Talk:List of rapids of the Columbia River

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Notes on additional rapids[edit]

This is the list of rapids I read about but haven't had time to figure out. Some might be alternate names for other rapids. Also additional sources. Basically a "to do" list. Pfly (talk) 17:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Gualquil Rapids: Located several miles above Island Rapids, river mile 447. No GNIS entry. Submerged by Wanapum Dam, I believe.
  • Wenatchee Ripple: At the mouth of the Wenatchee River the US ACE maps show a minor feature labeled the Wenatchee Ripple. There is no GNIS entry, but it was located at present-day Wenatchee, Washington. Submerged by Rock Island Dam.
  • For a number of miles northward there are only minor "ripples", bars, and unnamed rapids. Submerged by Rocky Reach Dam.
  • Downing's Rapids: Located just south the the mouth of the Chelan River and flanked by a few series of "ripples". Submerged by Rocky Reach Dam, I think. Not in GNIS.
  • Marcus Rapid: (minor) 35 miles below Canadian border; short... (War Dept report, Sheet No. 2)
  • Pingstone Rapids: (minor) commence 30 miles below Canadian border, 2 miles in length; "16 rocks to be removed"; "through these rapids the current runs at a rate of 8 miles per hour when the river is at nearly low water." (War Dept report, Sheet No. 2)
  • Josephs Rapids: (minor) 25 miles below Canadian border; "9 rocks and 1 jutting reef to be removed"; "three miles below there is a cluster of 14 rocks, the removal of which would be desirable" (War Dept report, Sheet No. 2)
  • Steamboat Rapids: Seven miles from Canadian border. No actual rapids but awkward for boats (War Dept report)
  • Two Mile Rapids: First obstruction below Canadian border. (War Dept report)
  • "rapids at the Rock Islands, two miles below town [Trail]." ... two enormous granite rocks through which the river rushed with great velocity... near mouth of Salmon River? (Down the Columbia, p. 204)
    • You mean the Salmo River, "Salmon River" is the old name
  • China Rapids: Located a few miles below Kootenay Rapids.(ref name=tincup/ - "Tin Cup Rapids". Trails in Time. Retrieved 10 October 2009.)
  • Sand Slide Rapid: "fast-rolling serpentine cascade near the head of Revelstoke Canyon".(Down the Columbia p. 190) (unclear to me where these might be, not sure where "Revelstoke Canyon" is, perhaps Little Dalles Canyon is part of it, perhaps these rapids are there?)
  • Rocky Point Rapids: Above start of Revelstoke Canyon.(Down the Columbia p. 190)
  • Twenty-One-Mile Rapids: Series of rapids btw. outlet of Kinbasket Lake (pre-dam) and the mouth of the Canoe River. Kinbasket Lake was the broadening and backing up of the river behind the "obstructions which cause the long series of rapids". The distance from Kinbasket Lake to the mouth of the Canoe River is (was) 21 miles (34 km), with a total river fall of 260 feet (79 m), "more than 16 feet per mile"; the narrows (or rapids themselves?) are btw 6-7 miles long depending on river stage and from 1-2 miles wide; high cliffs and bouldery shores throughout the 21 mile stretch making camping impossible and lining tricky; the whole stretch must be run in a single day.[1]
I think these might be the series of rapids below... Redrock, Yellow Creek, Weasel, Mink, etc.. have to figure out where Kinbasket Lake ended before the dam.

Sources[edit]

Found a source of information about rapids of the Columbia River, at least between Oregon and British Columbia, from the time before the dams were built: A series of 27 maps made in 1882 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers as "part of Report of an examination of the Upper Columbia River and the territory in its vicinity in September and October, 1881, to determine its navigability and adaptability to steamboat transportation." The maps are nicely drawn and show not only every "ripple" of the river and quite a few larger named rapids and falls, but also historic sites such as trading posts, Indian villages, "China Camps"s, ferries and river crossings, trails, roads, railroads, geologic features, and an ample number of place names that differ from their present forms (from close calls, like En-ti-at River for Entiat River to more usual forms). The viewing interface is fairly annoying. The image files are in SID format, which few people have the tools to easily view on their home computers. The website's viewing interface limits you to a small window with just a few frustrating controls. But it does work. The site is run by Washington State University and is called Early Washington Maps: A Digital Collection. They have quite a lot of material. I think this link will take you to the search result page showing just the 27 maps in question. If that fails, try going to their main search page and search for "Map of the Upper Columbia River" in just the "Early Washington maps" digital collection. The maps are all titled "Map of the Upper Columbia River, from the international boundary line to Snake River, on a scale of one inch to two miles. (1882) Sheet XX. [Name]", where XX is the map number and "Name" is the map name. You have to load and view each map separately, which can take a painful amount of time, especially as you have to launch their SID viewer and zoom in to read much of the text.

