Above and Below

Astoria, Oregon ~ February 14, 2012

This may be a training session in progress, as the pilot boat is also on scene (below) for any necessary transfer of pilots. I've heard that ships' pilots are sometimes transferred by helicopter at sea or on the bar when it's too rough for a boat to come alongside the ship. I remember hearing at one time that helicopter transfers were to become routine, but I don't know what happened to that idea. I wonder which method is more dangerous. I can imagine which is more expensive. Here in the river, waters are quite calm today.

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A Nice Place for an Office

June 4, 2010

The building on pilings in the center of the photo is the dispatch office of the Columbia River Bar Pilots. You reach it by way of the ramp of rust-colored wood. The white building on the left is the Astor Hotel, a landmark from almost anywhere on the Columbia River side of the hill. Astoria's downtown is about three blocks wide and runs parallel to the river. I've taken this photo from the 17th Street docks.

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Snow on the water

Astoria, Oregon ~ December 19, 2008

The pilots work in all kinds of weather. This is Arrow 2, the small pilot boat that docks at the foot of 12th Street. In another photo from December 18, 2008 (but posted on December 27, 2009), you can see two of the pilots in their gear.

More snow, December 18, 2008

December 18, 2008

Don't you love the day-glo green? I do. Especially in near white-out conditions. Two river pilots are either going to or coming from work. It's a nice day to go out on the water in a small boat and climb a ladder onto a ship, yes? They laughed a friendly greeting when they saw me taking their picture. The location is the River Walk at 15th Street, just outside my store. That's Marine Drive where you can see headlights and cars.
The weather on December 18th was truly chaotic, with snow one minute, hail the next, then sun and blue skies, then snow, then hail again. I couldn't help running outside with my camera every few minutes, and if you'd like to see the results, I posted about it that day on my personal blog.

It's log season on the Columbia River

So this is what's been thumping against the pilings under our building. Now it's drifted across the water to rock next to the River Pilots' building in the comparatively calm water today, but unless the tide takes it, it will be back, and the water may not stay so calm. During much of the last two weeks, it's been pretty rough.

Winter is log season. The rains and the high tides bring them floating down in all sizes; several times per year they end up knocking against the pilings for a day or so. When the water is rough, the buildings shake. We have long poles with hooks on the end, called "pike poles," and we use them to push the logs out into the river, but of course it helps if the tide takes them OUT rather than bringing them back in.

Both the pilots' building and ours have had new screens, or fencing, installed this year. The screens help keep the logs in the river rather than stuck under the buildings, but occasionally they buck the system. Last year one of the logs ripped into the hinged gate you see here and opened the door for itself and more logs. They also find ways to get under the screening, then they're locked in like . . . uh . . . caged logs.

The log above is big, but it's not huge. We get many, many smaller ones, but we also get larger ones. Here's a spectacular log that came to visit almost one year ago and managed to hang around for awhile. It's hard to call it a log; it's more like a tree. It didn't do the building much good, but it was really interesting to watch.

On a clear day you can see the mouth of the Columbia: A 19th-Century feat of engineering

This aerial photo was taken by Frank Wolfe and lent to me by Branden Wilson for use on the Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo blog. It shows the south (Oregon) side of the Columbia River as it pours into the Pacific Ocean. The line you see going from Clatsop Spit into the ocean is a man-made jetty. The line crossing from the land to the left side of the photo (and disappearing behind the airplane in the lower left) is what's left of the train trestle used to carry rocks to the jetty project. When you see all the mud in the water, it's easy to understand how the sand bars are built and moved around.

I took yesterday's blog photo from near the point where the white ocean waves meet the line of the jetty. Now, if you look at the right-hand edge of the waves, where they encounter the mass of land at the end of Clatsop Spit, and take this as the starting point, estimate about 1 mile going left, and that is where the mouth of the river was at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1806. That mile of beach and land is new, having accumulated once the jetty changed the flow of the water. It's pretty amazing. It took several expeditions to this area before Europeans even realized this was the mouth of a river. Due to the sheer size of the river's mouth, it had not been obvious, especially in bad weather. It was not until 1792 that Captain Gray discovered the river. Even Captain Cook had missed it in 1778, and Captain Gray had missed it on his first trip, a few years before his 1792 discovery. Others had also come this way and not recognized what they were passing. Today it remains one of the most dangerous bars to cross in a ship. I believe it was one of the pilots who said, there is one more dangerous, but this bar takes more skill. Don't ask. That's all I remember. The mouth of the Columbia has been dubbed "The Graveyard of the Pacific." Wikipedia quotes Saddler Russel as saying, "More than 2000 vessels and 700 lives have been lost near the Columbia Bar alone." (This "Columbia Bar" link helps explain why the elements here cause conditions to be so treacherous.)

