Palouse & Snake rivers, Washington
A young lock tender for the Corps of Engineers at Ice Harbor Dam regaled our guests with operational details while we waited for the lock chamber to fill with 43 million gallons of water.
A microphone was handed across to Russ Gilliam of Pasco. We lined the port side of Sea Bird to hear the lock tender describe operations at this dam 10 miles upriver on the Snake from its confluence with the Columbia. He said the four lower Snake River dams we locked through today are “run of the river,” meaning they have minimal fluctuation because they are prime power sources, not flood control. There is no charge for lockage at these dams, and starting with the recreation season craft as small as fishing skiffs or kayaks are allowed to enter the lock every three hours. Barge traffic has first priority.
As part of the ongoing fish passage upgrade, Gilliam said a $23 million movable surface screen to protect young downstream migrant steelhead and salmon has just been installed at Ice Harbor. Considering the dam’s name guests wanted to know if the Snake freezes in winter. “It’s an old name from pre-dam days when stern wheelers gathered in a protected pocket to wait for the ice to break upstream. The weather pattern changed and we don’t freeze,” replied Gilliam.
Our morning opened with a yellow school bus ride to Palouse Falls State Park. En route we fell in with a herd of range cows and their new calves herded down the gravel road by two buckaroos, one of which rode an Appaloosa horse, the very breed developed on this range by the Palouse and Nez Perce tribes.
May is perfect timing to see the 185-foot falls at full volume filling their black-walled punchbowl with curtains of mist. This gorge and all the surrounding land was gouged and sculpted by Ice Age flood torrents moving about 65 miles an hour and some 800 to 1,000 feet high. White-throated swifts that winter in South America and nest here careened around the punchbowl. Alternate groups kayaked or took Zodiak cruises up the Palouse Canyon. Some glided quietly into swarms of cliff swallows gathering mud pellets at the waters edge for their nesting colonies. Six red-tailed hawks rode a thermal almost out of sight above the bluffs.
Capt. Clark named this river for George Droulliard, their best hunter, scout and master of sign language. Clark spelled it Drewyer in the journal, but the name was lost because publication of the full text of the journals was so long delayed. It was a brigade of Northwest Company trappers who named this vast sweep of grassland “la palouse,” which is French for grassland. Thus derived the name for the river, falls, Palouse tribe and the horses they raised.
A young lock tender for the Corps of Engineers at Ice Harbor Dam regaled our guests with operational details while we waited for the lock chamber to fill with 43 million gallons of water.
A microphone was handed across to Russ Gilliam of Pasco. We lined the port side of Sea Bird to hear the lock tender describe operations at this dam 10 miles upriver on the Snake from its confluence with the Columbia. He said the four lower Snake River dams we locked through today are “run of the river,” meaning they have minimal fluctuation because they are prime power sources, not flood control. There is no charge for lockage at these dams, and starting with the recreation season craft as small as fishing skiffs or kayaks are allowed to enter the lock every three hours. Barge traffic has first priority.
As part of the ongoing fish passage upgrade, Gilliam said a $23 million movable surface screen to protect young downstream migrant steelhead and salmon has just been installed at Ice Harbor. Considering the dam’s name guests wanted to know if the Snake freezes in winter. “It’s an old name from pre-dam days when stern wheelers gathered in a protected pocket to wait for the ice to break upstream. The weather pattern changed and we don’t freeze,” replied Gilliam.
Our morning opened with a yellow school bus ride to Palouse Falls State Park. En route we fell in with a herd of range cows and their new calves herded down the gravel road by two buckaroos, one of which rode an Appaloosa horse, the very breed developed on this range by the Palouse and Nez Perce tribes.
May is perfect timing to see the 185-foot falls at full volume filling their black-walled punchbowl with curtains of mist. This gorge and all the surrounding land was gouged and sculpted by Ice Age flood torrents moving about 65 miles an hour and some 800 to 1,000 feet high. White-throated swifts that winter in South America and nest here careened around the punchbowl. Alternate groups kayaked or took Zodiak cruises up the Palouse Canyon. Some glided quietly into swarms of cliff swallows gathering mud pellets at the waters edge for their nesting colonies. Six red-tailed hawks rode a thermal almost out of sight above the bluffs.
Capt. Clark named this river for George Droulliard, their best hunter, scout and master of sign language. Clark spelled it Drewyer in the journal, but the name was lost because publication of the full text of the journals was so long delayed. It was a brigade of Northwest Company trappers who named this vast sweep of grassland “la palouse,” which is French for grassland. Thus derived the name for the river, falls, Palouse tribe and the horses they raised.
