Chiwawa River

Sometime technical people get accused of not seeing the forest for the trees but today that was pretty hard to ignore. The Chiwawa River is a tributary to the Upper Wenatchee and unlike nearby basins was never heavily logged or de-snagged to allow for log drives. This means it represents one of the best intact reference conditions for nearby basins and restoration projects (Entiat, Nason, Methow, etc).

I can't remember the last time I had portaged around logjams so much in such a short distance. The natural logjams were also really interesting to explore and take notes on for how to replicate the habitat they created. This is a picture of the a prominent side channel literally flowing through a mature floodplain forest with the large tress anchoring mobile wood that then formed the logjam. Without the logjam the channel would have likely cut right through the floodplain and likely incised 2-4ft through a large meander bend.