Blues from Yakima Canyon
The drought tour continues
A couple of weeks ago, we took the van out to the Yakima Canyon in Central Washington for a few days. Here’s what we found.
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Tuesday
Any trip from Whidbey Island begins with water, with a ferry or bridge crossing to the mainland—America, as we call it. From the ferry we head up the Snoqualmie Valley, still recovering from last winter’s catastrophic river flooding driven by torrential rain. Crossing Snoqualmie Pass into the Yakima River Basin, we see that while the rain has filled Keechelus Lake, one of the river’s two headwater reservoirs, the mountains around the pass are already almost bare. That rain fell instead of snow, so there’s little snowpack to replenish the reservoirs during the summer. Drawdown of the reservoirs started on May 21, a month early, and there’s no prospect of replenishment until the fall rains.
At our destination in the canyon, the river is flowing well in a “fish pulse,” designed to help the juvenile coho and chinook salmon fry start their 350-mile journey via the Columbia River to the ocean, running the gauntlet of dams and of predators from white pelicans to invasive small mouth bass. Also enjoying the fish pulse on this warm day are trout fishers, drift boaters, rafters, and floaters.
After staying mostly in full hookup sites during our trip across the country, we’ve realized that we don’t need to do that. The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Umtanum Recreation Area campsite has five reservable RV spots, and with my senior lifetime America the Beautiful pass discount, it’s a whopping $7.50 a night, about what we’re paying for a gallon of diesel.
The campsite is basic, with a couple of vault toilets for the campers and the many day visitors. We can hear the babbling sound of the river, which brings a ribbon of green to the dry shrub steppe of the plateau, the chorus of song from the abundant birds, drawn by the greenery and the water and different than those at home the other side of the mountains, and the excited silence of the abundant birders, drawn from Seattle and beyond by that birdlife.
An award-winning bridge leads to trails on the other side of the river.
The Umtanum Creek Canyon trail on the other side is a great place to watch a livestream.
The warm weather and the water attract more than birds and birders to the area. We’re alerted by a yapping dog to the arrival of a young lady in a beater white car. She stops in front of another camper’s site, the dog’s bark stopping with the car as if wired directly to the ignition switch. The young lady takes her bike and then the rest of her gear, armful by armful, to one of the two walk-in sites by the river. She strides purposefully back and forth, walking with a slight limp, a bag on her left hip, the strap over her right shoulder as if she’s expecting a purse snatcher, and the dog faithfully by her side. She stows the bike rack in the trunk, then parks at the far end of the parking lot, as far away as possible from a ranger checking for parking fees. Soon, four of her friends show up, two of whom set up a beer pong table in the parking lot. Several more pickup trucks arrive to join the party, but things remain chill. A train passes on the other side of the river every few hours, thankfully without sounding a horn.
Wednesday
We decide to ride bikes on a section of the Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail. Due to an error on my part, we wind up riding the exact section I wanted to avoid; through the Army’s Yakima Training Center firing range! It’s rough, with large, loose rocks, and uphill all the way out through dry and dusty shrub steppe, sagebrush, cheat grass, and frequent coyote scat, but no flying bullets. We reach the closed summit tunnel and follow the ride-around—just a bit further, just a bit further—hoping to get a view down to the Columbia River. We never see it, so we ride back, thankfully downhill.
It was the Yakima Training Center that first drew me to the Yakima Canyon several years ago on my way to a meeting in East Selah on PFAS contamination of drinking water from the firefighting activities at YTC. The Army has been slow to respond, and although many Point of Entry Treatment Systems (POETS) have now been installed, work is still not complete.
Back at the camp site, it’s raining and windy. The young woman packs her soggy camping gear into the white beater car, and the dog’s yapping restarts with the car, and fades into the distance as they drive off. There will be no beer pong tonight.
Thursday
It’s cool, calm, and fresh after last night’s rain. I catch up on email and news while Brenda swims in the community pool in Ellensburg. We decide to hike up to the Umtanum Ridge Crest via the Vista Trail. The trail is steep, rough and loose, and our legs are toast from that ride, but we make it most of the way, far enough to see back to the Stuart Range with the prominent Dragontail Peak. We also see a bighorn ram, but not before he sees us. He’s down the bluff and out of sight before I can get my phone out of my pocket.
This trail is on former rangeland acquired by BLM for public recreation just a few years ago, when BLM was acquiring land rather than selling it off. The cleared barbed wire is both welcome and a reminder of this land’s past. Another less welcome reminder is cheat grass. This invasive, introduced with livestock feed, is highly flammable and contributes to the number and explosive growth of recent rangeland grass fires across the west and plains. It’s looking like a tough fire season.
Animal agriculture hasn’t left the area; it’s just moved in part to the lower Yakima Valley. A few miles south of Umtanum, the Roza Diversion dam takes water from the river and feeds it into the Roza Canal, which runs through four-and-a-half miles of tunnels in solid rock and under the Yakima River to supply water to farmers, CAFOs, and dairies in the lower valley. Several other irrigation systems draw from the river, leaving it at barely a trickle by the time it joins the Columbia near Richland. This concentration of animal agriculture in the valley is having a devastating effect on the environment, air quality, drinking water, and public health.
Irrigated alfalfa for export and to feed those cows is displacing dry land wheat from west to east across the state, drawing down aquifers and leaving towns with ever deeper wells yielding only warm, salty water. The cow manure applied to the fields, particularly around the Yakima Valley, raises nitrate in drinking water wells just as towns like Richland expand to accommodate an influx of retirees from the “wet side”, drawn by abundant sunshine and lower property taxes. Those dairies are producing mostly cheese. Do we really need a cow for every seven people in Washington, or forty-two pounds of cheese per person per year?
The Yakima Valley area is the only place in the US outside of the southwest where Valley Fever, a fungal lung infection found where cows kick up dust, is found. To add insult to injury, Washington State’s droughts are hitting the Yakima Valley particularly hard. Last year, the third consecutive drought year, the Roza Irrigation District shut down deliveries early. This year it will both start late and finish early, delivering just half of the water of a normal year.
Friday
Our plan today was to ride a pretty section of the Palouse to Cascades Trail along the Yakima River between Thorp and Cle Elum, but the spinning wind turbines alert us to the strong headwind coming through the pass which hits us like a brick as we get out of the van. We opt to hike up to Manastash Ridge instead. The Manastash Ridge Recreation area consists of two thousand acres of former rangelands now managed by the Washington State Departments of Fish and Wildlife and Natural Resources, with a trail system built mostly on old game and livestock trails.
It’s a great hike to end a great day and a great trip. As we head back over Snoqualmie Pass to the wet side, we immediately run into rain. It feels good.
Coda
It didn’t take long for our fears for fire season to be realized. As I write this up two weeks after our trip, there are already over a dozen wildfires in Washington State, including two very close to where we were; the Roza Fire just a few miles down the canyon from where we camped, and the Cove Road Fire near where we parked to hike the Manastash Ridge.
It’s only June.
Thanks for riding along. I have another trip report coming. To make sure you don’t miss it, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Terrific photos, John, and an engaging travel journal. You and your wife are impressively active. Good thing neither of you decided to grow up to be a couch potato! :) I loved the "livestream" reference, and the one to Wile E. Coyote. I do struggle with what agriculture has done to our lands and waters, realizing that at the end of the day (as you note) it's human consumption driving the way those production systems operate. I was not familiar with fish pulse or cheat grass. Appreciate the opportunity to learn through your adventures.
Beautiful, thank you for popping us in your pocket and taking us along, John.