Hells Canyon Dam

by Robert Bales

Title

Hells Canyon Dam

Artist

Robert Bales

Medium

Photograph - Photo

Description

We took an 11 hour jet boat trip down and back through Hells Canyon! It was a total of 220 miles. This is one of many rapids on the trip.Some of them were rated as a 5.

Hells Canyon Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Snake River (river mile 247) in Hells Canyon on the Idaho-Oregon border. The dam impounds the Snake River in Hells Canyon Reservoir; its spillway elevation is 512 m (1,680 ft) above sea level.
It is the third and final hydroelectric dam of the Hells Canyon Project, which includes Brownlee Dam (1959) and Oxbow Dam (1961), all built and operated by Idaho Power Company. The Hells Canyon Complex on the Snake River is the largest privately owned hydroelectric power complex in the nation, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The contractor for the Hells Canyon Dam was Morrison-Knudsen.
The Hells Canyon Dam powerhouse contains three generating units, with a total nameplate capacity of 391 megawatts (MW).[2] Power generation began with two units in 1967, the third came on line the following year.
Lacking passage for migrating salmon, the three dams of the Hells Canyon Project blocked access by anadromous salmonids to a stretch of the Snake River drainage basin from Hells Canyon Dam up to Shoshone Falls, which naturally prevents any upstream fish passage to the upper Snake River basin.


Hells Canyon is a 10-mile (16 km) wide canyon located along the border of eastern Oregon, eastern Washington and western Idaho in the United States. It is part of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and is North America's deepest river gorge[3]at 7,993 feet (2,436 m)
The canyon was carved by the waters of the Snake River, which flows more than 1 mile (1.6 km) below the canyon's west rim on the Oregon side and 7,400 feet (2,300 m) below the peaks of Idaho's Seven Devils Mountains range to the east. Most of the area is inaccessible by road.
The earliest known settlers in Hells Canyon were the Nez Percé tribe. Others tribes visiting the area were the Shoshone-Bannock, northern Paiute and Cayuse Indians. The mild winters, and ample plant and wildlife attracted human habitation. Pictographs and petroglyphs on the walls of the canyon are a record of the Indian settlements
In 1806, three members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition entered the Hells Canyon region along the Salmon River. They turned back without seeing the deep parts of the canyon. It was not until 1811 that the Wilson Price Hunt expedition explored Hells Canyon while seeking a shortcut to the Columbia River. Hunger and cold forced them to turn back, as did many explorers who were defeated by the canyon's inaccessibility. There remains no evidence in the canyon of their attempts; their expedition journals are the only documentation. Early explorers sometimes called this area Box Canyon or Snake River Canyon.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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June 19th, 2018

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