In skimming through my images one day, I stumbled upon an interesting image I shot months ago from the top of Condit Dam. The lightbulb went on, and I realized that I had this gem of a before&after sequence:
Upstream view from Condit Dam.
Enjoy these other shots taken over the course of the last 6 months. Happy holidays everyone!
Looking downstream to Condit Dam.
Looking upstream from Northwestern Lake Road
Looking downstream from Northwestern Lake Road
(This post scheduled in advance–I’m sitting on a sailboat in Baja right now. Back mid January!)
I know it is all said and done but you have to admit which photo is the prettier, the one before or the one after?
hi–nice picts–great that salmon now have a chance. hope they fix the takeout site @ northwestern lake by june. we run the lower section a lot in whitewater kayaks. maybe the rains and snowmelt will help flush the sediment and we can go down to the columbia ? but most of all we can now see what nature intended. sounds like you deserve the rest in baja due to your hard work. it’ll be great to see the final outcome. maybe even increase the salmon stock to good levels. historical levels may not be practical. thanks–tom
Hi Andy, I have a question. How high is the drop from the coffer dam? It looks like in some flows it might be an impediment to passage and it would be a shame for summer steelhead entering the river this June, July and August to not be able to access the upper river because of an artificial barrier. Are there plans to remove the old coffer dam in the near future before it becomes a problem for migrating salmon and steelhead who will serve as colonists of the upper white salmon?
I’ve only seen the coffer dam from the perspective of looking down from the dam, so I could be wrong here. That said, it looks to be about 8′ high. I’m no expert on the jumping abilities of different species of salmonids, so I’m not actually sure if the Tules and steelhead would have a problem with that. I’ve certainly seen other species jump that high.
I suspect that they’ll have the coffer dam out in the next couple of months. Dependent on a lot of things though, I guess. I can only imagine that deconstructing a dam is a pretty complex process and one that doesn’t have an instruction manual yet.