Hey everybody, 

I need a little bit of your boating wisdom.  I'm working at UW in Water Resource Engineering, where I do a lot of modeling of Northwest Rivers and how their flows will change with Climate Change.  Most of my work goes towards general topics of interest to the area, hydropower production, flow for agriculture, salmon, ect.

However for my thesis I'm focusing on the effects to the whitewater industry.  Generally this is how commercial rafting will be affected as they produce the most revenue.  For my modeling I'm trying to look at rivers that have minimal regulation (dams, diversions upstream, ect.)  This makes the modeling significantly easier as I don't have to deal with reservoir management.  I would like to study five or six different rivers.

Currently my possible list looks like this:
-Middle Fork of Salmon River, ID (This is the only for sure river to be studied)
-Clackamas River, OR
-Wenatchee, WA (I know there is the small dam, but this is fairly easy to take care of with a little bias correction)
-Skykomish, WA
-Selway, ID
-Lochsa, ID

I would like to study a multiday river in OR or WA, but the problem is finding one that is popular, comes in regularly, and doesn't have much regulation.  Both the Deschutes and Rogue have multiple dams upstream, the Owyhee and Illinois aren't in that often and do not have much traffic(for the good or bad).

So where do you come in?

Great question, you can help me with other rivers that might be of interest.  Also minimum, optimal, and max flows for these rivers for commercial use would be of great help too.  I plan on contacting commercial outfitters for this information too.

Bests,

Kristian Mickelson
206 380 7132

PS: Anyone up for quick trip on the sky on Sat?  I need to get out on the water.  All this talk of boating always makes me just want to skip work and go boat.