But the mouth of the Columbia is also a beautiful and stirring place. Wildlife abounds, along with majestically scenic views and a taste of the incomparably-moody ocean. More scenes from both sides of the river to come later on this blog.

Arrow No. 2

This is Arrow No. 2, the boat that takes river pilots out to the big ships and brings them back. If you click on the image to zoom in, you can see who uses the buoy besides the ships' pilots. There are a couple of fat sea lions lazing around on the base of the buoy, and a seagull perched on top. This is the Columbia River side of Astoria. The pilot boats don't operate in the bay, although they are sometimes called upon to assist in unusual circumstances, such as in the photo I snapped for this blog's third day online.

Pilings and more pilings along Astoria's waterfront

Yesterday Steffe wondered why the pilings and posts in this blog entry were left in place and allowed to decay. That photo was taken from the River Walk at 14th Street. Just two blocks up from there at 16th Street, you can see more of Astoria's typical waterfront scenery in today's photo. There are areas along the waterfront where the pilings and beams are thick like this and areas where they are less so. In the past, there were many buildings over the water. Once the huge cannery and fish-packing industries lost their exuberance here, they were no longer needed and they disappeared. I'm sure that it simply wasn't worth anyone's time and trouble to remove the pilings (and for what reason?). The town doesn't grow so fast that it needs this space, in fact, Astoria remains fairly static at about 10,000 people, probably due to its historically slow economy. There may be other factors that people will mention in the Comments, but I'm not an economist, and I'm still new to the area.

What do you do with a charming town like Astoria when the industry is essentially gone? It becomes a tourist attraction, although it is certainly not a ghost town. And what is more interesting to tourists than something they couldn't see at home? As a resident and having talked with many visitors, I believe Astoria's interesting and unusually picturesque waterfront is a big part of the draw. So most of the pilings will be left alone - at least, I hope so. I believe that many of the ones you see in this photo are slated for demolition at some time in the near future due to plans to build a controversial 4-story condo, both taller and wider than the existing building. I won't get into that here. Let's just say that many people enjoy Astoria's waterfront for its unique and picturesque qualities, including the dilapidated areas where buildings once existed. You can see a concrete pad in this photo, no longer flat, but slanted several directions. The sea birds, and especially the seagulls, congregate here until the tide comes up high enough to cover the cement, which it does frequently. A sign along the bank tells us that a church was one of the buildings occupying this location. At one time many of the the buildings on the waterfront were built over the river, and people could actually fish through holes in the board streets.

The imaginatively-designed building on the far right is the office and dispatch station for the River Pilots, and is connected by a wooden walkway to the shore just out of sight on the right. The docks beyond, at 17th Street, are home to the Coast Guard ship Steadfast and to the decommissioned Columbia Light Ship and Columbia Buoy. You can barely see the white peak of the roof of the Maritime Museum. More on that later, and also more of Astoria's watery ruins in days to come.

Where the pilot boat lives

This dock is home to the green and white pilot boat that takes pilots to and from the big ships on the Columbia River. The building has just had a new coat of paint and is looking quite picturesque and bright. A number of the buildings along the waterfront use the same color scheme. I think they look nice. I took this photo from the shoreward end of the dock at 12th Street, almost where I took this photo of Doc's on 12th, the building that houses Baked Alaska Restaurant and Lounge. In that photo, I was facing across the river. In this photo I'm facing upriver (east). Here's another picture of the red pilots' building. It's the one on the far right, taken from a block upriver, so you're seeing the other side of it.

The location of this photo is right along the River Walk. I love it that locals and visitors can watch the pilot boats come in and out of dock on a regular basis during their working day. This morning I got a fairly good shot of the pilot boat with one of the big ships, and I'll post it tomorrow or at least very soon.

We've been having utterly gorgous perfect weather here. Not too hot and not cold. But this is Astoria. I usually carry a jacket just in case, and today sitting the shade, I actually used it.

I hope you're all enjoying another Scenic Sunday.