The Ninemile Vortex

We got this awesome email from Paul Parsons here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Paul replaced Rob at Trout Unlimited, and sent this great update on Rob’s old stomping grounds fixing streams in the Ninemile Valley just west of Missoula in Montana. We appreciate hearing the news, and were glad to here no wolves died during the vortex experience.

The upper Ninemile vortex caught up with me and deflated my pickle truck tire. And the spare. At the end of the day, sitting at mile marker 18 with two flats and a bed full of beautiful Ninemile landscape rock I started the walk out headed for the Pontrelli mansion.

I had spent the afternoon with Amy Sacry and a mini excavator digging around in the floodplain and piles looking for clues. Fortunately they found several indicators showing what they believe to be the remnant floodplain elevation. Most of the piles consist of sandy loams and cobbles. Great news for reconstructing the floodplain. John Muhlfield was also cruising around and had some great ideas for Sawpit. Part of me wishes we were going to construction this year.

So with John, Amy and the mini-ex headed down the road in front of me I thought I would stop and gather some rock I had spotted earlier in the day. I not so quickly filled my truck bed with colorful, moss covered rocks. Satisfied with my haul I discovered my front tire had a nice sharp rock poking through the tread. Unloaded the deflated spare and quickly thought, “what a great night for a walk down the Ninemile”. Turned my back on the sorry looking pickle truck and put boots to dirt.

After crossing Pine Creek around mile marker 13, I heard a truck coming down the road. I looked up the road into the sun and stuck out my thumb; dude jammed on the brakes and dusted me out. He pushed the passenger door open and smiled a toothy grin, minus some teeth. It took me awhile to take it all in. In the passenger seat rested a nicely honed homemade hatchet, a pistol and taking up most of the cab was beautiful black powder rifle. After making eye contact with the guy I looked down to see he was wearing only a loin cloth and buckskin moccasins. The loin cloth was loose fitting at best.

The guy asked me “where ya headed or are ya just out for a hike?” while he was sliding the pistol, hatchet and Last of the Mohicans DVD towards himself to make room. I told him I was almost to my destination but took him up on his offer to give me a ride. As we drove he told me of the day’s bear hunt and how he likes the experience of buckskin and black powder. All I could think of was trying to navigate over and through the thick Ninemile blowdown with only a loin cloth protecting my dangledown.

Midway through a sentence describing his sneak on a black bear through thick blowdown, I interrupted with “that’s a wolf” he interrupted my quick interruption with “that sum-a-bitch” and reached for his pistol. Maybe he was reaching for his hatchet or Last of the Mohicans DVD. I’m not quite sure as it all happened so quickly. The wolf came within 10 yards of the truck. He wasn’t a particularly handsome wolf, grey with black ears and running with his tail between his legs. I had never seen wolf behavior like that before and I almost felt sorry for it. Run more stoically and faster I thought, this guy is gonna throw a hatchet at you.

With wolf season over two months ago, the guy realized that I was in the truck with him. Might have been a dead wolf otherwise. We were both jacked with energy but maybe for different reasons and continued bouncing down the dusty road. He approached Pontrelli’s driveway and let me out. I thanked him and told him good luck with the rest of bear season. As he drove off, I stood on the side of the Ninemile road for a brief moment. Not quite stunned but in a fog thinking did that shit really just happen?

I was hoping for a continuation of surrealness to end the evening. Not much luck there. Dave wasn’t home and his compound was locked tight. With no phone and the sun looking lower than I’d hoped for I was sitting on the porch wondering if Pontrelli was the type of guy to hide a key. I heard a truck coming down the valley from far away. Thinking traffic is light and this might be my last chance to catch a ride out, I grabbed my backpack and sprinted down the driveway towards the road only to see a mega diesel truck with a gooseneck trailer roar by. Shit. Missed it. And I was getting hungry.

I started the walk again and soon a guy in an old Audi turbo was flying down the road. He was watching the turkeys in the timber on the hill and blew right past my outstretched thumb. He must have seen me at the last second because he stopped and backed up nearly as fast as he had blown by me. He also asked where I need to go or if I was just out for a hike. I told him I was just at Dave’s house to try to use a phone. He knew Dave and offered to drive me all the way to Missoula. Then he realized the guy with the mega diesel, aka his buddy, was headed to the Bitterroot. So the turbo came into play and we caught the guy with the gooseneck. I hopped in with him and shortly found myself standing on the side of Reserve Street.

Looking towards the M and knowing my little home was near the base of Mt. Sentinel I put boots to pavement. Missoula seemed smaller than ever and I was semi-excited to see how long it would take me to walk from Reserve to Tremont Street. Three generous rides and one wolf was all it took to get home.

big red - the red rider truck - rob roberts and trout unlimited - pushing through the forest

Fishing, Outdoor Adventures

So Long, Big Red

Since tomorrow is my last day at Trout Unlimited, it seems fitting that I handed over the title to our 1994 Dodge Dakota pickup this morning. Trout Unlimited bought the truck for $1 back in 2009 and, because of its stamina and sheer willpower, we dubbed it the “Red Rider” or just “Big Red.”

So what if the wheel wells were corroded, the passenger side door only opened from the inside, or the windows didn’t roll down, the Red Rider was my trusted companion, alongside my dog – Abe – for countless hours of fieldwork. It was the best work vehicle a guy could ask for. Together, we steamrolled through brush covered roads, forded streams, and carried some ridiculous loads. Watch this video to see one of our exploits.

