This pretty much sums up rafting.

Evening light downstream of Moab, UT.

White stripe in Cataract Canyon.

Hackysack high above the river, at The Loop.

The Doll’s House, Cataract Canyon.

Big Drop #3 in Cataract Canyon.

The team at Hite, UT, with Lake Powell in the background. Photo by Brendan Boepple.

Desert plains near Hanksville, UT

Many great blue herons have chicks at their nests close to the river (and the road).

Zak shows his Wu-tang Clan pride next to the graffiti under a bridge in Silt, CO. We passed many towns along the I-70 corridor past Glenwood. It has been strange to be traveling via river and camping out despite being next to civilization.

Between Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction, gas development is in full swing. Fracking (pumping mixtures of water and chemicals underground to extract natural gas) is commonplace, even near the river.

Will holds a garter snake. Even along I-70, the riparian corridor is filled with life.

Portaging Cameo Dam after a run-in with the dam keeper.  This is operated by the Bureau of reclamation and is one of the most important diversions on the Colorado- Its water rights are even senior to those owned by Denver and can force water to remain on the west side of the continental divide. This water is mainly used for crop irrigation in the Grand Valley.

David paddles a fish ladder/diversion dam upstream from Grand Junction, CO.

Will stands at the last in a series of diversions before the “15 miles reach” between Pallisade and Grand Junction, CO. The 15 mile reach is a section of river that is nearly dewatered to irrigate crops in the Grand Valley. Most of the water returns to the river by seeping through the ground or by flowing all the way through the irrigation ditches. We began the day with approximately 2700 CFS. Only 400 cfs remained for the 15 mile reach.

Harvesting wheat in Fruita, CO. We spoke with the farmer who owns this land and he explained to us that water projects are entirely necessary for the future of agriculture in the West and that we need to build more dams to manage the river properly for this purpose.

Sunset in Ruby Horsetheif, just downstream from Fruita, CO. A park ranger informed us that this section of river sees 25,000 visitors each year.

A collared lizard in Westwater.

The crew paddles through the rapids of Westwater Canyon, UT. This is the first long stretch of river away from roads and railroads since Rocky Mountain National Park.

Lightning illuminates the clouds and canyon walls in Westwater.

Floating through the flat water on a hot day.Hiding out in the shade of our sweet wing on day 2 of Westwater. We discussed the Colorado Plateau with author Steve Trimble, left.

Mike White joined us to float from Westwater to the Dolores Confluence. Mike works with the Southwest Conservation Corps to coordinate wilderness work crews that remove invasive tamarisk trees along the Dolores river. Behind him you can see an entire bank of defoliated tamarisk.

We were greeted with beautiful afternoon light on the canyon walls as we approached the Canyons near Moab, Utah.

First off the map has default settings for zoom, theme and social data being shown. The zoom bar is located on the upper left corner of the map, but should not be needed as the default zoom will include all of the social data posted to date. Currently the map is set on the Trans Basin theme, zoomed to the headwaters area and showing Flickr and Notes, summaries of our blog posts as well as link to the full blog post. To access either of these just click on the icon and a small pop up window will appear with the photo or text. Depending on the size and resolution of your computer screen the pop up window may drag the map to show the entire window. To re scroll back to the desired area, just click and drag the map back. To see the Flickr photos at a larger scale with captions simply click on the photo within the pop up window and a new tab will automatically open to Flickr page of the photo. For opening the full blog post on the Notes, simply click the hyper linked text.

The pop up window of a Note, with a brief summary of the blog post and a hyperlink to the complete blog post.

A Flickr photo showing the pop up window on the map. To access the full size image with caption click on the photo and you will be redirected to photo’s Flickr page.

To navigate between different themes, click on the themes in the top right corner of the map. Once clicked on, a legend will appear for the theme selected. To switch themes click on the theme title, Water Use, Climate Change or Trans Basin diversions and the spatial data will change automatically. For changing the base layer click on the tab  just to the left of themes, which will be named USA Topographic, DeLorme or Aerials depending on what is currently being shown and select one of the four base layer options.

The available base layers, simply click on one to select it as the base layer for the map.

The social data tab with the available options to have displayed on the map. The ‘i’ symbol shows what keywords and dates are currently being used. The gear symbol to the right will allow the user to change the keywords and dates, currently they are set to the expeditions content.

In the future, the interviews we have been conducting will be posted using Youtube and additional Notes and Flickr photos will be posted along with new spatial data surrounding the Colorado River. Hopefully this short introduction has helped you navigate the interactive map and ideas fro improvement as well as comments would be appreciated below.

