Hell’s Canyon Plan Stirs Up Jet Boaters

While Michelle Peters, an official for Beamers Hells Canyon Tours, was attending a promotional meeting in Spokane a few days ago, a man said to her, “I see that the Forest Service is shutting power boating down in Hells Canyon.”

That statement typifies public misunderstanding of what will happen next year if the Forest Service’s decisions pertaining to Hells Canyon of the Snake River are not changed after Oct. 28, the deadline for appealing those decisions.

Because the decisions were not fully reported by media outside the Lewiston-Clarkston area, most persons only marginally interested in the bitter fight between private and commercial power boat and float boat operators don’t know what is scheduled to happen.

All too many assume the fight is over and that the power boaters lost. To private and commercial power-boat operators, the Forest Service’s decisions were bad enough, but they will assure you the fight isn’t over.

They have politicians working for them and they hint they’ll go to court if the regional forester upholds the decisions that will limit the use of power boats in the canyon. The politicians, however, are so busy trying to get re-elected that they can’t spend much time on the issue.

The Forest Service decided last year how private power-boat owners and floaters will share Hells Canyon. Its regulations are to take effect next year. The decision affecting commercial power boaters was announced a few weeks ago.

No longer will private jet-boat owners be permitted to run their boats up and down the canyon any time they want during the “primary” season. They’ll have to make reservations with the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest to be in the canyon, between the mouth of Cache Creek and Wild Sheep Rapids just below the Hells Canyon Dam, on certain days.

The primary season will run from the Friday before Memorial Day through Sept. 10. The secondary season will be the rest of the year.

The Forest Service decided to limit the number of private boats during the primary season. It will permit eight launches per day Mondays through Thursdays in the “scenic” section between Cache Creek and Pittsburg Landing and 18 per day Fridays through Sundays.

Only six boat launches per day will be permitted in the “wild” section between Pittsburg Landing and Hells Canyon Dam. That section is highly popular with private boaters.

With jet boats seemingly in everyone’s back yard and multiplying like squawfish in the Lewiston-Clarkston area, the competition for the few permits to run Hells Canyon will be intense. Naturally, private jet-boat owners, as well as the manufacturers of jet boats, who fear a drop in demand, don’t like the new rules.

Owners of commercial firms that take thousands of thrill-seekers up the famous Hells Canyon each year don’t like the regulations that affect them. Not only will they be limited in the number of days they can operate in the scenic section of the canyon, but the new rules will make it virtually impossible for them to expand operations to meet the growing demand.

Abbreviated news reports emphasized the rules that, for a 21-day period, exclude jet boats from a 21-mile-long section between historical Kirkwood ranch and the top of Wild Sheep Rapids, just below Hells Canyon Dam. Specifically, motorized boats will be banned from that section Mondays through Wednesdays every other week from June through August, the peak of the boating season.

Jill Koch, who, with her husband Jim, owns Beamers Hells Canyon Tours, said the Forest Service’s regulations will prevent Beamers from expanding.

“No growth factor is built into the plan,” she said. “We will be lucky if we can make it with the launches they have allocated us.”

She said a “certain group” of commercial rafters “want exclusive use of Hells Canyon.” That’s what both private and commercial power-boat owners and operators fear will happen.

They think the rafters aren’t satisfied with the decisions already made by the Forest Service, but will pressure the agency to give them more days of exclusive use of the river. If the commercial rafting firms get their way, commercial power-boat operators feel thousands of persons who don’t want to or can’t ride rafts will be excluded from the scenic canyon.

Both private and commercial boat owners and operators, mostly through associations, are appealing the Forest Service’s decisions. But they suspect the decisions will be upheld and that they’ll have to go to court.

A lot of money rides on the final decision. Commercial power-boat owners have investments totaling millions of dollars and jet-boat manufacturing is a multi-million dollar business in the Lewiston-Clarkston area.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.