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The power of the river

by Tryan Hartill

On this beautiful Sunday I decided to head out to my family’s property and see how things looked with my new camera. I had heard that there was more damage out there this year than the last 10 combined, and they were right.

My USB cable wasn’t working for my old camera, so yesterday I set out to find one. As luck my have it, there are none sold locally, even though I probably have the most popular digital camera ever…a Kodak EasyShare. So rather than pay close to 40 bucks to order one from Kodak, I just went ahead and bought a new one. It ended up being the correct choice because I now realize just how crappy my old camera was.


First is picture of where the most damage occurred.


A few months ago there was 8-10 trees standing right where the middle of the channel is today. The old channel was where the gravel pit is now. You can see just the edge of it off to the left. If you were standing on that grassy knoll when we had all of the rain in December, you would be standing in 2 feet of water.


The next photo is about a 1/4 mile down the river. All of this didn’t happen this year, but a good portion was eroded away over the last few months.




Just ten years ago you could walk a straight line from where I was standing, all the way to the patch of alder trees at the corner of the river in the middle/left portion of the photo.

Next photo is kind of interesting. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the river today, but the gravel bar off the the left is where the channel was before this winter.


And here is a photo from down below at this same area. A few months ago there was trees and about 20 feet of solid ground where the channel is now.






After seeing all of this destruction, I headed to another stream on our property, Hartill creek (fitting name don’t ya think?) This is one of the many tributaries of the Lewis and Clark. Oddly enough there was absolutely no damage of this particular creek. It looks exactly the same as it did 3 months ago.





Just to show you how much some of the local Rivers expand and contract, this is the same size the Lewis and Clark is in the summertime. You can cross it in many places with tennis shoes and not even get your feet wet.

Mar 4, 06:23 pm | Tryan Hartill
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8 comments on this article (post your own)

1 On Mar 4, 06:56 pm, THartill wrote:

Judging by my hits today, I would say that most everyone else was outside also.

So what did everyone do?

2 On Mar 4, 07:20 pm, Robin Hillard wrote:

My kids and I cut and stacked firewood,you ever get crawdads out of that creek.

3 On Mar 4, 07:36 pm, THartill wrote:

Yep there are quite a few. If you put a trap in for a couple of hours you will get about 15. If you put it back anywhere near the same spot as the first time, you might get 1.

4 On Mar 4, 10:17 pm, Auntie L wrote:

TH – looks like a cool place. Whatever happened to you dad’s M37 claim? I can’t remember.

5 On Mar 5, 08:19 am, Pierce wrote:

I guess we need to remember that Mother nature retains some easements no matter how uneasy they make the property owners. Of course all old pasture land with streams is flood plain and over the last few milleniei most every bit of that plain has taken it’s turn as stream bed. One side effect of this sort of heavy runoff may be that it’s great for the fish runs. The young fish get a quick ride to mother ocean. Large woody debris in the streams make good cover and rocky bottoms excellent nests for following generations . After the floods of ‘96 fishing was phenominal. No doubt ocean conditions played a big part there. It’ll be interesting to see if that happens again.

6 On Mar 5, 03:51 pm, The Guy Who Writes This wrote:

I’ve been up stream and down stream from there. It sure is a beautiful river. Makes me a bit sad I gave up fishing. I should kayak that stretch, but I’d have to put in at the 400 line, but then I’d probably get tangled in all the trees across the river these days. I’d probably want to survey from the air first. Thanks for sharing the photos.

7 On Mar 5, 04:26 pm, Stephanie Hampton wrote:

Hey tryan. Me and marcus and everyone were just up there the other day looking for a jeep a few fishermen saw up that way.

Stephanie

8 On Mar 5, 06:53 pm, Pierce wrote:

What I meant to say was Tryan was those are awesome pics with that new camera !

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