A waterfall high in the mountains on the North Inlet

The Colorado River began as a small, roaring stream, carving its way through the mountains of Rocky Mountain National Park. After 10 days of hiking, packrafting, and kayaking, there is enough water to float our 16 foot long NRS raft. The switch to rafting has brought a significant change in our lifestyle. We now have a cooler, dry boxes, and a two burner stove. We eat well and float approximately 10 miles a day. But the story of the River so far is not a continuous narrative of a growing stream. And our story has not been one simply of first hiking, then packrafting, then kayaking, then rafting. Instead, the extraordinary demands on the river, especially in this drought year, caused the river to grow and shrink day by day. One day, we would have enough water to float kayaks. The next, we would be hiking again.

We began this trip high in the mountains, exploring two possible sources of the Colorado that each feed Grand Lake. The North Fork of the Colorado begins at La Poudre Pass at over 10,200 feet. This tiny stream tells the story of an altered river, pressed by the need for water to the east. The Grand Ditch diverts water from the very beginning of the stream. It creates a sort of new continental divide as waters that should be joining together in the Colorado’s headwaters, are sent east instead to the front range. We also explored the North Inlet creek. Four days of back packing here showed a different kind of headwaters. We found pristine alpine lakes and rushing streams. One of the lakes bore the name of Powell. The alpine Lake Powell seemed to be a fitting starting point for us as we follow the course of the river to the other, much different Lake Powell in Utah and Arizona. We hiked and pack rafted downstream to Grand Lake with high spirits.

This service road on la Poudre Pass divides the Grand Ditch from the Colorado River watershed. The pools on the left drain into the Colorado. The ditch on the right goes to the Front Range

It seems, however, that we will be experiencing more of the story of the diverted North Fork than of the pristine North Inlet. We had found enough water to packraft in the North Inlet and began kayaking across Grand Lake, Shadow Mountain and Granby reservoirs. But the reservoirs did not release enough water to float our craft on the downstream side, forcing us to return to hiking. We finally found enough water to float in Hot Sulphur Springs, 16 miles downstream. But even this was barely enough to float. Colorado law dictates the we cannot touch the bottom of the river if it is private property. We would not have been allowed to pass except that Rob Firth of Trout Unlimited called every land owner along that Colorado between Hot Sulphur Springs and Kremmling. We scraped along the bottom many times.

When we arrived in Kremmling, however, we finally had plenty of water to float on. We had passed the confluences with the Williams Fork and the Blue River. Our tiny stream of 135 CFS had suddenly grown to almost 900 CFS. We had ample water to kayak through Gore Canyon the next day and to begin rafting after that.

Watching the unnatural growth of the river, I realize we are not floating on the waters of the mighty Colorado River that should be fed gradually by smaller tributaries. Instead, we are floating on the waters of the Blue and the Williams Fork, which come to the rescue of the Colorado near the town of Kremmling. Without these tributaries, we would still be scraping down a slow, meandering trickle. We attempted to find the source of the Colorado in Rocky Mountain National Park, but the stream we have followed up to this point is no longer its largest tributary to itself. The demands placed on the Colorado’s headwaters have left that section of river dewatered and endangered.

Zak reading on one of our first nights with the NRS raft.

Standing at La Poudre Pass… the Colorado headwaters are on the left, the Grand Ditch (which diverts water to the Front Range) is on the right. Photo by Beth.

Waterfall near base camp. Photo by David.We decided to hike down from La Poudre Pass and up a different tributary, North Inlet, for a few days.

The Rocky Mountain National Park alpine. Photo by Will.

After five or so miles of bushwhacking through downed trees, we got up near treeline.

The expedition begins. Photo by Will.

Our destination was Lake Powell, an alpine lake. From here it’s over 400 miles to Lake Powell (the other one).

Will packrafting on a creek that was mostly too shallow and filled with logs. Photo by David.

More packrafting. Photo by David.

Grand Lake. Photo by David.

Everyone we’ve met has been extremely helpful, kind, and interesting. We slept on Jane and Richard’s (two local landowners) beach last night, with a great view of the lake.

Moose. Photo by Will.

Staying at the best hotel in town as we finish  planning

First, it is amazing how many little details of planning remain in the last two days before the trip. Will, Carson, and I have working non stop on the front range as we prepare our media equipment. Zach, who has been in Durango, has also been preparing gear and focusing on logistics. We must buy the right amount of food.  Yesterday, two boxes of equipment arrived from Northwest River Supply (NRS).How much can we actually stuff into our brand new NRS dry bags as we prepare for the initial leg of our trip? But things are coming together all the same. Soon, all of the compacted logistics and the details of planning will be over and our lives will become simple. Day after day, our only objective will be to follow the river’s course towards the sea.

