Multnomah Falls and the Passing Tugs

Passing tugs at the eddy

The working tugs on the Columbia are a special design for this river. They are deeper draft than the Mississippi boats and like most tug boats one sees today, they have a bow structure for pushing. So one wonders if they might be called pushers instead but I guess we still call them tugs. A minute amount of online research yields that they operate 24 hours a day with crews switching on and off the Tug somewhere along the river. It takes 48 hours to get from Lewiston Idaho, through the locks and dams, to Portland. Forty percent of our wheat production slide down this river to Portland at eight miles an hour while their diesel engines are burning about 110 gallons an hour. This tidewater tug is pushing upstream toward the narrows and its pushing two empty grain barges and a fuel barge loaded and low in the water.

I checked the USGS water data site last evening and the River is running around 320,000 cubic feet per second of water flowing by in this picture. For those of us who know the Arkansas River through Salida, it is running 348 cubic feet per second of water today.
        I have been here visiting at Skamania Landing a number of times in recent years but I haven't had two tugs going opposite ways pass by here before. It was fun to watch. I have a series of photos of each barge approach and passing. The water was so still and we had been watching birds sitting on flotsam caught in the middle of the eddy and slowly riding it around in a circle!
     On Friday we had to make a supply run into Vancouver. ( more cigars and scotch!) So we decided to go upriver to Bridge of the Gods and cross over to Cascade Locks on the Oregon side and go to Multnomah Falls. Springs and snowmelt up on Larch Mountain feed a whole series of waterfalls along this stretch of I-84 out of Portland and along a lovely winding road, US 30, up to Vista House and on to Troutdale. The Multnomah Falls are considered the tallest in Oregon. This is a popular stop on the interstate and finding a minute to get a picture in the crowd was hard. It is an easy trail up to the bridge and apparently with some dedication you can climb to the top of the falls on a trail that goes around to the left off the bridge.
     The winding and climbing road through the trees to Vista House is US route 30 and is the old highway to Idaho before the interstate. This section leaves the interstate and would be a nice ride when it is dry, but we had the car and it was nice in that also, the road was damp and in the trees and looked as if one wouldn't want to test lean angles this day.

The longview were great at the top and I could see back up river to the Landing and Beacon rock out by the river. Beacon Rock is a 848 ft high basalt volcanic plug that stands beside the Columbia River about a mile upstream of the Landing where I am staying. A trail was made up it to the top that is closed right now for repairs but it is an easy climb.
       We finished our site seeing and wandered into Troutdale and on to Vancouver for our supply run and returned up river to have the sunshine on us while we sat by the river. It will be hard to leave this for the snow that is happening today in Colorado! But that is days ahead and I will take it One Day at a Time.
Will by the Columbia River