Big Creek, Day 1: Final North American Fieldwork
As I will be gone for a year, I am preparing my students to carry on work while I am away.
Between May 1 and 5, Chris Tennant (PhD student), Holly Young (Undergraduate thesis researcher) and myself walked down the length of Big Creek, a large, steep mountainous tributary to the Middle Fork Salmon River. Here is a great documentary about the region. Our goals were to install instrumentation and scout out the feasibility of work planned for later in the summer. Holly and Chris will focus on how downstream-increasing discharge results (or does not result) in changes in channel geometry such as slope, width, depth, grain size, etc. We flew from Challis, ID with Middle Fork Aviation to the Big Creek airstrip and then walked the length of the river to Taylor Ranch where we were picked up and taken back to Challis. The country is steep and the river is a diverse series of reaches affected by massive landslides and contrasting lithologies. Here are some of the best images from our walk, in chronological order.
Day 1: Flight from Challis to Big Creek airstrip and hike down to Beaver Creek.
Between May 1 and 5, Chris Tennant (PhD student), Holly Young (Undergraduate thesis researcher) and myself walked down the length of Big Creek, a large, steep mountainous tributary to the Middle Fork Salmon River. Here is a great documentary about the region. Our goals were to install instrumentation and scout out the feasibility of work planned for later in the summer. Holly and Chris will focus on how downstream-increasing discharge results (or does not result) in changes in channel geometry such as slope, width, depth, grain size, etc. We flew from Challis, ID with Middle Fork Aviation to the Big Creek airstrip and then walked the length of the river to Taylor Ranch where we were picked up and taken back to Challis. The country is steep and the river is a diverse series of reaches affected by massive landslides and contrasting lithologies. Here are some of the best images from our walk, in chronological order.
Day 1: Flight from Challis to Big Creek airstrip and hike down to Beaver Creek.
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| Contrasting forests after fire |
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| Early morning shadows from snags |
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| Middle Fork Salmon River |
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| Cabin Creek area, Big Creek |
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| Canyon and Cave Creek confluence |
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| Snow persists in the western shadows of trees. |
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| Snow persists on west facing aspects. |
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| Can you find the shadow of the plane among the trees? |
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| This Chevy stands ready below Goat Mountain |