SRFB has accepted the grant proposal that the SIRC submitted to fix Steelhead Heaven Landslide. The project will be finished in the summer of 2006!

Clean water......here it comes!

Great news, now if they could catch the guumbahs netting the Chum to egg them and just leave them on the road.

Some people kids. I blame the parents.

This is Great news! This river currently turns to puke at the slightest rain. Can't wait as my cabin is five minutes away from the stilly.

The slide is on the NF and heck, above the slide it holds color for quite awhile. Love that river. Now below the slide....forget it!!!

Montague Creek and the small creek that hits the river about 200yards below the slide both contribute a lot of silt so I wouldn't expect the river to be crystal clear yet.

I'm with spartan, driving up C post road you will drive on more than two dozen chums laying in the road,gutted for the eggs. Someone needs to really get slapped hard for this one, hope they catch the SCUM that did it.

Right on, I love fishing the stilly and have for about 30 years. I don't think It will take much to make it fishable, at least after it starts clearing But the way it is now it takes forever to clear below the slide. Been a tough river the last couple years, hope its better this year.

rip a lip

same river different topic. i have walked up the hatchery creek and noticed multiple fish obstructions debree and crap. in low flows some of these are impassable by fish trying to get up. last yr i seen 1 dead bright fish wedged under a root wad. should this be fixed or are they calling this structure or protective cover?? if so i think it could be better. i have done several stream improvements and wetland midigation jobs and a few fish ladders. and they were all better than what ive seen up there. just wondering what others thought. FISHON

Whitehorse is not a hatchery, it's just a rearing facility. All of the fish reared there come from Reiter on the Skykomish.

The south fork also turnes to muck with any rain from a slide up in Robe Canyon so I don't know if cleaning up a slide on the north fork will do a whole lot of good.

Gunnar

We (SIRC) are working on a proposal for Gold Basin slide.
We where going to try to get both fixed at the same time but decide not too. $$$


Fishon Garhn

Come to a SIRC meeting and share you’re concerns we have 25 minutes every meeting for question from anyone that is there.

Here is the SIRC web-site:

http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/publicwk/swm/salmon/stillyplan/index.htm#description

Meeting schedule: Typically held the second Wednesday of the each month from 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm.

Meetings are held at Peace Lutheran Church in Silvana here are the directions
Take I-5 to exit #208 (the Silvana/Arlington exit). Go west on Pioneer Highway.
Go about two miles (through the town of Silvana) and turn left onto Larson Road. The church is on the right (north).

Homer,

I would like to attend. I actually love this spot the way it is now. I love the way it effects the river below it......color, and lots of it. Almost like an Oly Pen river I know.......

I don't believe it's endangering any homes on either side of the river. The eagles definatley seem to prefer it.

I've stood there for hours contemplating stabilization or other possible fixes.....I would love to see what has been proposed/decided.

For those of you who have never seen this slide, it looks like one of the Oak Harbor flyboys accidently dropped a bomb here. If you fish there for a couple of hours you will be startled by the noise of TONS of earth spilling into the river, shaking the ground beneath you. On an average day the river is gin clear above the slide and unfishable, for most people, below it.

I love it below the slide because I know how little vis it takes for a steelhead to see/smell/feel a rag/shrimp combo. Not to mention the very light fishing pressure.

Ike

is that true what Preston said about just rearing facility??? if so im confused but whats new lol. i will try to make one of those meetings i live 5 min from silvana and never knew that hmmm... thanks Homer

'tis true.
I might be totally wrong here, but it may have gone from a hatchery to a rearing facility when they were threatening to shut it down due to funding. Maybe around '99 or so?

Edited to add the pic.
This was taken last February. I couldn't fit the whole thing the picture.

So far as I know it's been a rearing facility only for many years. Reiter has been the source of hatchery stock for the Green (Palmer- Kanaskat Rearing Ponds), Skykomish and Stillaguamish and possibly others. I'm not sure whether the Tokul Creek facility on the Snoqualmie is still used as a hatchery or just as a rearing site.

