Hells Canyon from the Snake River
— — the deepest cut in the continent, seen from the water.
Not only on a wall.
“The view from a jet boat on the Snake River, with walls climbing on either side toward He Devil and the Seven Devils. The gorge runs about 7,900 feet deep at its deepest point, which makes it deeper than the Grand Canyon, though it reads as long and steep rather than wide. The water is jade-green and quick. Bighorn sheep work the slopes. The river was the boundary the wagon trains never crossed. — from the studio
Hells Canyon from the Snake River, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hells Canyon is the gorge of the Snake River along the Oregon-Idaho border, carved between the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon and the Seven Devils in Idaho. Measured from the summit of He Devil peak at 9,393 feet to the river surface below, the canyon reaches a depth of about 7,993 feet, the deepest river gorge in North America. The canyon is managed as Hells Canyon National Recreation Area within the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, designated by Congress in 1975, with 217,000 acres of designated wilderness inside its boundary.
The Snake River runs about 1,078 miles from western Wyoming to the Columbia at the Tri-Cities; the Hells Canyon stretch is the wildest portion. Below Hells Canyon Dam the river drops through Wild Sheep Rapid and Granite Creek Rapid, both rated class IV at typical flows, and Reese Buck-Hatfield Riffle. The water carries glacial green colour from upstream snowmelt and runs cold most of the year. Commercial jet-boat trips launch from Hells Canyon Dam and from Heller Bar on the lower river; multi-day raft trips run from May through September.
There is no paved road along the Snake through the canyon's deepest stretch. The Nez Perce hunted these slopes long before any wagon road, and pictographs along the river date back at least 7,000 years. Bighorn sheep, mule deer, black bear, river otter, and rattlesnakes live in the gorge today. From a quiet eddy on the river the only sounds are wind on the basalt walls, the riffle of the current, and the occasional cry of a peregrine falcon overhead; the canyon swallows engine noise within a bend.