The Red Rider was truly legendary because it had its own sense of humor and personal charisma. It didn’t drive well in the snow or, really, even the rain, but I took pride in showing up at meetings with the Red Rider. Parked alongside the shiny new trucks of state agencies or high dollar consultants, I admit that the much smaller Red Rider looked a little bit silly. But the Red Rider always held its own, kept its head high, and never let me down. It always reaffirmed my belief in being part of a lean and mean non-profit, maintaining TU’s focus on efficiency and results and not getting caught up in posh and posturing. Would I have liked 4 wheel drive? Sure. Did I wish that the interior lights worked consistently? Of course. Would it have been easier to drive if I knew what gear I was in? Always. But I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I envision the Red Rider spending its remaining days as a cared for farm vehicle, soaking its old bones in a sunny pasture and going out for Sunday drives. So long, Big Red. We’ll miss you.

[framed_video column=”full-width”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tol_nbmKcVY[/framed_video]

Fishing

Stitching 2 Creeks Back Together Again

As a perfect follow-up to the “typical office day” video I shared earlier this week, here’s the front-page article in the Missoulian newspaper this morning. It’s all about the job we finished, which reconnects two creeks.

It’ll be my last on-the-ground project before we take off to sail and explore for a couple of years. Watch the video for an up-close look at how I rebuilt the stream.

80 years after it was diverted, Twin Creek steered back into Ninemile Creek

By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian

NINEMILE – It took 58 minutes for Twin Creek to flow 400 feet and reconnect a waterway severed for the last 80 years.

“That’s pretty awesome,” David Pontrelli yelled as the first muddy cloud from Twin Creek’s new channel bloomed in the clear waters of Ninemile Creek.

On a freezing Friday morning, he saw the result of six weeks of earthmoving and landscape engineering repair a bit of family history.

“My grandpa was a miner up here in the ’30s,” Pontrelli said. “I’m working on some of the same projects he did, putting them back together. We’re making a positive impact, and I’m extremely proud to be a part of that.”

Shortly before World War II, gold miners patented a four-mile stretch of the Ninemile Creek bottom and started dredging the floodplain. Their machines scooped up the creek’s cobbles and gravel into berms 20 feet high, seeking a layer of clay where the valuable minerals hid. Ninemile Creek’s winding oxbows were shunted into a straight-line ditch.

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Twin Creek flows into the Ninemile from the hills to the south. When it reached the dredging zone, the miners forced it into a ditch that eventually poured into a pond and percolated away.

“No one’s blaming the miners – they were trying to survive just like the rest of us,” said Trout Unlimited project manager Rob Roberts, who organized the work with cooperation from Missoula County, the Lolo National Forest and the University of Montana. “There’s a lot of debate about how much they found. I think they paid their way. Now we’re trying to create a new legacy for the valley, and return things to the way they were.”

Sort of. To connect the two creeks, Roberts’ crew had to rearrange 16,000 cubic yards of old dredge berm into a causeway across some of the mining channels. That put a pile roughly the size of a football field in a miner’s clearing, with the new creek running 20 feet above the old dredge channel on either side.

Pontrelli and his Streamside Services LLC coworkers hand-placed hundreds of rocks in a series of pools and cascades to mimic the natural contours of a creek. Then they scattered sand, gravel and clay in the bed and blasted the whole mix with water hoses. The goal was to armor the new streambed so water wouldn’t leak out before it reached Ninemile Creek.

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Rock and River Co. partners Chance Kirby and Ray Trollope did most of the heavy lifting with their excavator and dump truck. In three weeks, they lifted and moved 1,600 dump-truck loads of fill. On Friday, Kirby got to pull the earthen plug that kept Twin Creek in its ditch. A single bucketful of dirt at 11:31 a.m. was all it took to send the stream tumbling into its new path.

A veteran of the Milltown Dam removal with a dozen years of streambed experience, Kirby used his huge power shovel to re-landscape the area around where Twin Creek used to run. While he transplanted loads of living plants into the old ditch, UM Wildland Restoration students Mark Fogarty and Mark Marano scrambled through the mud seeking stranded fish.

They returned with a 4-inch trout and a handful of minnows for the new channel. Roberts said a stranded population of westslope cutthroat existed in Twin Creek, and now will mingle with the fish in Ninemile Creek. Like first-time homebuyers in a new subdivision, Roberts said fish will flock to the new reach for a while.

Fogarty, Marano and classmate Danielle Berardi also put together a squad of 30 fellow students last weekend to plant thousands of trees and bushes along the new streambed.

Twin Creek was just one of a half-dozen tributaries to the Ninemile diverted for mining. The upper stretch of Ninemile Creek remains trapped in an unnatural channel.

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Lolo National Forest soils and water program manager Traci Sylte said Twin Creek didn’t have any serious hazardous waste issues, although other mining-affected creeks higher in the drainage did.

“So far, we’ve done work on Little McCormick, Eustache, Mattie V, St. Louis, Twin, Kennedy and Josephine creeks,” Sylte said. “It’s been great that a lot of private folks have the ethic and desire to give us permission to do this.”

The Twin Creek project cost about $200,000. All combined, the Ninemile drainage streamwork has brought close to $1 million for area excavators, contractors, nurseries and laborers. And there’s been some unpaid labor involved as well.

Over the years, beavers have built ponds that backed up the water and flooded into parallel dredge channels, returning a bit of braiding to the waterway. But lots more work would be needed.

“The only problem is we don’t have enough money to do this for the entire four miles,” Roberts said. “It’s so disturbed in this area, we don’t even know where the floodplain was. It’s completely altered.”