Salmon

Olympic National Park

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Even though the Hoh Rain Forest is on the far side of the park from Seattle, it’s popular in July, so I watched an otter playing in the water for half an hour while waiting my turn to drive through the gate to look for parking. (A parking map at the gate would save everyone time). The Hall of Mosses Trail above is easily hiked from the visitor center, and it’s impressive and definitely worth the trip. Several of the trees appear to be 1000 years old, and the streams are clear from spring water, where I saw tiny salmon among the bright green watercress.

There are some signs that the increased heat from carbon pollution is damaging some of the mosses, and while the overall annual precipitation has remained the same, it’s more concentrated in heavy downpours and less in the misty fog-drip that these sensitive plants require. The glaciers are also disappearing rapidly and will disappear completely in a few decades or less, severely impacting all the downstream ecosystems. Still, it’s my favorite park for moss.

Of course, Olympic also has mountains, including Hurricane Ridge and Mount Olympus, which feeds the Hoh and Queets Rivers. There’s a Hot Springs resort at Sol Duc and boating at Lake Crescent. The Olympic Peninsula also has Native American Reservations which help manage the coastal wilderness, wildlife refuge and marine sanctuary. For me, their crown jewel is their large temperate rainforest, but the other areas are also stunning. Some artists are painting the glaciers before they melt, but wouldn’t it be better if we all did our part to reduce our carbon footprints?

Whiskeytown National Recreation Area

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The 220’ three-tiered Whiskeytown Falls were a local secret known only to loggers and a few others until rediscovered by the park service staff in 2004. The ‘strenuous’ trail opened in 2006, and, since the shaded trail is in the 3% of the park not completely burned by the 230,000 acre Carr Fire in 2018, I decided to hike it earlier this summer, rather than broil on the water in my kayak.

But then these folks from Cal-Fire Bully Choop & Sugar Pine CC #9 passed me on my way up. Rather than complain, I gave them a bit of applause and thanked them for their heroism. They were taking turns cooling off in the 50° water. Of course, it’s not fair to expect these young people to risk their lives to protect our forests and property from the Climate Crisis we are all guilty of making worse, so they deserve our thanks all the more.

At the visitor center, I noticed that they are using an underwater curtain to block the warm surface water from continuing downstream from the dam. This innovation helps keep the water temperature low enough for Chinook salmon eggs and fry in the Sacramento River. I’m not sure how long it will work given the Climate Crisis, but it’s the least we can do after damming Clear Creek. Maybe we could ban gas-powered boats too?

I was disappointed to read the park newsletter with three long articles about the fire and zero mention of the Climate Crisis. I expect my tax dollars to be used more wisely. Denying the crisis only gives us less time to act.

Ross Lake National Recreation Area

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Ross Lake is atop three dams on the Skagit River which provides power to Seattle, but it still has some old growth forest near the visitor center which you can hike through on the River Loop and To Know a Tree Trails. Since the park is managed and surrounded by the North Cascades National Park, they run the visitor center. The Gorge High, Diablo & Ross Dams can all be seen in short hikes, and the good news this year after decades of tribal petitioning is that ‘fish passage’ will be added to all three dams! Hydroelectric power is zero carbon, but it must not be at the expense of salmon and other species that we’re driving extinct.

Anyway, I highly recommend those two hikes which total about three miles, and include waysides explaining the different types of trees, their niches in the forest and the natural cycle of wildfire. Another improvement would be building wildlife bridges along the highway & over the river, so that animals like Grizzly Bears could migrate between north and south sections of the park more easily. Well, in any case, Ross Lake extends to the Canadian border and has many paddle-in campsites for folks who rent gear from the resort or somehow portage their kayak around the Ross dam after paddling across Diablo Lake. Seemed like too much work to me to explore an artificial lake, but maybe if I had more time to try fishing, it would make a nice vacation.

Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area

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A couleé is an old French Canadian word meaning a flow, such as a spring creek that carves out a gully. Roughly 15,000 years ago the giant glacial Missoula Lake melted, ice dams broke and the floods carved a giant gorge here. The Columbia River used to roll on through the grand couleé until the giant dam was built, providing power and irrigation to an extensive area. FDR approved the project, so the man made lake that stretches all the way back into Canada is named after him. The dam has a museum showing old propaganda films about how wonderful dams are. The 12 bands of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation couldn’t stop the dam, but now they own the lake and co-manage it with the park service. They also hold ceremonies to ask for the return of the salmon.

Fort Spokane—rhymes with ‘man’—has an old school built to force Native American children to be like white kids, and it still hosts Buffalo soldier descendant reunions. The fort is also part of the Nez Perce story, as Chief Joseph and refugees were forced to winter here, receiving some emergency supplies from a trading post named Fort Colville after the governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and some Nez Perce are still here. Many Chinese settled here when there were mining camps, but then they were excluded from immigrating by law, driven out of many northwest communities and massacred in at least a few cases.

There’s a scenic drive up the northeast coast of the lake, past farms, a ferry and a few boat launches. The town of Colville is mostly underwater now, but the mission remains on park grounds. I hiked a few miles looking for the remains of the original townsite of Kettle Falls that was moved to accommodate the lake. There was some fire damage and fireweed blooming, and there’s a large plywood operation nearby. I found the wetlands above between the park service campgrounds and a day use area. There were many geese around here, a few hikers, and I disturbed a large white-tail deer on the trail. It was hot in July, but cooler in Washington state than most of the country.