Off to the Sol Duc

This week my crew and I are off to the Sol Duc river valley. The Sol Duc River is one of the few in the area that isn't dammed. For any type of environmentalist that's a plus, and for salmon it's a lifeline. We're renovating a "comfort station" at the campground all the way up the road in to the park, something like 12 miles deep.

Halfway up we decided to stop and wonder at the Salmon Cascades, a series of small waterfalls where the quintessential salmon pose takes place... of a fish jumping out of the water with all its might in order to spawn in the quiet pools miles above where it was born, and where it will die.

The pictures don't really do it justice, considering that spawning is over and there aren't any fish to see, not to mention I couldn't get a decent wide angle shot of the water body's entirety. In the same vein, the rapids don't look all that peculiar. But when seen in contrast to the stately evergreens sitting ashore, its a remarkable atmosphere.

Even still, I tried to capture the force, relentlessness, and length of the rapids, as well as some of the lush corridor that surrounds them. At least it sounds good, right? I'm still an amateur you know...

We've had a couple intense wind storms during the last week that wreaked havoc in the interior of the park. The shell of a once dominating tree reveals the brutality of it all.

Often the entire tree is uprooted, leaving what's called a "rootwad". Ya see, there is so much precipitation around here, especially on the west side of the park, that the ground becomes incredibly saturated. The trees, under their own weight, begin to sway back and forth in the mushy ground, and its only a matter of time before they're headed for the dirt.

It's something like... say... when at the beach, near the shore, you dig your legs into some damp sand... try as you may to completely surround them with sand (because we all enjoy the snugness), each slight back and forth motion creates the tiniest of crevices on each side, that grow bigger the more you move. That's kind of what its like for the tree and the base of its trunk... it craves the hug of the soil, but that sucker's comin' down.

Another blurry shot, agck! Anyway, I was trying to give you an idea of just how full of plant life the forest is. There is moss or lichens or ferns covering everything. An ecologist might say that the biomass is extremely great. Eh? Eh?

So here's something else that an ecologist might say about this place by just looking at the picture above: the biodiversity in this river would probably be very high. The reason? It is a commonly accepted ecological theory that there is a positive, and significant, relationship between environmental complexity and species diversity.

Examining the picture above, there is an incredible amount of complexity: the log sticking out into the current... the rapids... the rocks along the shore... the boulder sitting smack dab in the middle of the stream... the carpet of moss to the right...

Every one of these unique situations creates a specific biological niche that could be the bee's knees to one species, but slummin' it for others.

These are pictures of the campground we are working at. It's very nice, and situates you right next to the river.

On a side note, I'll be spending Thanksgiving with my friend Kylan's family. They live on a farm about 20 minutes outside of PA. I'll crash at his place, and we plan on waking up the next morning to go fishing... apparently there are straggler salmon runs afoot!!