh, there he is, there he is!

Right there.

At last, SNRF 38.

At least a glimpse... See him?

...and then he is gone.

Darn you, sly fox!

Outfoxed me yet again.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Oregon has some great biking trails, but if you're a mountain biker in Portland, there really aren't that many places close to ride.

That is, until now.

Welcome to the Fear and Loaming Trail.

MAN: This trail is pretty amazing and kind of breaks the mold of what we have out here.

MAN: I just still have, like, this feeling of unbelief.

You know, this type of trail does exist literally less than an hour from where I live.

MAN: There's a lot of jumps.

We've got 15 to 20 jumps.

I think our largest jump is 35 feet, and that's pretty big.

RIDER: Yeah!

MAN: It's a rush, it's always a little terrifying.

You are pedaling as hard as you can for this lip, you can't see the landing, you know it's down there.

And every time I hit it, it's like, "All right, we got it!

Time for the next one."

WOMAN: Yeah, I think I smile for hours after every ride.

MAN: The best part is that adrenaline rush that you get from riding something that you made.

All right!

[ bikers chattering ] Thanks for coming out.

Welcome to Fear and Loaming, if you guys haven't been here.

It's been a long time coming.

Today we're going to be doing some building, some riding, and we've got a lot of people.

We're just gonna walk down that way a little bit.

Anybody needs any tools or anything else, let's get these dirty.

My name is Ryan McLane.

I'm kind of the trail manager out here.

I think the first thing we wanna do is get everything down to dirt.

Oh, hell yeah!

This is gonna look so good!

[ laughs ] This is all hand-built.

This isn't like we got a million-dollar grant and somebody's coming out, a professional, and they're like with excavators building all this.

It's a lot of work.

Oh, geez.

Oh, my gosh.

RYAN: Ooh, it's looking good, guys.

It's taking shape.

He is not helping.

We start with, like, bare forest.

So we come through and we have to clear everything.

WOMAN: Oh, yeah, this goes real deep.

We gotta get all the old log out of there till we get to this light -- this stuff right here.

So we gotta move the whole mountain basically.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

This whole thing is just completely organic.

My hands are working better for this one, because all these roots, they're getting stuck on my shovel.

There's this phrase mountain bikers have, that they say, "No dig, no ride."

Heh, that means, like, nobody would be mountain biking if people weren't building the trails, basically.

So it's a great service, and it also pays us back, because we get to ride it after, you know?

And we can build it how we want.

We live in such a weird time where, you know, you see a lot of other things happening in the city of Portland.

And it's kind of disheartening.

And then you come out to this place, you have people with different background, different ages, beliefs, religion, you know, orientation.

The only common denominator we have, we all love riding mountain bikes.

One of the cool things about cutting new trail and being able to ride it is remembering what it did look like, you know, when there was brush everywhere, you're cutting through trees and things like that.

And so being able to look back now and see what it's turned into, it's -- there's a sense of fulfillment.

Ryan's been working for 15 years trying to get this going.

We live like 20 miles away from here, and we were driving an hour and a half, two hours in other directions, and we'd look behind us at the hills as we were driving away and be like, "Why aren't we going up there?"

So we found a plan that Oregon Department of Forestry funded, and it says, "You've got all this terrain and not enough bike trails to satisfy the need."

So almost quite literally we showed up with shovels and said, "All right, we're ready.

We want to build."

They were like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Wait, wait, wait.

We gotta think about this."

We went through a pretty detailed process, created a fairly comprehensive plan.

We put together, I think it was a 30-page document.

And we hand-delivered that to them in 2009, and if you guys remember what happened in 2009, we had a huge crash.

When the recession hit, that really changed the priorities for the program and for the agency, and we downsized, we laid off staff.

RYAN: And we're chomping at the bit to get a trail in, and they say, "Sorry, we're under order: no new trails."

Two years ago, I got a call on my cell.

So I took it, and it's Randy, and he's saying, "We got the green light."

And I broke down.

Like, I lost it.

It's still like -- to this day, it's like, you got that much time, it's, like, super cool.

[ bikers chattering ] MAN: Rolling!

WOMAN: You know, you start in a really dark, like, steep area, surrounded by Doug firs, and you come out into like a clear-cut section that's almost like a high-desert vibe, and then you kind of dive back into the darkness, you come into the alders, which is honestly my favorite part.

It's magical, the lighting is like... [ sighs ] RYAN: You've got all these people that are just railing through the forest, and then you come out to the bottom, and then you look around, and everybody's got this ear-to-ear grin and they're all slapping high-fives and, yeah, that's amazing.

MAN: Ryan's organized a group of people who...

I mean, none of us knew each other before we all came together, and now we're all fast friends, and he's just brought this community together around this one trail in a way that I've never seen before.

[ bikers whooping, cheering ] RYAN: These people are my brothers and sisters.

Without them, we wouldn't be anywhere.

WOMAN: How was it?

It was so much fun?

I live for this!

RYAN: When I started with this project, I was 25 years old.

Gotta build it if you want it.

"If you build it, they will come."

That's right.

And now I'm 41 years old.

So here we are, 16 years later.

WOMAN: Good day?

MAN: Yeah, great day.

Rad day.

RYAN: And we're just about ready to open the trail.

It's one of the biggest things that's happened to me.

It's pretty cool.

[ bikers whooping ] [ ♪♪♪ ] I'm Todd.

I've been filming on Oregon Field Guide for a long time.

And when I'm home, I like to relax in my little backyard oasis.

It reminds me of places like this.

[ birds chirping ] [ ♪♪♪ ] You can now find many Oregon Field Guide stories and episodes online.

And to be part of the conversation about the outdoors and environment here in the Northwest, join us on Facebook.

[ birds chirping ] Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... Additional support provided by... And the following... and the contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.