The Zigzag River is a tributary, about long, of the Sandy River in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

. The Zigzag and one of its major tributaries, the Little Zigzag River, drain the

Zigzag Glacier Zigzag Glacier is an alpine glacier located on the upper southwest slopes of Mount Hood in the U.S. state of Oregon. It ranges in elevation from with fingers in canyons extending to about , and lies almost entirely within Mount Hood Wilderness. ...

on Mount Hood, a high volcanic peak in the Cascade Range. Their waters flow westward to meet the Sandy River near the community of

Zigzag A zigzag is a pattern made up of small corners at variable angles, though constant within the zigzag, tracing a path between two parallel lines; it can be described as both jagged and fairly regular. In geometry, this pattern is described as ...

. The river's flow ranges from . The dramatic topography of the Mississippi Head escarpment dominates the upper Zigzag River, where the

Timberline Trail Timberline Trail is a hiking trail around Mount Hood in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is mostly in Wilderness Act, wilderness but also goes near Timberline Lodge, Cloud Cap Inn (the oldest building on Mount Hood), and Mount Hood Meadows ski area. ...

crosses the Zigzag River and the Paradise Park Loop Trail crosses a tributary. Avalanches have necessitated rebuilding of the Timberline Trail switchbacks on the southeast side of the river; the

Pacific Crest Trail The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), officially designated as the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, is a long-distance hiking and equestrian trail closely aligned with the highest portion of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, which lie ...

also follows this route. Seventy-five-foot (23 m) Little Zigzag Falls on the Little Zigzag River is one of the three most popular off-road locations in the Zigzag basin, along with Mirror Lake on the Camp Creek tributary and the area just west of

Timberline Lodge Timberline Lodge is a mountain lodge on the south side of Mount Hood in Clackamas County, Oregon, about east of Portland. Constructed from 1936 to 1938 by the Works Progress Administration, it was built and furnished by local artisans during th ...

under three ski lifts which drains into the largest tributary, Still Creek. Other than 11,239-foot (3426 m) Mount Hood, the highest point in the Zigzag watershed is Devils Peak which has a fire tower now used by overnight hikers. This area is under consideration in the 2007 Oregon Wilderness Area bill before congress for addition to the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness. The northern part of the watershed and the uppermost Zigzag River are in the

Mount Hood Wilderness The Mount Hood Wilderness is a protected wilderness area inside the Mount Hood National Forest, in the U.S. state of Oregon. The area, covering , includes the peak of Mount Hood and its upper slopes, and ranges from temperate rain forests at the ...

. Falling between source and mouth, the stream's average loss of elevation is about . According to

American Whitewater American Whitewater is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 membership organization with the declared mission "to conserve and restore America's whitewater resources and to enhance opportunities to enjoy them safely". The organization can broadly be classi ...

, the last of the Zigzag River, from Tollgate to the Sandy River, has been rated Class III (difficult) to IV (very difficult) on the International Scale of River Difficulty for

whitewater Whitewater forms in a rapid context, in particular, when a river's gradient changes enough to generate so much turbulence that air is trapped within the water. This forms an unstable current that froths, making the water appear opaque and ...

boating. The average

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gr ...

in this stretch is . Although the Zigzag River is closed to

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus ''Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Oncorhy ...

and

steelhead Steelhead, or occasionally steelhead trout, is the common name of the anadromous form of the coastal rainbow trout or redband trout (O. m. gairdneri). Steelhead are native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific basin in Northeast Asia and ...

fishing, it offers

catch-and-release Catch and release is a practice within recreational fishing where after capture, often a fast measurement and weighing of the fish is performed, followed by posed photography as proof of the catch, and then the fish are unhooked and returned ...

fishing for coastal cutthroat trout.

References

External links

Sandy River Basin Watershed Council
{{authority control Rivers of Oregon Mount Hood Rivers of Clackamas County, Oregon Mount Hood National Forest Wild and Scenic Rivers of the United States

See also

References

External links