Canoe Kayak Magazine August 2015

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//-->2016 GEAR PREVIEW //5 CANOESTHAT PROVE THERE’ S LIFE AFTER ROYA LEXWA T E RISSUEFREYA’SSOUTHAMERICANTRIUMPHCLIFF JACOBSONUNFILTEREDSEA KAYAKINGTHE SWEDISHARCHIPELAGOBEST FALLPADDLING TRIPSSOURCE-TO-SEAON THE RIO GRANDE AND THE NEWLY UN-DAMMED ELWHA RIVERhobiekayaks.comFOREWORDConnectionsWe paddlers often use the word ‘connection’ when wespeak of rivers. They’re our conduit to the natural world,where we gather to socialize and play. In a larger sense,rivers link the mountains to the sea, carrying life-givingwater to forests, prairies and farms.What happens though when the rivers becomedisconnected? It’s a strange thought, a river that doesn’tmeet the sea. But it’s become a common phenomenonlately, as our demand for water grows and severe droughtsettles across the western half of our continent.The Colorado River, the femoral artery of the AmericanSouthwest, hasn’t reached the sea in decades. And asColin McDonald writes in “A River Divided,” (p. 34) thatother iconic river of the West, the Rio Grande, runs dry longbefore it reaches the border it famously defines.McDonald’s account of his source-to-sea journey on theRio Grande has rather more walking than we’re used to ina C&K feature—some 360 miles. That’s the distance fromthe de-facto end of the Rio Grande at the base of ElephantButte reservoir in New Mexico, and the place where the RioConchos trickles out of Mexico into the dry bed of the RioGrande and takes its name.McDonald’s story is extraordinary, but hardly unusual.Last year C&K online editor Zak Podmore and I paddledthe Lower Colorado during an experimental ‘pulse flow’intended to temporarily restore the river’s connection to thesea. In a tamarisk thicket some 60 miles south of MorelosDam, we followed a rivulet of Colorado River water into theRio Hardy—a shallow bayou full of agricultural runoff that, afew times a year during extreme high tides, connects withthe Sea of Cortez.The Colorado River had reached the sea, in a manner ofspeaking.It felt like a triumph at the time, but it didn’t last.The river had reached the sea because a coalition ofenvironmental groups purchased just enough irrigationwater—about 1 percent of the river’s average annual flow—toget it there.This spring, Zak and photographer David Spiegelpaddled the Elwha River through the ruins of the GlinesCanyon Dam to witness a river making a more permanentconnection (“Elwha Unplugged,” p. 44). At the bottomof the canyon they floated between terraces of rapidlyeroding sediment below hillsides bursting with purplelupine. A century without salmon runs left the river valleymalnourished; a century without floods starved the oceanbeaches of sediment. Now the river is pushing sand into thedelta, and the salmon will return in the fall.– Jeff Moag4| canoekayak.comPhoto: Erich SchlegelEATECRIth sSringRrEhaSTOwoWWW.PELICANSPORT.COMYou love nature, and we do too: we’ve been designing products for the greatoutdoors since 1968. So get outside and find an unforgettable adventure. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]