Second, the distinctly hazy look of the sky in Denver immediately reminded me of the dire situation presented by this year’s drought. The unprecedented size of the fire in Fort Collins has filled the front range with a smokey haze. It is proof of the drought’s consequences. The drought will affect our trip as we must scrape through low water sections of river that should be bursting at their banks this time of year. In a year like this, everyone is screaming for water that just isn’t there.

A beautiful sunset created by the smokey atmosphere

Finally, I am now realizing how excited I am to embark on the journey. There is no place I would rather be than floating down a river with good friends. On top of this, I truly hope that our effort can inspire others with passion for the river and a more nuanced approach to its issues.

David Spiegel

Packed and ready to go!

Nico Copernicus

Johannes Kepler

Sir Isaac Newton

Environmental writings and films on the Colorado River are no exception.  We have some serious problems surrounding this river system and there are some serious people out there working on solutions.  Mostly we hear that we’re going to have to make some changes in coming decades.  With the number of people who rely on Colorado River water expected to nearly double in the next 50 years and the amount of water available expected to decrease with climate change, we’re often told those changes need to amount to some kind of revolution in how we view and use water in the Southwest. This much seems inevitable, but the debate over what the change will look like is in full swing.

Some say we need a “new water ethic” as a recently released film on the Colorado, Watershed, suggests. A rafting guide interviewed in the film alludes to a Copernican-style shift (albeit in a different direction) where we’d come to view the Colorado as some native peoples did, as “the center of the universe.”  Elsewhere, there has been plenty of doom and gloom used to help spur our new vision of water in the West from Philip Fradkin’s River No More (1981), to Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (1986), all the way up the my recent source to sea kayak expedition which has produced articles with titles like “The End of a River?” or Will Stauffer-Norris’ documentary film about the trip, Remains of a River (2012).

None of these reports, as far as I know, were meant to serve as a hopeless prophecy of the imminent end of our desert civilization and the impending evacuation of 30 million people living between Denver to Tucson. That may come eventually but it wasn’t the point for Will and I, at least. Other commentators on the river whose work has lasted over the years are for the most part well-read, well-practiced journalists who are well-versed in Colorado River history and politics, people who based their reports on extensive research and interviews.  If these folks want to make grim predictions, they can go right ahead.  Will and I, on the other hand, get our credentials from having spent 113 days kayaking the length of the Green and Colorado Rivers. We graduated from college about a year ago, didn’t know what else to do, and paddled.  The less-than-bubbly titles of our film and writings came less from research and more from failing to shake an uneasy feeling that overtook us on the U.S./Mexico border.  There, we met the physical end of the wet river after three months of hard paddling. And spending the next nine days dodging trash in irrigation canals and struggling through mudflats watered by the near-toxic agricultural runoff didn’t do much to ease our troubled minds.

We crossed the delta by foot and pack raft, and in the process we became convinced that something is very wrong down there, whether or not the fate of everything upstream rests on it or not. The environmental groups we talked to in Mexico told us a small amount of water would go a long way to restoring the wetlands below the border, providing habitat for the 320 bird species that can’t survive in farmlands or desert, the fish and other aquatic species who need something resembling an estuary, and the people who rely on a functioning ecosystem in the delta for their livelihoods. The problem is that seven states in the U.S. and two more in Mexico have coveted that very small amount of water for a very long time.  And there are other problems on other parts of the river, equally complicated and equally urgent. Perhaps they won’t all require total reorientations of our worldviews if we were to respond to them, but they will take creativity and work, two things that were probably more familiar to Copernicus than revolution.

Dry bed of the former Colorado River, Mexico

So in the midst of preparing to launch on the river for another source to sea float—and while still harboring some hope that the Gulf of California might one day meet with flowing water from the Colorado once again—I was distressed to read an article in the May issue of Mountain Gazette, which says we should “get used to” a dewatered delta.  And it didn’t stop there: “Once we have thoroughly ‘firmed up’ our control and utilization of the world’s freshwater resources…no river will be drowning itself in that salty cesspool.”  The article, “The Colorado: First River of the Anthropocene” by George Sibley, argues that the Colorado is so dammed, diverted, and depended upon it is beyond “restoration.”  Instead of lamenting the natural river’s loss and giving into our “nostalgia centers,” we should begin to view the river as an opportunity to “take an active role in the evolution of life,” by rebuilding a new, entirely managed river in “the image of the old one.”  Sibley claims that in order to understand the scale of our species’ effect on the earth, we need a kind of Copernican revolution in geologic terms.  Our current era should be known formally as the Anthropocene, “a biological and climatological epoch in which the earth has been impacted by things happening among humans [in contrast to the earth’s cycles happening to humans] (advanced technologies, release of banked carbon, et cetera).” In the Anthropocene, it would be expected that we use our money and resources try to modify the earth to our advantage before the earth and its cycles modify us instead (by curbing our growth, determining where we live, et cetera).

