The Wild Goose Chase

               Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue

Its mid-December and instead of ice skating on the Colorado River, yesterday I put my boat back into it.  The river ice formed right on time after Thanksgiving, and over the next few days it grew. I was looking forward to it getting thick enough to get out onto it. But this month has proven to be unusually warm, and it looks like it will stay that way for another couple of weeks. This isn't entirely unprecedented, for about fifteen years ago something similar happened. The river froze around Thanksgiving and the ice formed, but then got warm and all the river ice melted. It was so mild that my wife Terena and I did a float on Christmas Day. But soon after that, it got extremely cold and began snowing, and we ended up with a normal winter.  The hope is that something like that happens again, because if we have another subpar snowpack reservoirs aren't going to be very full next summer. 

When I pulled my dory out of the water, the ice was thick enough to have begun to lock it in.  I usually put my boat in the river in the spring as soon as the ice melts around the first of April, and leave it there until Thanksgiving. For about seven months a year my boat is out on the river to row whenever I feel like it, but this is the first time I've ever put it back. Although I miss not rowing the boat in the winter, being able to ice skate is more than ample compensation. 

Yesterday I ended up doing a short unplanned float with my wife Terena.  I was already thinking about getting the dory out from under it's tarp since the river ice was gone, and skating now a few weeks away.  But then something happened which forced me to do it. That unplanned event was a Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue. On Friday we got a new goose, which brought our current goose population to eleven. (Why anyone needs eleven geese is a question only my birdbrained wife can answer). We locked our new goose up in her own enclosure, with plans to pair her in with another inmate, an outcast male who gets abused by a more dominant male. The plan was to give the abusee a mate, in a sort of arranged goose marriage.  But on Saturday morning, one of our employees who was unaware of the upcoming goose nuptials let our new goose out, and she wasted no time heading upriver. By the time I heard about her early unplanned release and went to look for her, she was as far upstream as she could be and still be seen.  She was already upstream at the eddy I regularly row my boat to, and showed no signs of stopping. 

At least I knew what direction she went.

 

I had to do a short day of work, and when I got home was hoping that the escapee might have had second thoughts and returned.  But the new goose hadn't been seen all day, and we were left with a decision as to whether to try and find it or not.  Terena was leaving on a trip the next day, so it was now or never. I went back to my shop, untarped my Hog Island dory, and drove back home to pick up my wife.  We wadered up and drove along the River Road looking for the reluctant goose bride.  Luckily she's a Sebastopol, and as such wears a bright white feathered coat that looks like a wedding dress.  Think Bjork at the Oscars. She would be easy to spot from a distance, especially with the lack of snow along the river to blend in with.  We went up as far as Rancho Starvo, where one of our neighbors has a primitive boat ramp.  The river is so low right now that putting in further above wasn't an option, since I'd never get it through the rocky section below the Red Dirt Bridge.  

With some difficulty I was able to get the boat in the water, and had to immediately row hard to avoid some rocks just below the put in.  We made our way down the river scanning for a big pile of white feathers, although now that we were underway we could relax a little an enjoy our surroundings.  It was a beautiful evening, not yet dark but with the hills above glowing with golden hour light, and reflecting that shimmering color on the water.  Being in the boat isn't my wife's favorite thing to do but it is mine, so whatever it takes to get her out there in it is worth it for me. 

 

She had last been on the river a few months earlier on a similar mission, only this time to catch some ducks. Until this year, we had never had ducks before.  Her bird-braininess had started innocently enough years ago with some chickens.  That led to some quail, and then some pheasants, which we bought to shoot as part of gun dog training.  But the pheasants we got all laid eggs the day after we brought them home, and then the day after that, and so on to the point that they were just too productive to shoot.  Somewhere along the line we got more quail, and then the geese, domestic turkeys and finally guinea hens.  

 We thought that our backyard would be perfect for geese, and for awhile it was.  But then as if in some avian Agatha Christie novel, one by one they began to disappear. Game camera footage showed that the reason were foxes and raccoons, not wanderlust. So we built a big enclosure consisting of chainlink fencing with an adjacent shed we call the Goose Megaplex.  Even that wasn't enough to keep out the predators, so we added electrified wire around that. On the first winter we had the geese, they decided that the best place to be was a half-mile downriver, so we had to walk across the ice shelf in waders carrying nets to catch them and bring them home.  It was the first time we had played Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue, but it wouldn't be the last. They never wandered away too far after that, though they have the freedom to go wherever they choose during the day. They always come back home at night to the safety of the Goose Megaplex.  

  This summer some kids who raised some ducks for a school project needed a home for them once the ducks grew big and less cute. Since Terena has been involved with 4H, someone decided to call the Crazy Bird Lady on the Colorado River Road. Since she couldn't say No, the ducks ended up at our place. They lived there for about a month, the newest residents of the Goose Megaplex. They were there for about a month, until some crafty and murderous ermine devised a way in.  He promptly killed four of the ducks, and maimed the fifth.  The next morning, the lone survivor made a beeline to the river and was never seen again. If he's still alive, he's probably in Mexico by now. It was a pretty awful thing to happen, for the ermine didn't even eat them, he just seemed to kill them just because he could. But then something odd happened.  The day after the ermine's killing spree, three domestic ducks showed up in our backyard.  Where they came from we had no idea.  In the evening, when it was time to round up the geese to put them safely away, these newcomers just sauntered right into their new home like they'd been living there their whole life.  

