[Chief Joseph]

Seems to be a very tough job. In my non professional <opinion> it seems that in the cascades they sometimes under-estimate the power of mother nature, in many cases a wild stream or river. Last week during the heavy rains a FB poster observed a large mount of logs floating past her house next to the Stillaguamish river. They were wondering if they might have come from the recent construction of a levee and salmon rearing ponds up at Gold Basin. It looks like on the east side of the campground, just across the river about a 70' section of trees lining the levee were washed away. Some are about a mile downstream washed up against the north bank. When I went up there last week during the height of the storm, there were 4' waves and the river was near the top of the levee. I suppose it was to be expected that some would dislodge, and the section in question was right where the river makes a bend to the south. On the plus side, there is a very nice sandy beach seen on the mid-right side of my first photo.

[Chief Joseph]

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/at-gold-basin-a-river-is-moved-to-save-endangered-salmon/?fbclid=IwAR0cGg6cgbz3XWTWO5YaYpmCGLkQ4Bh9CvsLa25PkKugqoRn4QZ9ePuv5ko

[treeswarper]

The log structures that were placed along the Cispus River in the 1990s have been working as they should. The purpose was to save the 23 road. The river has not had the same major flooding as in 1996? again, so we don't know if they will hold through that much water. Similar structures have been placed along highway 12 just east of Randle to try to save the highway. Other small successes have been replacing culverts with wet crossings--concrete contoured a bit to let water go over, and trash catchers. That's so far. I would expect those to fail someday.

[Pyrites]

https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/229intro.pdf https://file.dnr.wa.gov/publications/em_fp_biomass_forest_to_sea_story_fallen_trees.pdf See p 48. Authors were a virtual who’s who fisheries and forest of the time, maybe leaving out Kate Sullivan. This and the follow on book by Maser and Sedell of half a dozen years later were kind of a shock to me. The idea that not just rivers like the Stilly, and the Green, but the Willamette, Skagit, and Snohomish had log jams that in some cases extended for miles - big, powerful rivers - truly monstrous beasts a few days a decade - it’s just so different. They talk large woody debris with 18” diameter now. It’s hard to remember and envision out side of the Park many 4 and 6’ diameter logs that must have been the founding logs of those jams. You just can’t pull out 300 or 500 year old trees with their root wads attached to build fish habitat. Some books disturb the senses, forever. You drive over the bridges and see imposed on your sight the alternatives past.

[Kim Brown]

These logs don't look secured as an Engineered Log Jam would be, but maybe they are (or were) and the photo doesn't show it. Along the banks of the White River at Federation State Forest you can see more-engineered ELJ's, with the anchor logs pounded into the banks and logs lashed together. I don't know why these weren't built the same as the others; the Stilly is not Wild & Scenic, but perhaps it's another designation that prohibits it.

[treeswarper]

Columbia Helicopters had a contract in the Oregon Coast Range and was ferrying large diameter logs sans rootwads to place in streams. I do know that in the same area, it had to be explained to a fisheries person that it isn't exactly possible to push over large diameter trees in a safe manner using for instance, a large excavator. It might be possible to push one over in the right circumstances, but not exactly safe due to limbs, tops breaking, control, etc. of the tree. Then it takes pretty big equipment to load it onto a truck. (time to think in a scandihoovian type accent now) Back in da not too old days, it took a logger about an hour to get a large log onto a truck using his second growth sized equipment. The truck had two small bunk logs, and then the big punkin log was wrassled onto the trailer using chokers, a skidder and the Barko loader. The truck was getting jostled pretty good during this feat. There was a lot of yelling and moving of the skidder into different positions. The log went to the old Packwood mill, which is no longer a mill. I do have a black and white photo of this, but not handy right now.

[George Winters]

This will be an interesting experiment to watch. Google Earth gives an opportunity to look at about 3 decades of images, showing a very short snapshot of that active geological system across the river from the Gold Basin campground. The images show that in about 1990 the loop of the river was several hundred feet farther NE. In a decade or so the mountain slope of clay/sediment advanced, covering the 1990 river bed an average of over 30 feet deep, moving the river SE. Looking at the photo in the Herald, it appears the canal has been excavated to move the river a similar further distance SE, which, at least for now, gets the river away from the toe of that moving mass of clay/sediment. I see two questions related to two big natural local forces. First, in the short term, will the river dynamics of flooding and sediment and upstream debris let the river stay in the new canal? Second, in the long term, will the huge mass of clay/sediment keep moving SE? As for the logs visible in the Herald photo, my guess is that their size and mass is probably irrelevant in relation to the two major local dynamic forces.

[treeswarper]

OOps, I forgot about this event. In 2016 too. Oh well. https://www.chronline.com/stories/no-timetable-to-repair-forest-service-roads-damaged-by-flooding,63956

[Chief Joseph]

[RumiDude]