Distressing as it was to hear somebody say that the sea doesn’t “need the leftover piss-in-the-ocean semi-fresh water from rivers” (which clearly depends on what we mean by “need”), Sibley’s article upsets me because, up to a point, he’s on to something.  Hoping to restore the Colorado River to its “natural” state is as ridiculous as trying to get the earth back to the center of the universe, but I don’t think anybody’s arguing for that.  It’s also probably true that we don’t need any more literary “lamentations,” as he calls them, books recounting the clumsy history of the Colorado’s total transformation thorough widespread manipulation and management (though it is important that we already have some very good accounts of this history). We have a better chance of working with what water and wild river canyons we still have left by protecting and healing what we can instead of wishing for a time machine.  And we should pay attention to one of Sibley’s main points: that we can’t let environmentalism become a dogma that keeps us from looking into whether or not a severely damaged river system might befit from more manipulation, not less.  As an example, he cites stretches of the upper mainstem of the Colorado where Denver Water is working on remaking the riverbed to fit the amount of water still there (they’ve taken 60 percent across the continental divide already and are looking to get more) by narrowing and deepening the channel.  This will help the river-turned-creek stay cooler and deeper for the benefit of “aquatic systems that fish and kayakers…depend on.”  Perhaps this is a good idea, but at “maybe a million bucks a mile,” shouldn’t we also be working on ways to prevent taking any more water out of the riverbed by curbing water use outside of the basin?

Beginning of Colorado River Aqueduct, which takes water 242 miles to Los Angeles

The article ends with a quote from The Whole Earth Catalog by Stewart Brand: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” The quote sums up the true burden of the scientific revolution’s legacy—the question of whether or not our values and restraint, our very capacity for goodness, can catch up with our technological capacities before we’re tangled in a net of power, production, and growth so dense it becomes impossible to move at all.  Or so widespread that there is nowhere left to move to.  If Copernicus cast us out of the center of attention all those years ago by making a local God a little less likely and by making our ability to manipulate the planet a little more detached, calculating and godlike, then isn’t it our task to better take on not just the power of the gods, but their responsibility and compassion as well?  Sibley is right in chastising those of us who reject everything the modern world has given us including the ability to live in our beloved desert Southwest in numbers that would have been unthinkable a few centuries ago. I think he is wrong, however, to suggest “the first time life has ever presumed to take and active role in the evolution of life” should be an entirely active process.  As wielders of immense power, learning to let things be themselves is just as important as learning to change them. We know far too little to presume to know what’s best for all life.  And moreover, we can’t take part in the evolution of life, as Sibley suggests, if there is no life left to evolve—in the delta of the Colorado, for example.

Sibley urges us to “adjust to the reality” before us and “acknowledge the miracle associated with the dual facts that there is still water in the Grand Canyon as well as in the faucets of Denver and LA.”  I disagree. That would be impressive only if LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Tijuana, and Mexicali, and the thousands of square miles of farmland near these cities were all upstream of the Grand Canyon.  The big ditch in the desert has water in it because it happens to be the most convenient way to transport the liquid gold to those with water rights further south; it’s not because we’re entirely enlightened in our river management schemes.

Copernicus may have proven that we are, in principle, on the periphery of things.  But only in principle. In the 21^st century, we still have little trouble convincing ourselves that the world revolves around us as individuals or as a species. We remain, quite effortlessly, at the center of our own attention. The real revolution will come not by continuing to espouse our special privileges or by predictably furthering our quest to control the world down to its smallest details. It will come instead when we fully adjust to the complexity of our ecological orbits and make it a priority to leave as much space, sunlight, water, and air for our fellow earthlings as possible by finding a balance between management and restraint. A real miracle will take place when we’re able to spare just a little water (say one percent of the total flow of the Colorado) for some of the other creatures that need that water, creatures that have been living in the region a whole lot longer than our clan of dammers and diverters. A real miracle will take place when there is water in the faucets of LA and Denver as well as in the delta wetlands, not because it’s convenient or profitable, but because it’s the least we can do.

The sun sets on Baja mountains, Mexico