Originally Posted By: GPS
Originally Posted By: WDFW X 1 = 0
Originally Posted By: Salmo g.
Originally Posted By: WDFW X 1 = 0
In the 70s we would launch the sled at the highest tank bridge and run up river to a big flat below the dam.
Freedrifting our way back down.
The fish were big, wild, and free.

I acknowledge contributing to their demise.
You shoulda been there.


I assume you mean that you ran your sled from the tank crossing upstream to the Centralia diversion dam. Elsewise I would so love to see you run any sled upstream past the diversion dam up to La Grande Dam, not to mention freedrifting back downstream, even if only from McKenna. There's some gnarly water that chews up driftboats. I'd like to see the sled that freedrifted back down through that. And who "freedrifted" in the 70s? Thought it was only boondoggin' back then.



Salmo,
There was actually a few that free drifted.
Dragging an anchor sucked.
Not to mention there where very few sleds back then.
We would go out to 4 corners in Yelm, take a slight right(Bald hills road?), go out there quite a ways turn left on a gravel road, drop down hill, and head to an old timber structure bridge. The launch was on our side of the river below the bridge. The river from there up to the big tall dam wound through a bunch of alder flats with log jams on the sides.
Your right you would have liked to have seen it and it's obvious you didn't. It was epic and easily runnable with a sled.


The bridge you're referring to could be the Weyerhaueser bridge right above the mouth of the Mashel. They had a little camp area there you could launch from. The roads to it have not been open since like the 80's. I think state parks actually bought it and a park is somewhere in the works. Or it could have been Peissner Bridge, which is closer to Bald Hill road and was used as a launch.



The "Tank Bridge" is miles below, with the impassable diversion dam in between.



Thanks for the information.
I honestly have no clue but will never forget some of the experiences there that I lived as a kid. God stuff.