The Hoh River braids and frequently shifts its channel across a broad gravel floodplain, driven by the heavy sediment load it carries from the glaciated high country. Floods regularly rework the riverbed, and the fast-colonizing cottonwoods and alders of the banks are adapted to this constant disturbance, keeping the valley-bottom forest in a perpetually young, shifting state.
Follow the Hoh River with your eye where it runs beside the road, and notice it isn't one tidy channel. It splits and braids across a wide bed of pale gravel, threading around bars of stone, splitting apart and joining back together. This river is restless. It carries so much rock down off the mountains that it's forever rebuilding its own bed, and a big flood can shove the whole channel sideways in a single winter. The cottonwoods and alders along the banks are gamblers, sprouting fast on fresh gravel, knowing the river may take it all back.
Photo: Dirtsc · CC BY-SA 3.0
