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Photo by Steve Johnson From left to right, loggers Bryce Sanford, Bill VanCleave and Rod Huffman hook up choker cables to logs that are endangering the fish ladder at Gold Ray Dam. Jackson County hired the men's Canyonville company to remove the debris, a legacy of the New Year's Day Flood of 1997. Crew unravels flood debris at dam They walk treacherous log jam to set cables By MELISSA MARTIN GOLD RAY DAM -- It would have been like any other logging job if it weren't for the Rogue River flowing ferociously beneath their feet and the steelhead jumping in the water nearby. There was an extra element of danger and adventure for a Huffman-Wright logging crew this week as they removed about 300 cottonwoods that have been jammed against Gold Ray Dam since the flood on New Year's Day 1997. Jackson County, the owner of Gold Ray Dam, hired the Canyonville company to remove water-soaked logs that weigh 2,500 pounds, root wads and other debris backed up against the dam. The log pile threatens the fish ladder that steelhead and salmon climb during their spawning migration. "This job is about as dangerous as it gets," says hook tender Bill VanCleave, whose occupation has taken him to the tops of 80-foot trees. "We have families we want to get back to." Crews started the week-long project with a fishing pole. They cast a line and stretched a cable across the river. Then loggers walked across the log jam, hooking cables to the fallen trees so they could be hoisted to a growing pile on the bank. Steelhead return now to Rogue By MELISSA MARTIN GOLD RAY DAM -- The summer steelhead swimming against the current in their ascent of Gold Ray Dam this week are making their second trek to the Rogue River. Steelhead are unique in that they twice make a trip to fresh water, the first time going only as far as the lower Rogue River, where they spend six to nine months as "half-pounders." But they return to the Pacific Ocean to feast on plankton and small fish, staying mostly in the waters off the Southern Oregon and Northern California coasts, says Mike Evensen, district fish biologist for Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. On their second trip up the Rogue River, steelhead are on a spawning migration. They pass Gold Ray Dam for the first time on their way to lay eggs near their birthplace in the Upper Rogue River. "This is unique for the Rogue, Klamath and Eel (in California) rivers," Evensen says. At Gold Ray Dam, there's a water-proof vault where biologists watch fish through windows. They count summer steelhead May through December and winter steelhead January through May. Steelhead are not the only fish passing by the windows. Fall Chinook salmon pass by the dam August through December at age 4 after spending about three years in the Pacific Ocean. Chinook live one year in fresh water, about three years in salt water (although some have lived five or six years in the ocean) and return to the Rogue and its tributaries to spawn and die. Coho spend 1 years in fresh water, 1 years in salt water and make their spawning journey to their birthplace September to January, Evensen says. Biologists won't know until next year how much the 1997 flood affected the eggs that the coho, chinook and steelhead had already buried six to 12 inches in the gravel. "The flood caused a physical disturbance of the gravel," Evensen says. "As you get real high flows, the gravel starts to roll the eggs around and damage or destroy them. "They can tolerate a little bit of that. But at certain stages, like the eyed-stage -- when even running a feather over them will kill them -- the rattling and the jarring will kill them. Once they get past the eyed-stage, they are resistant and immune to damage." "These logs are tangled like a puzzle and it makes it difficult to get them out," says Larry Fry, timber manager of Huffman-Wright. "Safety is our main concern. We won't be taking any chances." The log jam was caused by the 1997 flood and high water last winter, says Paul Korbulic, parks and vegetation manager for Jackson County, the keeper of the dam and power plant that closed in the 1960s. Where the logs came from is up for debate. Fish biologist Mike Evensen says upstream property owners may have cut flood-damaged trees that floated down river to the dam. Some of the logs may have been cut by biologists creating fish habitats in gravel pits up river, Korbulic adds. The 1997 flood destroyed the fish habitat sloughs -- even changed the path of the river -- and sent the logs down to the dam. However they got there, the logs needed to be moved because they were dangerously close to the fish ladder, he says. "I'm surprised the hydraulics of the water haven't pushed this log pile into the fish ladder already, tearing it out," Fry says. The fish ladder is not only the spawning route for salmon and steelhead, it's the way Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists count fish as they swim up and over the dam, passing in front of a video camera in a water-proof vault. "We don't think the logs have had a serious impact yet, but it's hard to measure," says Evensen. "Our concern is that there may be a delay that we can't measure," he says. "A fish can end up not getting where they want to go and if they are ready to spawn, since they are on a schedule, they might spawn in an area where their young may not survive." This isn't the first time Jackson County has removed logs from the dam. In 1994, an Erickson Air Crane helicopter pulled logs off the dam. But a close call with a shifting log when the helicopter was inches off the water canceled future missions. "We want to prevent this log jam from happening again by installing a debris boom, a cable with logs attached to it," Korbulic says. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA