Peaceful Salmon River
by Robert Bales
Title
Peaceful Salmon River
Artist
Robert Bales
Medium
Photograph - Photo
Description
We spend a few days exploring the area around Salmon, Idaho and this is one of the few places the river looks very peaceful.
The Salmon River is located in Idaho in the northwestern United States. The Salmon is also known as The River of No Return. It flows for 425 miles (684 km) through central Idaho, draining a rugged, thinly populated watershed of 14,000 square miles (36,260 km2) and dropping more than 7,000 feet (2,134 m) between its headwaters, near Galena Summit above the Sawtooth Valley in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, and its confluence with the Snake River. Measured at White Bird, its average discharge is 11,060 cubic feet (313 m3) per second. It is one of the largest rivers in the continental United States without a single dam on its mainstem.
Cities located along the Salmon River include Stanley, Clayton, Challis, Salmon, Riggins, and White Bird. Redfish Lake and Little Redfish Lake near Stanley, which flow into the river via Redfish Lake Creek, are the terminus of the longest Pacific sockeye salmon migration in North America. This river is also featured as part of the route that William Least Heat-Moon and his friend take in their boat journey across America, which is described in Heat-Moon's book River Horse.
The Salmon River originates from and flows through the mountains of central and eastern Idaho (Lemhi Range, Sawtooth, Salmon River Mountains, Clearwater and Bitterroot Range). The main stem rises in the Sawtooth Range at over 9,200 feet (2,800 m) in elevation, several miles northwest of Norton Peak. For the first 30 miles (48 km), it flows north through the Sawtooth Valley, then turns east at Stanley, receiving the Yankee Fork shortly below that point and the East Fork further downstream. The river then flows northeast, receiving the Pahsimeroi River at Ellis and then the Lemhi River at Salmon, Idaho east of the Lemhi Range.
North of Salmon, the river is joined by the North Fork, before turning west into over 200 miles (320 km) of continuous canyons through the Salmon River and Clearwater Mountains some of the most rugged and isolated terrain in the contiguous United States. Exhibiting upwards of 7,000 feet (2,100 m) of vertical relief, the Salmon River canyons are some of the deepest in the US, surpassing the Grand Canyon and second only to the Snake River's Hells Canyon on the Idaho, Oregon border. Here, the river is joined by its two largest tributaries, the Middle Fork and South Fork. Ten miles (16 km) downstream (west) of its confluence with the Middle Fork, the Salmon River becomes the dividing line for the two time zones in Idaho: Mountain time to the south, Pacific time to the north, bisecting the state at approximately 45.5 degrees north latitude.
The river turns abruptly north at the confluence with the Little Salmon River at Riggins, about 87 miles (140 km) above its mouth. From there the river flows almost due north, passing White Bird, before looping northwest and south to its confluence with the Snake River north of Hells Canyon, 15 miles (24 km) south of the Washington border and 40 miles (64 km) south of Lewiston.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Uploaded
July 28th, 2016
Statistics
Viewed 863 Times - Last Visitor from Fairfield, CT on 04/24/2024 at 12:33 AM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet
Similar Images
Comments (4)
Recently Viewed