Finding some sources with a lot of information about Columbia River rapids, some US only, some including BC, mostly older "official" accounts (eg, Army Corps of Engineers) and personal accounts of traveling down the river (eg, Down the Columbia by Lewis Freeman--lots of info about rapids in BC!). And being older books, some are available for full preview and PDF download at Google Books, yay.

Focuses on area between Wallula, Washington and Canadian border.
  • Lorraine, Madison Johnson (1924). The Columbia unveiled; being the story of a trip, alone, in a rowboat from the source to the mouth of the Columbia River, together with a full description of the country traversed, and the rapids battled, by an old voyager and whitewater man. Times-Mirror Press. OCLC 3459515.
WorldCat entry. Apparently a very detailed account of the river before dams, with precise descriptions of rapids. It has a Google Books page, but only with snippet view, but which shows a section title, "The Terrors of the Rapids Rationally Considered", and a several page long "table of distances" listing each rapid by name, "miles from boundary", and "character of rapids". Used copies seem to run between $125 and $200 or more. The Seattle library has a copy but reference only, no check out. There is a description of the author and book, and of Lewis Freeman and his book Down the Columbia, at Rowing the undammed Columbia.

References

  1. ^ Down the Columbia, pp. 141, 144-145

Discussion[edit]

(Moved/trimmed from sandbox working draft page)

See here for more resources.Skookum1 (talk) 15:48, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: Marcus and Northport were the southern end of the Arrow Lakes steamboat route because they were at the upper end of needed portages around obstacles in the river; specifically Kettle Falls itself but also the Little Dalles etc. (actually I think the Little Dalles is in between them and it was an advance in technology that moved the port from one location to hte other.Skookum1 (talk) 14:44, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't got to researching the Little Dalles rapids in detail, but just saw the photo of the "inlet" to it in Down the Columbia this evening. The inlet looks very narrow in the photo--hard to imagine steamboats passing through--but its an old photo and hard to read clearly. If nothing else it looks non-trivial. Would be interesting to learn more about how it was made navigatable. Pfly (talk) 06:52, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Somewhere there's a really excellent local history site for the West Kootenay that may have more, I'll try to find it; I know it had more on Ole Skattebo, so I'll try searching that name.....Skookum1 (talk) 14:44, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Skookum, thanks for all the info and leads. Will reply later when I've time. A quick question--do you know how to figure river mile numbers in British Columbia? I've been adding them for US rapids by looking at USGS topo maps, which show river miles for the Columbia. It would be nice to add them for BC rapids, but I can't find a source...? Pfly (talk) 16:13, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't recall ever seeing any such markings on NTS maps or on Basemap, but I suspect there's stuff out there frmo the Water Rights Branch of British Columbia (part of MoE) as there's a data-tree of all creeks/tributaries in teh province and the amount of water available in them and who owns it etc but also how many km from mouth...; I'm not sure if it's publicly-accessible but it might be. Other than that DFO might have some measures e.g. the distance of certain fisheries features like Hell's Gate or the various tributaries which have DFO-monitored spawning channels (Weaver Creek, Wahleach Creek, Seton River to name a few).Skookum1 (talk) 14:36, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sectional maps[edit]

