“The Water Was Chocolate Brown”

Tolan Creek – The Bitterroot Water Partnership Fulfilling Its Mission

By Doug Hatchimonji, BWP Board Member

All rivers are a sum of their parts and the health of a river depends upon the health of its parts.  And so, the Bitterroot River is the sum of her hundreds of tributaries high above the Bitterroot Valley in the Bitterroots and Sapphires, and her health depends upon the health of those tributaries.

Since 1993, the Bitterroot Water Partnership has understood that water is the lifeblood of our community, and has worked to promote understanding, restoration, and conservation of our water resources, critical to supporting a healthy, functioning watershed and our water-reliant way of life.  The Water Partnership recognizes that our water is often impacted by events that happen far upstream, on private and public lands, away from the eyes of the public that ranch, farm, recreate, consume and rely upon our water, and is committed to fulfilling its mission even if it may be out-of-sight and unsung.  Such is the importance of our water to our ways of life.

TOLAN CREEK: Recent History

High up in the Bitterroot National Forest is Tolan Creek, a nine-and-a-half-mile tributary to the East Fork of the Bitterroot River.  For centuries Tolan Creek ran as cold as the snow that gave her life and as clear as the gin that fly fishers enjoy neat; it has tumbled over rocks from the basement of time, shaded by stands of pine and fir, under whose branches deer, elk, bear, and sheep found shelter. This ‘fish factory’ of the Bitterroot made its way along the contours of sloping hills and snaked through a wide and gradually dropping meadow with cold, clean and clear water incubating the aquatic life – mayfly, caddis and stonefly – upon which cutthroat and bull trout gorged for the energy to spawn and grow and migrate downstream.  Wondrously, the creek was not unique in its character for it mirrored the hundreds of other creeks, streams, and rivulets of our Bitterroot River’s watershed.

Sadly, in August 2022, summer lightening ignited fallen timber just five miles south and east of Sula, an all too common event in the changing climate of America’s Intermountain West.  Named the Trail Ridge Fire, it took over two months to contain and raged over 18,000 acres, including 62% of the Tolan Creek watershed. As often is the case with modern wildfires, the fire burned blow-torch hot, leaving bare blackened tree trunks, charred groundcover and soil denuded of organic matter.  And then the waters came.  Melting snow and rain in the spring of 2023 flowed unrestrained down naked hillsides and sterile streambeds, driving with hydraulic power boulders the size of fifty-five gallon drums, tons of softball sized rocks, tree trunks like fallen telephone poles, limbs and branches, dirt and sediment, eventually clogging and eroding Tolan Creek and spreading debris across its meadow, destroying the habitat that protected and nurtured the area’s wildlife, cutthroat trout, and one of the few remaining bull trout populations.

In June 2023 the Water Partnership heard from our community about unusual and excessive muddy runoff in the East Fork of the Bitterroot River.  A fishing guide said, “the water was chocolate brown” and ran through the confluence with the West Fork down the main stem of the Bitterroot to Hamilton, twenty miles away.  These concerns prompted an investigation upstream into the tributaries of the East Fork and revealed the East Fork’s chocolate water was the first downstream effects of the destruction of the Tolan Creek watershed.

TOLAN CREEK: Looking Forward

To accomplish its mission, the Bitterroot Water Partnership (BWP) is just that – a partnership – leveraging longstanding relationships with federal, state and local governmental agencies, non-profit organizations, private property owners and other residents complete restoration improvements across the Bitterroot Valley watershed.  Once the Water Partnership traced the East Fork’s muddy water to Tolan Creek on National Forest land, they reached out to staff at the United States Forest Service, deeply experienced and knowledgeable professionals who are dedicated and passionate about restoring, conserving and protecting our way of life in the Bitterroot Valley.  Because of many years of successful teaming on multiple projects, the BWP and the Forest Service established a stewardship agreement to reverse the destruction to Tolan Creek and restore the health of its waters and habitat for fish and wildlife. 

Teaming with its partners, the Bitterroot Water Partnership will help execute an on-going multi-year project to restore Tolan Creek to the state she was before the Trail Ridge Fire (and others), focusing on the twenty-seven acre meadow where, before the fire, the creek meandered, braided and wound, with deep pools and runs and gravelly beds, shaded by trees and high brush, creating a stronghold for bull and cutthroat trout to spawn and thrive.  Artificial beaver dams and other wooden structures (using onsite wood) will restore the course and character of the creek, and 3,500 shrubs, willow cuttings and other vegetation will stabilize the banks of the creek, lower water temperatures by shading its waters, and enhance the surrounding land for birds, insects, deer, elk, bear and other wildlife.  

Like the muddy water in the East Fork that alerted the Water Partnership to the destruction of Tolan Creek, all of the benefits of our restoration of the creek – healthy, clean, clear, cold water and a functioning watershed – will flow downstream through the East Fork, the mainstem of the Bitterroot and beyond, enriching our community’s way of life.