What are they going to do to fix the problam, a homeowner told me 3or 4 years ago they were going to change the course of the river.

What are they going to do to fix the problam, a homeowner told me 3or 4 years ago they were going to change the course of the river.

Where are going to move the river back into the OLD channel. Move the river 500 feet away from the toe of the hill. With LWD the same way they did in the Nooksack River.

http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/publicwk/swm/salmon/StillyPlan/minagn/2004/sircmin021104.htm

Tracy Drury of GeoEngineers in Bellingham, WA

Designing for Geomorphic Processes: The South Fork of the Nooksack River.

Tracy gave a presentation on the design and implementation of engineered logjams on the South Fork of the Nooksack River. Geo Engineers’ approach to such projects is to place structures that cause a desired reaction in the stream channel. The project objectives included increasing: holding pool habitat, channel length and complexity, wood and sediment retention, suitable spawning gravels, and floodplain connectivity. The structures also were used to attenuate deep-seated landslides, channel incision and peak flows.
Engineered logjams were inserted at mile 20 on the South Fork Nooksack. Over 1800 feet of side channel were reactivated as a result of this project, and a collecting area was created to contain the landslide sediment as it stabilized.
The long-term design of this project plans for channel migration in the future. Expected outcomes are already being met as the project:

•Set the stage for high flows to develop side channel habitat.
•Provides structure that scours pools and redefines the riverbed.
•Retains landslide sediments and allows for reestablishment of an adjacent terrace.
•Sorts sediments and creates spawning areas
•Enhances floodplain connectivity.
•Reverses channel down cutting.

I,ve been hearing that slides gonna be fixed for years so I'll believe it when I see it.

I cant really see it making for clearer water either because the reason that slides so volatile is there's two little feeder creeks undermining the banks. If they move the river over those little feeders will still get into the river, just a little more downstream.

It's funny how if you fish there even just one season every homeowner there will tell you all about it, You can even complete their sentences and they'll just keep on ramblin.

It will happen, and be done late summer of 2006.

Good comments, and an interesting topic--one that lands firmly in the realm of resource management more than anything else.

Having caught fish both above and below the Stilly's color line, I'm not averse to a planned reroute, but to think it'll solve all the river's ills is like thinking a band-aid will solve cancer.

The mass wasting occuring in this stream cannot be attributed only to the slide; neither can the sedimentation. As logging (...hello? can you say Deer Creek?...) and agricultural practices take their toll, the river will be blessed with higher flood levels and lower non-flood norms resulting from the loss of (wetland) biomass. No secret there--seen it in plenty of ruralized watersheds. For some reason this slide has been a bone of contention...perhaps it deserves it, but there are other issues here, and throwing some LWD around will not cut the chocolate cake the river becomes after a good rain.

StillyD has a good point: there are two small feeder creeks that flow through that slide, and gurgle and puke slops of mud like mini-lahars. LWD and rip-rap will not stop them.

Can we mitigate the liver spots this river is showing? Maybe in the short term--but the prognosis becomes more and more bleak with every tree chopped in that watershed.

I applaud the SIRC and the SFRB, because I do believe they have all of our best interests in mind, but the crank in me snorts...pfft--I'll believe it when I see it. Please please prove me wrong.

-----------<*))>><

No Problem fishkisser99

Have you been up on Little Deer Creek lately?

We are replacing culverts that where choke up with rocks, dirt and wood and adding new culverts where they weren’t any before to help with the slide problems in that area and sediment problem. Little Deer Creek was dumping a lot of the sediment into Deer Creek.

We are in the mist of the 20 – 25 year syndrome, it takes that long for the stumps and tree’s to rot and make the hill side move (land slide) like Boulder Creek, Squire Creek.

Getting back to Steelhead Heaven, the creek on top of the slide is getting closer and closer; if they meet on top there will be a huge slide like we never seen before. We had GeoEngineers (out of Bellingham) come and look at it (2001) and make a proposal on how to fix it, we went and look at what they did on the Nooksack and it’s working there and we don’t have as many slides as they do.

