{"id":28928,"date":"2023-04-16T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2023-04-16T16:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.nrs.com\/?p=28928"},"modified":"2023-04-21T11:02:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T18:02:52","slug":"the-grand-salmon-journals-reaching-the-pacific-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2023\/04\/16\/the-grand-salmon-journals-reaching-the-pacific-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grand Salmon Journals: Reaching the Pacific Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the course of the spring and summer in 2022, The Grand Salmon team skied, whitewater kayaked and sea kayaked from the headwaters of the Salmon River in central Idaho to the Pacific Ocean. The women completed this 1,000+ mile source-to-sea expedition as a conservation project, promoting the removal of the four lower Snake River dams and a moratorium on the Stibnite Gold Project, in order to save the rapidly dwindling Snake River Basin salmon populations from extinction.<\/em><\/p>\n

Following the natural migration of chinook and sockeye salmon, the team launched on April 29, around the same time the salmon were hatching from their spawning grounds at the headwaters of the Salmon River. The team followed the salmon smolts\u2019 migration path for the following 79 days, reaching the Pacific Ocean around the same time the salmon reached the ocean.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The following is a collaboration of journal entries, art, and reflection by the three core paddlers of The Grand Salmon team: Hailey Thompson, Libby Tobey, and\u00a0Brooke Hess<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Day 71 \u2013 Day 76: The Tumultuous Lower Columbia
\n<\/strong>From the journals and thoughts of Hailey Thompson <\/em><\/p>\n

07 July 2022 (audio-journal): \u201cAlright. It\u2019s 6 am. We\u2019re less than 10 miles out of Hood River, and we\u2019ve been absolutely wrecked by wind for the past 24 hours. It\u2019s been really bad. We didn\u2019t get much sleep last night on the public dock we attempted to rest on, we\u2019re all pretty tuckered out. But we\u2019re going to try to make it to Bonneville. It\u2019s our last dam. Our last portage, with the assistance of friends. And then I guess we just have to make it to the ocean.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The exhaustion in my voice was palpable. My groggy words were hard to discern over the loud gusts of wind and slapping waves captured by the mic in my phone. The flavor of the Lower Columbia was exhaustion\u2014dismal amounts of sleep, violent headwinds, and enormous, shifting wind waves that reminded me of rivers like the Ottawa at high water.<\/p>\n