I figure you've already thought of that, i.e. a Big Bend (West) or Big Bend (east)/Columbia Valley map, a Mid-Columbia map, etc - but what's the template called that says "display all coordinates", which could be used sectionally here and would generate the sat-image....(if desired)....the AcmeMapper rendition of what I suppose is Wiki data has some oddities; West Revelstoke showing east of the city, South Revelstoke to its east; probably "rounded" latlongs to the minute huh? I went upriver looking for Dalles des Morts or other landmarks but instead it's the Columbia-Shuswap electoral area name, which is utterly irrelevant and a bugbear of mine in wikispace (it only applies to electors, i.e. voters and trees don't vote....it's for settled areas adjacent to the nearby towns, not meant to include the high bush...; in all cases something like a "main" template coudl be used for the steamboat articles covering each section (about that - the steamboat article begins at Marcus/Northport, that might work well here too IMO....dn as I put in the edit comments the Narrows belongs in; read the account of the firet steamboat trips up it.....The Boat Encampment-to-Revelstoke is historically notable and I don't mean the death toll; between the Express and the Big Bend Gold Rush, there's a lot of names in that area that have stories behind them. BTW on remaining rapids there's probably hydro-studies on them out there, I don't mean hydro-power but hdrography etc, geology as to why it where it is and so on. Note as you go up the Columbia from Revelstoke that the flat lands ended where the dam is now, roughly (just above it, I'd say); that's what "dalles" is - not just implying a rapid, but implying a canyon - a gulley on the grand scale; I don't have location specifics on the Big Bend rush available just yet but where La Porte and Downie Creek were and so on would be appropriate to show -a nd Boat Encampment. What's interesting to note is that the miners of the Big Bend rush didn't notice Eagle Pass; their access was from the passes east of Seymour Arm (Shuswap Lake) and the associated port-town (another interesting place to check out....). Maybe the resulting map (s) could be used to illustrate the Arrow Lakes steamboat article, also.....anyway g'nite, I'll send you waht I recorded yesterday while retracing my steps looking for a lost bus pass in the cold sunshine, on the steep slopes of the northern part of Halifax's downtown....never did find it, but the hunt generated some good tunes ;-)Skookum1 (talk) 02:24, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I quite understand all this, but yea, the BCGNIS coords are usually only to minute precision and often obviously inaccurate when mapped as such (mapped as a point assuming 0 seconds is correct--it would be better to somehow map a circle around the minute than a point exactly at the minute, if that makes sense). Quite often the BCGNIS points for rapids aren't even in the river when viewed in Google Maps, or AcmeMapper. In some cases I tried to correct the coords, or at least give more precision and better accuracy, by comparing the BCGNIS coords to topographic maps. Following a clue I got from User:Shannon1, I used peakbagger.com, which gives you a little (quite little) topo map of whatever peak you look up--and you can pan and zoom around in the little viewer looking at topo maps, in Canada as well as the US. I'm not sure where they get the Canadian topo map imagery, and whether one could access it in a better way, but it works well enough. And it's fast. Some BC rapids are shown and labeled right on the topo maps, like Steamboat Rapids near Revelstoke, and Little Dalles Canyon too (which I've seen labeled elsewhere too and is clearly the fairly short but steep canyon, like you said above, right at Revelstoke Dam--I still can't figure out what and where the "Revelstoke Canyon" mentioned in Down the Columbia is exactly). For others, like Kitchins Rapids, the topo map shows lines in the river, indicating rapids, without a name (Kitchins Rapids is a good example--the BCGNIS coords are nearly 2 km off from the rapids shown on the topo map (and something like a km away from the river altogether!). I love BCGNIS for providing historical notes, sometimes quite lengthy and informative, about a place (unlike USGS GNIS, which only rarely gives you a tiny bit of a clue about the place's history and name). But I wish BCGNIS had better coords. Also, the use of topo maps to clarify and improve BCGNIS coords fails in the reservoirs (yes, I know I can't spell resevoir very well!). The USGS topo maps not only show river mile numbers, but also (usually) contour lines within the river, at least or reservoirs. That makes it possible to see roughly where the river's course actually lay before inundation. Sometimes this is quite useful, and frustrating in BC as the topo maps I've found don't show such things. I wish I could view the pre-dammed river's course within the broad reservoirs. It's particularly frustrating in Kinbasket Lake. The dammed reservoir and its many "arms" at river mouths makes it hard to tell whether, for example, Wood River entered the Columbia above or below Canoe River. I figured that one out in time, but there are many others. The pre-dam situation near Surprise Rapids is quite unclear when looking at post-dam maps. The rapids are near the northern end of a broader part of Kinbasket Lake, and there is a sizable island right there. So...did the river flow west of that post-dam "island", or east? And a few rivers enter that "lake", like the Gold River, Succour River, and Bush River, and it is not at all clear which river joined the Columbia where and in what order. That "balance of power" website's maps don't let you zoom in for more detail, but at least I could figure out, I think, that the Columbia's course was west of that island, and that the Gold River joined first, then the Bush River. It also helped me see not only The Narrows better, but just how far north Upper Arrow Lake grew. No wonder Arrowsport, British Columbia was a steamboat landing (that's yet another page needing to be made!). And I was able to better see what the pre-dam Kinbasket Lake was like, making it much clearer that the Twenty-One-Mile Rapids described in Down the Columbia, and elsewhere, really was Boulder, Mink, Weasel, Yellow Creek, Redrock Canyon, and probably others, where parts of Twenty-One-Mile Rapids. Also, Freeman, the author of Down the Columbia makes an interesting point about how the fur-trading people had almost no experience with the the rapids above Boat Encampment--David Thompson, sure, but most, no. And that the rapids above Boat Encampment, especially Twenty-One-Mile and Surprise Rapids, were nastier than those around Dalles des Morts. As a result, he claims, Dalles des Morts became infamous while those above Boat Encampment were barely known and now, submerged, nearly forotten. Anyway, back on topic--I don't quite follow you on the template and steamboat article things. In any case, the rapids were notable not just for steamboats but also for the voyageur era. The bateaux and other vessels of the fur traders were able to run some rapids that forced steamboats to stop. An obvious example is the river reach from around today's Grand Coulee Dam to Bridgeport. As far as I know, steamboats never even considered attempting this reach, either up or downriver, high or low water--while the fur traders and voyageurs regularly shot through downriver and, upriver, ....worked really hard I suspect--not a lot of portage opportunities as far as I know. So, after wondering and asking about how to "sectionize" the river, I opted for the rather basic sections in the article now. Perhaps it could be better. As for, BTW on remaining rapids there's probably hydro-studies on them out there, I don't mean hydro-power but hydrography etc, geology as to why it where it is and so on, well, I would love to see studies like that. To finish up, it sounds like you are saying it would be nice to have some maps showing the rapids. I so, I agree, and have been thinking about it. Making nice maps takes more work than it seems like it should, so I may not manage it. But it would be nice to have maps of at least of few key areas, especially those with a density of rapids--The Dalles, Celilo Falls, and upriver rapids; the Priest Rapids (WA) series; the Bridgeport to Grand Coulee section (older sources seem to call this reach, or part of it, Nespilem Canyon; the cluster around Dalles des Morts and the others nearby; and of course those of the Big Bend, where there's a whole cluster close together. Another potentially useful map would show the whole river with only the really major rapids marked--the rapids that presented total barriers to steamboats (apart from a few stunts) and made even the voyageurs think about portaging. This would be a short list--perhaps Cascade Rapids, The Dalles, Priest Rapids and Rock Island Rapids, Foster Creek Rapids, "Nespilem Canyon", Kettle Falls, "Twenty-One-Mile Rapids", and perhaps Surprise Rapids or the series of rapids below Golden. This might tie in well with steamboat "reaches". The Lower Columbia below Cascade Rapids; the Middle btw Cascades and The Dalles; the so-called Upper btw The Dalles and Priest Rapids; the Wenatchee Reach btw Rock Island Rapids and Foster Creek Rapids; the "no steamboats at all reach" up to Kettle Falls; the Arrow Lakes reach btw Kettle Falls (or slightly upriver) to Revelstoke; the Big Bend reach btw Revelstoke and Golden; and the Upper reach (whatever its caled) from Golden to Canal Flats. Ack, too much babble as usual! Must to sleep soon. Pfly (talk) 06:39, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mileages in Canada[edit]

