2025 Confab Tours and Workshops

1. Mid-Klamath Groundwater Study Workshop (full-day), Lars Jacobsen, Mid Klamath Watershed Council and Rachel Shea, Michael Love & Associates. Visit restoration sites with groundwater wells; take discharge, dissolved oxygen, salinity, recharge, and temperature measurements; and discuss monitoring results. This workshop will be 3/4 in the field and 1/4 in the office.
 

 2. Red Cap Creek Floodplain Restoration Project at Schnable Diggings, Leroy Cyr, Six Rivers National Forest; Jimmy Peterson, Mid Klamath Watershed Council; and Jay Stallman, Stillwater Sciences. Tour a ½ mile long fisheries restoration project constructed in 2024 with 2 off-channel ponds and 17 wood structures. The tour will include a fish sampling demonstration by the Karuk Tribe Fisheries Department.  There may be an opportunity to dive ponds and creek for juvenile and adult fish. If you have snorkel gear, please bring it with you as there will only be a minimal amount of gear provided by the coordinators. (40 minute drive from Orleans)
 

 3. McKinney Fire Instream and Upslope Restoration Field Tour, Charles Wickman, Mid Klamath Watershed Council; Toz Soto, Karuk Tribe, and Nicholas Caselli and Julia Petreshen, Yurok Tribe. Full Day Tour. Learn about the 60,0000+ acre McKinney Fire, the subsequent debris flows, fish kill, and ongoing instream and upslope restoration efforts within the fire footprint. The field tour will primarily explore instream restoration efforts using low-tech process-based techniques (LTPBR) such as BDA’s, direct felling, large wood loading, and gully stuffing in a dynamic post-fire landscape. Time permitting, the tour will also include stops at several upgraded stream crossings within the fire footprint that were affected by debris flows.

1. Mid Klamath Off-Channel Ponds – Snorkeling and Exploring Coho Refugia, Jacob Pounds, Mid Klamath Watershed Council. Tour and snorkel multiple off-channel ponds (there are over 30 off-channel ponds in the Mid Klamath). Practice your underwater videography and fish identification. Please bring your own snorkel gear and underwater cameras if you are able.
 

 2. Low-Tech Restoration on the Mid Klamath, Jimmy Peterson, Mid Klamath Watershed Council, and Toz Soto, Karuk Tribe. This field tour will visit the low tech work being done on the Mid Klamath. Build BDAs in a stream or in a high mountain meadow (or both). Snorkel thermal refugias at Sandy Bar and Stanshaw, and BDA pools. If you have snorkel gear, please bring it with you as there will only be a minimal amount of gear provided by the coordinators. Participate in constructing a beaver dam analog with the Karuk Tribe and Mid Klamath Watershed Council. (20 minute drive from Orleans)
 

 3. Salmon River Floodplain Enhancement and Revegetation, Karuna Greenberg and Deja Malone-Persha, Salmon River Restoration Council; Rachel Shea, Michael Love & Associates. Join Salmon River Restoration Council for a fun day on the North Fork Salmon River, exploring two floodplain enhancement projects, new and innovative revegetation methods, and get a chance to swim in this beautiful river. Field tour participants will explore the Red Bank Off-Channel Fisheries and Riparian Habitat Enhancement Project, an ambitious and dynamic 20-acre floodplain restoration effort that was designed to increase the abundance of complex off-channel rearing habitat with high intrinsic potential for year-round rearing of juvenile salmonids by providing both high-flow and thermal refugia, enhancing and increasing the area of perennial groundwater-fed pools, increasing in-channel bed complexity using large wood features, and greatly enhancing riparian vegetation through large scale hugelkultur-esque techniques.
 

We will also visit the Kelly Bar Habitat Enhancement Project, a floodplain restoration project that was implemented in 2019 to see our revegetation methods after 5 years of growth. We will discuss floodplain reconnection, geomorphic change, revegetation, and providing for all life stages of salmonids in a placer mining impacted landscape. We will lunch and take a swimming break along the spectacular Salmon River, so bring your swimsuits if desired.

 

1. Haypress and Stanshaw Meadows Restoration Tour, Jimmy Peterson, Mid Klamath Watershed Council, Jay Jackson, Salmon River Restoration Council. Tour sites identified in KMP meadow inventory and discuss meadow habitat and ways to restore meadows. Round trip hike is approximately 7.5 miles through several large meadow systems. Potential to build low tech structures in a high mountain meadow (Pending permitting). (One hour drive from Orleans)
 

2. Mid Klamath Helicopter Wood Loading Projects, Will Harling and Charles or Mitzi Wickman, Mid Klamath Watershed Council. This tour will visit two helicopter wood loading projects on Upper Horse Creek (1-1/2 mile, 107 logs, added in 2020) and West Fork Beaver Creek (2-1/2 miles, 125 logs, added in 2023). Participants will have the opportunity to evaluate effectiveness and discuss project planning and implementation onsite. 
 

 3. Klamath Dam Removal and Reservoir Footprint Tour, Alison O’Dowd, Cal Poly and Michael Belchik, Senior Water Policy Analyst, Yurok Tribe. This tour will include a visit to the former Iron Gate dam site to hear about how it was removed.  Participants will tour the reservoir footprint and learn about revegetation efforts in the thousands of acres previously inundated by the reservoirs.  We will visit reconnected tributaries in the reservoir footprint and learn about fisheries monitoring in the mainstem and tributaries upstream of the removed dams.  *Please note this tour is a 3-hour drive from Orleans.