Palouse River Canyon
By kayak, Zodiac and school bus we set out from Sea Lion for a morning of exploration into the Palouse River Canyon in Washington State’s remotest corner.
No din of rushing river here. The hush of the canyon was interspersed with a bubbling song from Western Meadowlark on the high grassland or a twittering of Cliff Swallow rebuilding last season’s nest colony of mud pellet gourds.
Our Zodiac driver cut the outboard and we slipped right under swallows swarming to an overhanging cliff where they plaster their homes. It’s a wonderful sensation to sit silently while the raft drifts alongside great towers and mesas sculpted by Pleistocene floods. Ice dams some 2,500 feet high on an upper Columbia River tributary released flood torrents that repeatedly imprinted this land from 15,000 to 10,000 years ago.
The Corps of Engineers built four hydropower dams with navigation locks on the lower Snake River, and this created the backwater we followed into the Palouse River. Migrating Western and Clark’s grebes and Bufflehead rested on the backwaters. Beaver and Muskrat were active in willow thickets and bullrush marsh that formed when the dam stilled the lower end of the Palouse River. Naturalist Steve Engle, an animal sign expert, made us a small casting where mink, raccoon and goose had all left their tracks.
Bus and Zodiac parties traded off at a Lyons Ferry State Park landing, at the confluence of the Snake and Palouse rivers. Here the yellow school bus shuttled us onto the plateau and Palouse Falls State Park for a look straight into the plunge bowl created by the glacial Missoulian Flood. In some of those flood events 500 cubic miles of water poured across this land within a day or two.
The Corps of Discovery passed through this same reach of lower Snake River Oct. 11-16, 1805 which we covered in smooth comfort today. And we had time for a barbecue deck lunch and our morning explorations. Lewis and Clark had to negotiate 30 rapids, including one portage, and they upset one of their dugouts and lost valued gear.
“We should make more portages if the season were not so advanced and time so precious,” Capt. William Clark wrote in his journal.
For the Palouse and Nez Perce Indians the passage of the Corps down this reach of river was a grand affair. They followed in canoe, afoot and horseback.
Nez Perce Chief Twisted Hair served as guide and emissary for the expedition from his village on the Clearwater River to Celilo on the Columbia, the greatest fishing and trading site in the old Oregon Country.
Our day ended with the sun setting at the juncture of the Columbia and Snake rivers that provided the navigation route President Jefferson instructed them to seek and follow.
By kayak, Zodiac and school bus we set out from Sea Lion for a morning of exploration into the Palouse River Canyon in Washington State’s remotest corner.
No din of rushing river here. The hush of the canyon was interspersed with a bubbling song from Western Meadowlark on the high grassland or a twittering of Cliff Swallow rebuilding last season’s nest colony of mud pellet gourds.
Our Zodiac driver cut the outboard and we slipped right under swallows swarming to an overhanging cliff where they plaster their homes. It’s a wonderful sensation to sit silently while the raft drifts alongside great towers and mesas sculpted by Pleistocene floods. Ice dams some 2,500 feet high on an upper Columbia River tributary released flood torrents that repeatedly imprinted this land from 15,000 to 10,000 years ago.
The Corps of Engineers built four hydropower dams with navigation locks on the lower Snake River, and this created the backwater we followed into the Palouse River. Migrating Western and Clark’s grebes and Bufflehead rested on the backwaters. Beaver and Muskrat were active in willow thickets and bullrush marsh that formed when the dam stilled the lower end of the Palouse River. Naturalist Steve Engle, an animal sign expert, made us a small casting where mink, raccoon and goose had all left their tracks.
Bus and Zodiac parties traded off at a Lyons Ferry State Park landing, at the confluence of the Snake and Palouse rivers. Here the yellow school bus shuttled us onto the plateau and Palouse Falls State Park for a look straight into the plunge bowl created by the glacial Missoulian Flood. In some of those flood events 500 cubic miles of water poured across this land within a day or two.
The Corps of Discovery passed through this same reach of lower Snake River Oct. 11-16, 1805 which we covered in smooth comfort today. And we had time for a barbecue deck lunch and our morning explorations. Lewis and Clark had to negotiate 30 rapids, including one portage, and they upset one of their dugouts and lost valued gear.
“We should make more portages if the season were not so advanced and time so precious,” Capt. William Clark wrote in his journal.
For the Palouse and Nez Perce Indians the passage of the Corps down this reach of river was a grand affair. They followed in canoe, afoot and horseback.
Nez Perce Chief Twisted Hair served as guide and emissary for the expedition from his village on the Clearwater River to Celilo on the Columbia, the greatest fishing and trading site in the old Oregon Country.
Our day ended with the sun setting at the juncture of the Columbia and Snake rivers that provided the navigation route President Jefferson instructed them to seek and follow.
