I. Free Running Rivers
Log Towing on the Harrison
“We don’t really tow them. We just try to guide them,” said Rusty Whelpton of the work that he and deckhand Roy Grypuik were doing on the Harrison River one sunny June day in the early 1990s. About ten miles of river link Harrison Lake with the mainstem of the Fraser River. At that time something like 2000 sections of bundle booms were being moved down the Harrison from the several logging operations on Harrison Lake each year.
Both salmon and water levels limited the towing season. By late September the river’s gravel bars are covered with spawning salmon and towing is stopped to protect this all-important resource. By this time the river levels have dropped so low that there may be only five feet of water over some of the shallower parts. With bundle booms drawing up to five feet this is about the limit of operation. Winter freeze-up in the headwaters, can drop levels down to four feet. On occasion a heavy rainfall will give a short winter freshet in January or February and then, with permission of the Department of Fisheries, a few days of towing may be fitted in. Otherwise the river remains closed to log towing until the spring freshet starts in mid-April.
Water levels on the Harrison are affected as much by the volume of the Fraser as flows out of Harrison Lake. River measures are maintained at three locations. As Rusty plans his towing strategy he checked with other Rivtow boats working out of Hope, several miles upstream from the junction, for levels there. By June 16 that year the measure on the Hope gauge had dropped to 10.7 feet from a high of 19.9 feet a few weeks earlier. On this same day, the gauge on the CP Rail bridge near the mouth of the Harrison was reading 9.1 feet down from an earlier 15 feet. The third gauge on Harrison Lake was down to 5.8 feet. Rusty figured he would have a good eight feet over the shallows.
The 32-foot Canyon 8 was the “pride of the fleet” when she was built at Hope 25 or 30 years earlier, she had a three foot draft designed with a fairly fine entry flowing to a nearly flat shape aft. Her propeller was in a partial tunnel to reduce her draft. Her weight and design was such that with the engine performing at optimum she will get up and plane when running light. The machine was a little tired as we headed up river that June so Rusty cut the throttle as they pass over a shallow spot in the river. The wash catches up and the shallow caused blue-green river waters to build and lifted the stern, Rusty ran the revs back up and the boat began to plane.
It was ten p.m. as Rusty and Roy were headed back up river having brought their first tow down the seven mile central section of the river. They moored part of it at the dolphins below the bridge where Highway 7 crosses the river between diked farm lands. The other part of the tow was turned over to the Red Fir 7 which would take it out past Harrison Mills booming ground, across Harrison Bay, around Calamity Point and on down the Fraser to Mission. With the hard working little Canyon 8 doing her best to stay up on a plane, deckhand Roy Grypuik, took the wheel and Rusty told about starting out with Rivtow on the Harrison as a 17-year-old in 1974. He had already worked part time pumping gas at Rivtow’s marina in the little resort town of Harrison Hot Springs and working on the company’s ex-crew boat Tarquin showing tourists around the lake. The family’s roots run deep in the Harrison area. His dad, Howard Whelpton, had skippered boats on the river before him. Rusty had a house with no mortgage in Agassie and two kids. His oldest at the time, six-year-old daughter Kimberly, was ready to start waterskiing behind her dad’s ski boat that summer. Rusty’s wife is an Engstrom of the well-known Harrison Lake logging family. Rivtow’s Fast Water Division was a family oriented operation.
Roy’s dad Sam Grypuik wad also worked as a skipper. Roy started on the river in 1968 but went outside to spend some time towing out of Prince Rupert. Then, after a stint towing booms on Williston Lake, he came back home to the river.
As the Canyon 8 nears the top end of the river, Rusty swings it toward the east bank where a boom of logs lies against the rock bluff. Rusty and Roy had moored the boom here earlier having brought it down from the lake where a bigger lake tug, the Rivtow Strivour, (in 2007 registered as Western Caper) tows up to seventy sections at a time into a central area. Now Roy goes onto the boom to break off 16 sections for the down river trip. Rusty updates his logbook and runs the boat in between the boom and the bluff and pushes the wood out into the channel. The Canyon 8 churns up some mud as she worries the flank of the boom to drag a stick off that has hung up on the bottom. With the boom floating free, Roy hooks the towline on to a corner chain and ties it off on the tow post.
For the tow down river the skipper runs the boat. Rusty explains that it isn’t just a matter of knowing where the bars are. The river levels are changing daily so that the current in the river channel work differently on the tow. Just above a shallow section known as the rapids, a strong current flowing down a side channel behind little Oscars Island tends to pull the boom off course. “When the water is high it sucks out behind the island. You’ve got to allow the tail end to come down through the groove,” Rusty explained.
Looking back over the snaking 16-sections of logs in the tow, the current’s action on the tail is apparent as it bends toward the top end of the island. With her engine cranked right up the Canyon 8 pulls the boom along quickly enough to avoid having the last couple of sections wrap themselves around Oscar Island. When a boom does hang up it really messes up the day as the tug must go back and separate the sections to remove them from the bar one at a time. When the river is in full freshet a second boat is usually brought in to assist on the tail of the boom.
Below Oscar Island the rapids formed a long shallow curve on the river. A current setting off the opposite bank pushes the booms over so much that it has been necessary to built in a permanent assist. A series of dolphins have been driven with overlapping logs, called shear sticks, laid along their base. To prevent it landing up in the shallows these logs guide along the tail of the boom. At the bottom end of the rapids Rusty tows hard for the opposite shore hoping to bring the boom in tight to a rock there to line it up properly for the next run. As the tail of the boom comes off the shear sticks, Rusty is pleased to note that with the drop in river levels a strong current that was crossing a bar at this point has slowed so the boom is note endangered.
There is very little other traffic on the river. For most of its length there is no road access or housing along the banks. Passing the Chehalis Indian reserve the only sign of human activity was a dugout racing canoe up on the beach. A little farther down river a speed boat was pulled up on a bar with a couple of fishermen relaxing by a row of willow brush and trying their luck while they soaked up some sun. As the Canyon 8 came into the last run above the highway bridge, Rusty eased off on the throttle. Roy went on deck to unhook the tow so that Rusty could push it over to a set of dolphins already holding a number of booms. Leaving these 16 sections there they turned back up river to bring down one more turn before quitting time.
The river, the forests and the boats are reminded me of some of the smaller rivers of coastal Oregon like the Umpqua or the logger’s river of Ken Kesey’s “Sometimes a Great Notion”. Tucked away but very much alive with families, water, booms and boats. For the crews of the Harrison River boats in the 1990s there was a good life in their quiet little blue green utopia they have found the best of all worlds. They get to mess about in boats all day, in water that is constantly changing so that it never becomes monotonous, and they sleep at home every night.
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