A pair of friends have been converging on Lucia Falls annually for the last decade, as spawning steelhead and salmon do the same.
The duo of cheerleaders for nature, Joanne Pritchard and Gina Duca, both from north Clark County, could be seen at the picnic table overlooking Lucia Fall,s screaming and cheering as each steelhead and salmon made its leap in an attempt to get past the hurdle in the fish’s biggest and most crucial effort in life on Monday, Oct. 27.
“Oh, he almost made it all the way up,” Duca shouted while rooting for a steelhead to make it past Lucia Falls.
Every year, multiple runs of steelhead and salmonids swim up to the first major hurdle on the East Fork Lewis River. Their goal is simple: make it beyond the 10-foot-tall cascade.
When the fish do make it beyond Lucia Falls, some will spawn and die just upstream, while others will continue on to the next cascade, Moulton Falls. Some steelhead go the distance since Sunset Falls was notched from 13.5 feet to 8 feet in height in 1982. The Native Fish Society reports that 12% of the summer and winter steelhead runs spawn above Sunset Falls.
But when a fish makes its leap at Lucia, some people visit to watch, some visit to photograph, while others cheer.
Some fish will smack the rocks, a few jump right into the cascading flow, and make it through. Others will jump the wrong way, and some may even try to get creative and swim up the side closest to the viewing area.
“It makes you scream,” said Duca. “It’s like watching a whale breach for the first time. When I first saw a whale breach, it’s just so phenomenal. And to see them against all odds trying to get up against all that water, it’s a phenomenal thing.”
The two sit and watch, and let time pass for a while.
“It reminds me to slow down,” Duca added.
For Pritchard and Duca, watching the relentless efforts of the steelhead and salmon to complete their life's goal of spawning the generations to come teaches a valuable life lesson.
“The struggle they have to go through to get where they want to be and when they lay eggs and then a lot of them die,” Pritchard said, “it’s like, the struggle that they have to go through and the amount of force against them, how can you not coordinate that with life?”
The East Fork Lewis River is designated as a wild steelhead gene bank for both a winter and summer run. The designation eliminates all hatchery plants and protects the fish with angling regulations, according to the Native Fish Society in 2014.
Lucia Falls Regional Park offers an easily accessible viewing location to observe the fish as they leap to cross the cascade. The park is located at 21803 NE Lucia Falls Road in Yacolt and is open from 7 a.m. to dusk.