I'll try and be brief but it occurred to me why it is our maps don't have mileages on them for t he rivers, unlike on the USGS maps....on the one hand, US and British survey techniques were different, I'll bet; partly for navigation reasons the US Army had gotten in the habit of mapping streams by their length; BC was short on surveyors for one thing, the REs were road-builders not steamboat-builders, and something like established tradition in BC mapped things by road mileages; this shouldn't apply on the Columbia as the early activity there was all "marine" and maybe the steamboat companies, even under the CPR, had mapped out the lengths between different landings. What struck me, htough, was t aht for a lot of rivers, or valleys rather, the numbers everyone goes by ar the road figures; e.g. you'll find all kidns of books on "Backroads of Briitsh Columbia, Volume V/IX etc" and as roads tend to follow watercourses in BC, the road-distances become the creek-distances. Just a hunch about how that came to be, but tha's the kind of information you'll find; the only other way to do it I can think of is use the "measure tool" on provincail basemap and lick it out by hand, in detail, along the course of the river from Waneta north........kind of original research but you're really just readin the map and compiling points off it; I use it for stating river distances and lake sizes all the time; it's STRIM generated to very accurate.Skookum1 (talk) 02:24, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GeoGroupTemplate sections[edit]

Skookum asked if there was any way to use {{GeoGroupTemplate}} so it is specific to each section. I'm not aware of any way to do that, and I don't see anything suggesting there is such an option at Para's documentation for the extraction tool. I'll ask him. —EncMstr (talk) 04:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that feature is now added thanks to Para. He made changes to two areas to implement it. There is still a limitation that the section parameter to the template has to have spaces expressed as underscores. —EncMstr (talk) 23:20, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And that limitation is now lifted. Much gratitude to Para. —EncMstr (talk) 18:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, it's been very useful; I also applied it to List of crossings of the Fraser River for example, and having the map generated helped also know where to make the section-breaks, i.e. which areas have clusters of crossings. I've been using the ordinary template on First Nation pages where I've added the coordinates, e.g. Teslin Tlingit Council, Taku River Tlingit First Nation, Kitselas First Nation and others, and in the case of the Taku River Tlingit it helped me determine that one of their reserves had an incorrect latlong in both BCGNIS and CGNDB (which isn't surprising since their content is coordinated). Makes me think that breaking up List of ghost towns in British Columbia into regional sections might work really well, too, as with other geographic lists out there, or potentially to be made....Skookum1 (talk) 18:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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