Recreating (in) a Watershed
Baker River, Dams, and Returning the Sockeye
When I was reporting this Skagit River story, a source told me that Puget Sound Energy had agreed to change its fish management practices two decades ago during the last Baker River Hydroelectric Project relicensing. (For licensing, see this newsletter.)
I became intrigued and wanted to know more. So recently I headed up the Baker River watershed for the first time. The Field Trip presented good views and historical vantage points. Read on!
Going Upriver
Like salmon, I had to go upstream to get to the Baker River watershed.
I started in the Skagit River Delta and drove alongside the Skagit River for roughly forty miles. Along the way, flat farmland gradually gave way to trees, foothills, and eventually mountains. Reminders of natural resource economies stood out. I crossed Coal Creek, a resource that served as an impetus for white settlement but long since abandoned here. The foothills bore the clearest marks of extraction, though. Steep switchbacks for logging trucks wove through former forests. Western Washington, of course, is no stranger to clearcutting. I still am shocked when I see such steep mountainsides entirely stripped of trees.
Finally, I turned off the North Cascades Highway toward Baker Lake. The road passes through small parcels, then land owned by timber companies, and finally reaches the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest boundary. Along the way, old motorhomes, one with a flat tire, sat in small pullouts selling bundles of firewood at $4 or $5 a pop for campers to build their campfires at the many Forest Service campgrounds upriver. It’s a popular recreational corridor.
Walk in the Woods
An interpretive trail named Shadow of the Sentinels provides a quick roadside attraction. Curious, I stopped and meandered through the trees. Serenaded by Macgillvary’s warblers and Pacific wrens (and heckled by Stellar’s jays), I walked along the elevated boardwalk. A young couple in their 30s – the man in a yellow hat and the woman with streaked blond hair in dreads – had climbed off the walkway and were harvesting juneberries. As much as I wanted to learn about their story and plans for this foraging, I walked on. The big Douglas firs reminded me of my recent time in the Oregon Cascades. It’s an excellent interpretive trail to orient yourself to the natural history here, but I was interested in water and drove on.
On field trips like this, I aim for a quick reconnaissance, a general impression, an incomplete survey. I knew I would not see everything or even get to the end of the road. But I did aim to get further upstream and see Baker Lake.
At a swing in the road I noticed one sock and a black hightop sneaker, the left one, sitting on the shoulder. Footwear without feet seemed like rivers without fish. The curve moved over Boulder Creek, a stream with wide, rocky channel originating from Mt. Baker’s glaciated shoulders. For now, that cold water feeds the watershed that pours into Baker Lake.
The conditions make the system ideal for salmon – cool water, shaded streams, rocky bottoms. This is the heartland of the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, but the land has been changing from outside pressures for 150 years. In the 1890s, the state of Washington built a fish hatchery on Baker Lake to compensate for declining salmon runs elsewhere. Its location there reflected its good habitat; the need for it reflected broader problems. The federal government took over the hatchery in 1899, reserving it for the US Fish Commission.
Dams
Today, Baker Lake is much larger than its historical size, because in 1959, Puget Sound Energy completed Upper Baker Dam. A conservationist acquaintance of mine recently shared that as a boy his family camped at the original Baker Lake. They saw stakes around the lake marking where the new water level would be once the dam was completed. His family never returned to the campground, because the dam inundated it. This sparked his interest in protecting wildlands. I was struck by how common a story like that was for a certain generation: a specific environmental harm sparked a lifelong commitment. I wonder if specific projects – a dam, a clearcut, a housing development – still inspire people or whether global trends – climate change, ocean acidification, extinctions – do the work to create environmentalists.
You can drive across the 312-foot high Upper Baker Dam. I found it unnerving, water at my level on one side and a massive dropoff on the other. Trails, campgrounds, and a boat launch are scattered near the dam and PSE’s cluster of buildings there. For a moment, the clouds cleared, and Mt. Baker loomed above the lake. Those who live here know that Baker is a finicky peak, often shrouded in clouds. I lucked out.
And then I lucked out again. As I headed back to the main road, a black bear cub scampered in front of my car. This was no ordinary day.
Concrete
I traced my way downstream to the town of Concrete, a contender for the least interesting town name anywhere. Yet there is some evocative about it.
At the confluence of the Baker and the Skagit, the town was traditionally known as S.báliuqʷ. Then it was called Baker. Then Concrete after the two cement companies – Washington Portland Cement Company and Superior Portland Cement Company – that set up shop, competed, combined, and left. Remnants stand in town (and in construction projects throughout the region like the old Times building in downtown Seattle and the Cedar River Dam).
In 1914 the WPCC build an office and lab and quickly left. Puget Sound Power & Light (PSE’s predecessor) bought it and made it the Club House. It’s been recently remodeled and opened as a visitor center. Within it, displays of the history – natural and human – try to capture the long story of this place. This effort stems from PSE’s relicensing agreement and aims to educate the public about the changes wrought by settlement, industry, and power to the region.
But much of it, at least much of its most interesting parts to me, focused on the efforts to help salmon recover. They used something known as the ski jump, a chute out of which young salmon launched toward a shocking landing in the river below. A so-called gulper scooped up fish and transported them around dams. Today, PSE uses a state-of-the-art floating surface collector and a variety of other measures to help.
All this is necessary because just beyond view from the Club House, the 285-foot Lower Baker Dam stops up the river and has since 1925. Salmon, especially the sockeye runs, declined. In 1985, despite the ski jump and gulper and other measures, fish and wildlife officials counted a mere 99 fish returning. Dams aren’t the only thing that harm salmon health and abundance, of course, but they are obvious symbols. From that nadir in the 1980s, with investments and persistence (and the insistence of Tribes during the relicensing process), numbers have increased. Since 2010, no run has been as low as four figures.
Sockeye
My last stop before heading home was just north of the Club House. A PSE fish trap includes a small observation platform. I stepped onto it and looked through the chain link fence out at the weir across the river. Then, I looked down in a small holding pen where fish wait for their elevator ride up. The morning I visited the Club House staff marked 1,826 sockeye had returned so far. They were just getting started; the state reports that more than 23,000 have returned now.
This seems like a good start.
Final Words
Besides my work that I referenced last week, I have written about fish and dams in the Northwest in an article on the Columbia River Treaty. There is always more to learned, and I expect more stories in the future. And here is a personal essay that reflects some of my thinking about rivers and fish and how the past and present mingle.
As always, you can find my books, and books where some of my work is included, at my Bookshop affiliate page (where, if you order, I get a small benefit).
Taking Bearings Next Week
Next week is The Library, and I’m sticking with Mt. Baker. Stay tuned!
Regarding Concrete, random fact, that was also the supplier for the cement used on the Ballard Locks.