I was up there earlier this year when there was a little slide; it went out 200 feet out from the toe of the hill and about 15 – 20 feet high which block the river (dam) for a while. The river blew though it in an hour, the Stillaguamish has been filling up with sediment for years now because of the slides (and Gold Basin Slide) might be a factor in the flooding in the lower Stillaguamish.

A friend and I have talked about going up to see the slide on the Boulder that is puking it out, but haven't made the trek yet. We don't even know how far up it is.
Squire Creek? You talking about the slide on Jumbo Mountain? That one was mostly rock and large debris that really doesn't wash into the river.

I was up in a plane looking at both slides, I'll have to scan some pictures and post them (that was before I got the digital camera).

Before the slide on Jumbo, Squire Creek would run clean, no matter how much rain. Drove over it a couple of times yesterday and it was high and muddy. It still cleans up fairly quick, faster then most streams up the valley but the slide did have some effect on it.

Fishkisser99's post reminded me about the great information contained in one of the books I read for a course in Hydrology. Fluvial Forms & Processes A New Perspective by David Knighton. This book gives into fairly technical detail, but there are quite a few basic ideas that can be had from reading it. In particular, the first couple chapters can give you some pretty good insight into what is going on with that slide in terms of erosion processes.

However, be forewarned, this would probably be dry reading for most of you, but an interesting read on a day when all the rivers are brown and you wonder why...

Preston they dont trap winter fish at reiter. they get their fish from the snoqualimie. they only trap summers there. they have closed reiter to trap when other rivers are struggling tho. this info comes straight from thr reiter hatchery manager. FISHON

Point of clarification regarding Whitehorse hatchery/rearing pond -
The facility usually takes winter steelhead eggs for there its own program (as I recall they took over 200,000 winter steelhead eggs last season -exact numbers available in the hatchery escapement report at WDFW's web site). It is rare that many summer eggs are taken at that site.

On years of low runs or low water (the returning adults seem to be reclucant to run the creek the needed winter eggs are supplemented from the Snohomish system. On years of good fish abundance winter steelhead eggs on the Snohomish are taken at Tokul Creek (Snoqualmie) and the summer eggs at Reiter (Skykomish). On years of short returns either facility is capable of supplementing the other.

Regarding the Boulder Creek slide - there is a slide that is periodically active located about 7 miles upstream of the creek's mouth. It should be noted that slide area is located in a wilderness area. Much of the Stillaguamish Basin has been cursed with large areas of geological lake sediment deposits (those awful blue clay areas) that casue high turbidities in the basin.

A successful control of the Steelhead Heaven slide would be a boon for anglers as it should reduce the amount of time the river is un-fishable below the slide. However it should be stressed that the project will do little to increase the productivity of the North Fork to produce wild steelhead or chinook. This slide is actually contributing relatively little of the sediment that is being inputed into the system. The 3 major habitat factors that are limiting successful salmonid production in the basin include: 1) elevated stream temperatures, 2) unstable spawning gravels and 3) lack of complex rearing habitats. These habitat failings are due to the lack of stream physical processes that have little to do with the slide.

Bottom line projects such as this slide fix is just a very small baby-step in the long road of recovery.

Tights lines
S malma

Well, there I go again, shootin' off my mouth with a lack of hard facts to back it up. Thanks for clarifying it Smalma, I must have been thinking of the summer run program. I take it then that the Tokul Creek hatchery is still up and running?

Preston -
Another example of how valuable this internet thing is - there is no way that we each individually can keep try of all the various details involved in steelhead biology, management, and fishing but collectively we as group can bring a lot to the table.

Yes the still are taking eggs at Tokul Creek. That station is the most consistent source of winter run steelhead eggs in Puget Sound and often is used to back fill shortages at other Puget Sound hatcheries.

Tight lines
S malma

thanks for all the help smalma. i agree we collectively are a great resource. i learn somthin new everyday even if its what NOT to do lol FISHON