the deschutes

[Slow and Low]

Any relief in sight for the huge flows this year?

Also, anyone done buckhollow to heritage above 7000 cfs?

[cphatts]

Its leveled off at 10,400 cfs....as far as fishing goes, you can fahhhhgettabahhhtit! :noway:

[PDXSteelhead]

at over 10k cfs, Shears is passable, isn't it? Should be all filled in.

[Slow and Low]

if your mark angel maybe.

[Stew]

if your mark angel maybe.



Here is his display in Maupin :bigshock:
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a119/sstew54/dbwreckage.jpg

[Two Fister]

Fish still have to eat. It's not nearly as fun, but you can catch fish in high flows. You just have to look in different places than you normally would. Edges that have softer flows can be loaded with hungry fish when the flows are up.

That black Alumaweld is a friend of mines boat. It sank at the entrance to Whitehorse on it's very first float trip. Still had the price tag hanging off of the bow eye. He had run Whitey many times, but it was his first time through after the floods in 1996. Didn't know about the shallow rocks on the right and other changes that had occurred and didn't stop to scout. Oops! Also didn't want to pay to have the factory apply the glovit and he couldn't wait to get on the river. If you look closely at the picture you can tell the bottom is plain aluminum. They stuck to a rock on the left hand side and spun off into OH SHOOT (ifish PG version) Rock. Passenger and dog were thrown over the casting deck into the river and the boat slid under to the right. Everybody was OK but needed a new pair of undergarments. Dog was washed way, way downstream. They thought that she had drowned but she came running back upstream about three hours later. Those black labs can swim! Moral of the story; always scout Whitehorse or Mark will end up with the title to your boat.

He hadn't quite gotten around to getting insurance. :hoboy:
TF

[Stew]

Thanks for telling us the history behind that boat wreck :cheers:
It pretty sobering to see the bottom basically opened up like a can :bigshock:

Here is another victim of Whitehorse

http://www.ifish.net/gallery/data/500/1882Whitehorse1.jpg

[PDXSteelhead]

My dad and I were scouting Whitehorse, his first time running that stretch after the flood. We watched a gear raft (mounded with stuff) row forward (why would someone row forwards into a rapid) and just got pinned broadside on the rock and all the gear, including the two dudes in the boat, got dumped.

My dad just looked at me at the scouting point and said "That's what NOT to do"

[Whiskey Dick]

Entering Whitehorse http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v470/steelheadr99/WhiteHorse2004.jpg
This was on a trip with 6 clients and yes we had a bag boat. They turned up with a load of gear for a 4 day trip. The first night in camp the guy running the bag boat was not saying much, I asked him if he was ok and he told me he almost sank his boat coming through TroutCreek rapids as he had too much weight in his boat and was worried about running Whitehorse the next day. That year i had decided to set up my raft with seats and use it for guiding and see how it worked out, this was the first time and as you can see i took half there gear off him which made him a very happy person :smile:. I have been using the raft setup since then and it works great and is real handy if you need to carry somthing extra :wink:, tight lines,brian

[Slow and Low]

Two Fister,

Thanks for the story. I always wondered why there was no gluvit on the boat. My buddy sunk his clacker on oh [petunias!] November 2004 and Mark had to get his boat out. Screwed up our Grand Rhond trip the next weekend. We ran into Mark last October when he was trying to get a boat out 3 days in a row. Boat was upside down with the nose upriver. Not sure how a boat got sunk and loged upstreeem of oh [petunias!]. I'm sure at 10,000 cfs the whole thing is flattened out.

[Slow and Low]

awesome picture.

[Two Fister]

A friend of mine went out with Mark to help recover the black Alumaweld on the trailer. He was in the boat that ran Whitey in front of our friends that wrecked. He said that watching Mark work was amazing. Lots of lines stretched across the river, block and tackle, and he used the rivers own forces to "surf" the boat back to the surface. A lot of the damage to the boat happended as the boat tumbled down the rapid after it sank. I believe that the big hole in the bottom was the result of spinning fast into Oh Shoot! (ifish edit).

Running Whitey in Mark's huge sled with a driftboat on the back was kind of fun as well! :passout:

We floated the lower river shortly after the 1996 floods receeded a bit. In addition to 10' high vertical sand walls where there used to be campgrounds, we found an old Willy drifter that looked like it had been stuck to the bottom for a long time. It was buried in the sand about 20 feet above the water line just above Beavertail. Floods do some cool things on that river!

TF

[PDXSteelhead]

The lower end was pretty amazing after the flood,

The culvers on the rail road just acted like big fire hoses with the water back up on 'em, just moved earth.

We almost didn't have enought poop to get over Wash Out, much bigger than it is now, and that was with a 200hp outboard, and we about caught some air coming down through it staying on plane.

[Slow and Low]

In 96 the flows weren't higher than they are now were they?

[PDXSteelhead]

but, it was flash floods bthat formed Wash Out.

[Two Fister]

From the USGS website:
EXTREMES FOR PERIOD OF RECORD.--Maximum discharge, 70,300 ft3/s Feb. 8, 1996, gage height, 12.08 ft, from rating curve extended above 47,000 ft3/s on basis of slope-area measurement of peak flow; (In other words, the water was over the top of the gauge and they had to do it the old fashioned way by calculating the flow) :bigshock:

An USGS hydrologist told me that he had calculated the flow at more like 93,000 CFS. The highway was closed because the water was flowing over the top of the bridge at the mouth for an area about a 1/2 mile wide. Shears literally didn't exist as the water was about 10 feet over the road on the west bank. Large sections of the railroad track got washed out. Down in the lower river there were a lot of places where the access road is 20 feet above the river, but there were hard structures (read cliffs) on either side and the river had no place to go but up. When we drove down in April (just after they opened the road) the access road in those spots had 12" of sand deposited on it by the river. The BLM had already cleared the large debris from the road and repaired the washouts. There was debris in the tops of the trees that were left. A lot of areas had either been scoured down to cobble or had 20 feet of sand deposited on spots that had been part of the river previously. It was an awesome sight to behold.

Washout was formed when two road culverts at the bottom of a steep draw (aptly named Mud Springs Canyon) that are a couple of hundred yards away from the river on the Corches (sp?) Ranch backed up and then cut loose. They must acted like two huge firehoses of rock, mud and debris. I remember hearing that several of the first sleds that ran it were lost in the hydraulic that was formed by Washout Rapid. It's about a 10th of the size that it used to be now.

And I had to run it uphill in knee deep snow both ways on my way to school!

Old Curmudgeon...I mean Two Fister

[Slow and Low]

must have been an awesome sight. can't wait for the river to drop into shape.