First Descent: A Dam Demolished Frees A Drowned Section of River (VIDEO)

This spring, I joined two friends at the putin for Upper Trout Creek, a classic class V run that for more than 100 years has cascaded through steep boulder drops to a lake. This trip down Trout Creek would be different though--the recent removal of Hemlock Dam meant that the lake was gone, and we had several new miles of river to explore.

The whitewater paddling community must have cringed when, in the early 1900s, the Era of River Reclamation was ushered in and dams began flooding whitewater rivers across the country. Today, we have 86,000 such dams. Fortunately for modern day paddlers in the U.S., 430 of these dams have been removed since 1999, with 15 more scheduled to be removed from Pacific Northwest rivers in the next 10 years. Finally, the pace of dam removal has overtaken new dam construction. For us and several species of salmon and steelhead, the removal of Hemlock Dam on our local Trout Creek drove this point home, and was definitely a cause for celebration.

We showed up at the putin only to find less water than expected, though still enough to float a boat. Check out the video to see how the trip went:

Naturally, dam removal is far from simple. Hemlock Dam produced no power and got to the point where it would cost more to bring up to Endangered Species Act comliance than it was worth. So removing it was a natural choice. Here in the Pacific Northwest though, where much of our power comes from hydroelectricity, it will be some time before we see giants, like those on the Columbia River, start to fall.

Some interesting facts on dams:

• On average, we have built one dam a day every day since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

• Currently, 600,000 miles of our rivers lie behind an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 dams.

• The 600,000 miles of rivers lying behind dams amounts to fully 17% of our nation’s river mileage.

(source: American Rivers)

Check out this month's issue of Outside Magazine for an article about our trip.

Tags: andy, creek, dam, hemlock, maser, nomad, trout, whitewater