ABOVE: Here is the essence of Palouse Falls: Steel rails against a backdrop of brownish and gold basalt rock. RIGHT: Just to the north of Tunnel 14 there is a nice view down the canyon at the “state park spring,” where the campground gets its drinking water. The spring flows all year. This UP train is northbound on April 8, 2011.
annual precipitation is less than ten inches. But others say that this is a relatively pristine example of a “shrub- steppe” environment. Steppes are arid, treeless plains found around the globe in northern latitudes, especially in Asia and eastern Europe. But one thing everybody agrees on is that there is plenty of sagebrush, specifically the species known as big sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata, at Palouse Falls. Sagebrush is an evergreen plant, but its greenness is most intense in the spring, before the plants start to bloom. The tiny flowers have a dull yellow color. By the end of August and the beginning
of September the endless summer days are growing noticeably shorter. The upside of these increasingly early dusks is that sunrises are also getting later and later, which means that you don’t have to climb out of the sleeping bag at 4:15 a.m., the way you did in June. Rattlesnakes definitely enjoy the cooling temperatures, since they no longer have to stay under cover during daylight hours. There is a bridge that leads to Riparia,
Wash., where the Camas Prairie once interchanged traffic with its two owner railroads, the Northern Pacific and the Union Pacific. The NP line, long since abandoned, came up the north side of the Snake River, but at a much lower level than the cliff-clinging Spokane, Portland & Seattle mainline, now also abandoned. Today both UP and BNSF Railway interchange with the Great Northwest Railroad at Ayer. The BNSF train, which uses trackage rights to reach Ayer, is known as the “Lowline.” It
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stops short of Palouse Falls but is often heard on the radio, talking to Dispatcher 41 in Omaha. A highway bridge once spanned the Columbia River at Vantage, Wash. In the 1960s it was disassembled and moved to this location, bringing ferry service at Lyons Ferry to an end. Speaking of how things used to be, passenger service survived on the Ayer Sub until Amtrak and in later years sometimes rated a pair of E units up front, with some boxcars and caboose on the other end, and perhaps one coach and a baggage car in between. There was a hotel of sorts at Ayer (which is not actually a town) and the passengers, if there were any, could get off and enjoy a meal. For my money the bald hilltop above
the gap between Tunnel 11 and Tunnel 12, at milepost 276, is the best photo op on the Ayer Subdivision. At least in theory. I have yet to get the results I want. The main problem is that the window of opportunity — the interval of good light — lasts only about an hour and a half, since deep shadow starts to cover the track very early. Plus, the walk from the campground, although only about two miles, is brutally hot in the summer, and once you arrive on site, perhaps after quite a bit of backtracking if it’s your first time, there is no shade, unless you make your own (an 8x6 tarp and a pair of trekking poles will do the trick). Other sites, such as the south portal of Tunnel 14, are more convenient, but just about every location along the canyon rim has its own problems, which means that the effort-to-success ratio can be pretty intimidating. Yet I keep trying,
and I have to say, I don’t regret a single minute of the time spent out here.
Magic In the Morning Mornings at Palouse Falls are magical.
The promise of good things to come seems to rise up from the still shadowy canyon depths. There haven’t been any failures or missed opportunities yet; anything seems possible. Anything at all. Plus, the air is nice and cool, even at midsummer, and it is usually very quiet, much quieter, somehow, than in the afternoon. Depending on wind direction, you can hear a train down on the Snake River, miles away, or way up at Hooper, blowing for the grade crossing there. Or you may hear nothing at all, apart from a few bird calls. Or some howling coyotes who aren’t quite ready to call it a night. The edge of golden light moves further and further down the basalt cliffs and still nothing happens, not then, and not
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