Storms shot debris down from Mount Hood, creating fears for safety and crowding on the water

HOOD RIVER -- Some call it a natural disaster. To others, it's just plain natural.

Whatever you think of it, the Hood River's broad new delta has monumentally mucked up the eponymous city's waterfront.

November's disastrous storms sent a huge flow of mud, rocks and timber rushing off Mount Hood, down the Hood River and spreading like a fan into the Columbia Rive

"What's happened with the growth of the sandbar is all the zones of use have collapsed upon each other," said Bruce Peterson, windsurfing shop owner and board member of the windsurfing association.

That has some people worried that cramped conditions could lead to conflict and perhaps injuries.

"The main issue here is safe access for all the users," said Sherry Bohn, a windsurfer, beginning kiteboarder and Port of Hood River commissioner. "It's not just windsurfing and kiteboarding. There are swimmers, dog users, kayakers and other things like that."

"The fear is you're going to have some sort of contact, a collision, and somebody gets hurt," Bohn said.

Swim beach also gone

About 760,000 cubic yards of debris -- enough to fill the beds of about 375,000 full-sized pickups -- ended up at the mouth of the Hood River as heavy rain and snowmelt scoured creek beds and washed out bridges and roads throughout the area.

The debris flow, a viscous mix of mud and rock that came off Eliot Glacier at the head of the Hood River basin, was the largest on record, said Tom DeRoo, a geologist at Mount Hood National Forest.

The flow joined other flooding tributaries downstream to deposit debris an average of 8 feet thick at the Hood River's mouth, creating an expanse of brown that reaches out toward the middle of the Columbia and puts Oregon a little closer to its neighbor to the north.

"There aren't that many places you can walk out and be halfway between the two states," Bohn said.

Hood River appears to be rebuilding the delta that existed before the rising waters of the Bonneville Dam covered it, said Andrew Jansky, a consultant to the Port of Hood River. Runoff from spring thaw may alter the size and shape of the new delta, but it's unlikely to change much before this summer, he said.

In addition to blocking the Event Site, the deluge inundated the city's sole swimming beach, where the sand now slopes down to more sand instead of open water.

"There really isn't a swim beach anymore," said the Port's Bohn.

The same sandbar is blocking access to the Nichols Boat Basin, owned mostly by the Port, where tour boats plying the Columbia stop in the summer. Most of the boats will simply move to a nearby marina, except The Queen of the West sternwheeler, which is too large, Bohn said.

And plans by Naito Development of Portland to build a 5.25-acre hotel, condo and marina complex at the boat basin are now on hold.

"The way things sit right now, I don't think we're going to be able to do a resort marina," said Bob Naito, the company's owner.

"Safe zone" proposed

The situation isn't likely to change soon.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers doesn't have the money to dredge the channel into the boat basin, and private dredging, which could cost between $3 and $10 a cubic yard, can occur only between November and February, a limited window to protect fish, the Port said.

Confronted with the challenges of their new waterfront, some residents of Hood River, population 6,580, have adopted a "make lemonade" approach. In winter, some locals reportedly ice skated where water had frozen on shallow parts of the sandbar.

Last month someone used the sand for free speech, planting thousands of white paper "headstones" in a neat grid across the open sand, a monument to war dead.

"There are whole villages that have been buried by mudslides," said Bart Vervloet, a local personality known for his daily radio wind report. "So in the scheme of things, it's not that big of a deal."

While blocking much of the windsurfing site, the deluge added 26 acres of space for kiteboarders to set up their inflatable kites and 60-foot lines.

"It's kind of a good thing for kiters and not a good thing for windsurfers," said Laurent Picard, a kiter and member of the Hood River City Council.

But in the short term, the Port and local groups want to mark or try to clear hazardous debris such as logs that can catch kiteboarding lines and trip up fast-moving kiters or windsurfers, particularly near the northern edge of the sandbar.

The Columbia Gorge Kiteboarding Association and Columbia Gorge Windsurfing Association this week proposed a joint plan for managing access to the newly configured river real estate.

It would create a 600-by-600-foot safe zone in front of the Event Site to discourage kiteboarding, swimming and fast sailing there.

Not that the new rules will likely be enforceable. Most of the sandbar is public land, owned by the state Department of State Lands, and open to all legal uses.

And some kiters -- still sore about the lack of community action last summer when high water wiped out their launching area, a sand spit adjacent to the Event Site -- may choose to launch at the Event Site rather than walk or swim their gear out to their designated spot on the sandbar.

Either way, it's going to be a busy season on the river, said Hood River Sheriff's Marine Deputy Michael Anderson.

"With just the few number of users that are there right now," he said, "it's already like what it is in the summer."

Matthew Preusch: 541-382-2006; preusch@bendbroadband.com