We found out later that the ducks had belonged to a neighbor who lives near the river about a mile away. Her duck dormitory had also been visited by some predator, and they had escaped in terror. Three of them migrated downriver to our place, but five had chosen to move up the river instead, where they spent a very pleasant summer living their best duck life.  Every time I did a float I'd see them, often with their butts in the air as they scooped the plentiful grasses off the river bottom. It was a dry summer and the warm water caused algea and grass to bloom, so they had lots of food. Other guides who knew about our waterfowl addiction kept letting me know, I Saw Your Ducks In The River! I had to let them know that they weren't our ducks, and no we didn't need them back.  But as summer turned to fall, the five ducks became four, then three, then two.  My wife was concerned that they would all eventually die, since they were pampered domestic ducks and not prepared to live in the wild, especially with winter approaching. Terena contacted the neighbor who had owned the ducks before they rewilded themselves, but she had no interest in having them back.  So we decided to act.  One afternoon we got my big cataraft, and loaded a pair of dog crates.  I knew roughly where to find the remaining two ducks, since they were usually around the Jack Flats area or just below.  Since that might be my favorite place on the planet too, I could see why they would choose to settle there.  

They weren't at Jack Flats when we got there, but soon we saw them on river left not far below. We were able to get pretty close to them, as I and others had been feeding them treats all summer.  When the big nets came down over their heads they seemed pretty surprised and pissed off, but by the time we floated into my backyard they had calmed down in their crates.  When we let them out and they saw their old friends, it was quite a reunion.  

 Last night, as Terena and I made our way down past Walt and Jan's house beside the river, I remembered another goose rescue we had done twenty years before, back when my wife's brain was addled by horses instead of birds.  One spring, three baby goslings showed up in our backyard, and I knew their parents were nesting a upriver on a small island.  As adorable as the goslings were, they couldn't stay at our house without getting killed by dogs.  Baby geese are extremely cute, but they don't stay that way for long. Each day they get incrementally less so, and by the time they're a month old they just look like normal adult geese, crapping all over the yard. I used to have to shoo the Canada Geese out of our backyard to keep them from doing that, and that was one of the reasons my wife used justify getting the domestic geese in the first place. She said that if we got our own geese, it would keep the Canada Geese from pooping in the yard.  She was right about that, but our yard is now carpeted in domestic goose poop, which seems to stick to the bottom of my shoe just as well as the wild goose shit did. 

  On that day twenty years ago, we took our two person inflatable kayak, (which oddly enough is called a "ducky"), launched it from just below Walt's house, and paddled our way down the island in the river where the parent geese were. Terena got out of the ducky, cradling the goslings against her chest as she made her way towards them. The geese didn't seem to appreciate our gesture, and moved rapidly away.  She chased after them calling, Wait! Wait! I have your children! Eventually the terrified geese peeled off the bank and into some slower water, and Terena was able to put her tiny cargo into the water after them. The babies shrieked with delight as they clumsily went back to the bigger geese, who also honked loudly.  Goose chaos ensued. 

That was our first Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue, but it wouldn't be our last. Now we were back at it again, and in the same backwater behind the island where we released the goslings twenty years before, we saw our Runaway Bride.  She was sitting contentedly at the top of an eddy that I've had many clients catch fish out of.  Terena got the net ready, but as soon as the goose saw us, she gave us a look that said Oh Hell No!, swam into the current, and began moving furiously away. The wild goose chase was on. 

 I started rowing faster but barely kept pace.  That goose was enjoying her freedom and wanted nothing to do with getting locked back in a cage again. For a creature that had spent its whole life up until that point in confinement, she was doing an expert job of reading the water and keeping herself in the thalweg, or the point in the river where the most current is. She kept getting further away from me, as I kept hitting rocks that are normally well below the surface.  A couple of times she even forgot that she couldn't fly, and tried unsuccessfully to take to the air. Soon we were almost to the railroad bridge just above my house, and the goose moved to the left side of the river where our yard is.  I stayed over on the right side, hoping that she would stay near our place or even go up into it.  Meanwhile our captive geese in the Goose Megaplex were watching all of this action and honked loudly like the worlds worst horn section, pure cacophony. But stopping at our house wasn't her plan, she just kept going along our bank without even slowing down and got way out ahead of us.  I had been hoping that she would stop there, so that I could just leave my boat in the river at its normal mooring.  Going past my yard meant a longer float, all the way down to my shop takeout a mile away, and that was assuming we could catch her.  

  I spun the boat around 180 degrees and began backrowing like it was the Henley Regatta.  Eventually we were closing the gap, but now it was almost dark and if we didn't get her in the boat soon we were going to be using headlamps to find her.   Finally we were close enough that I was able to spin the bow back around, for the goose seemed to be tiring.  I know that I was feeling the effort. She drifted off to the left and got into some slightly slower water, and I knew that if I stayed in the current we'd soon get her.  Terena stood up in front and leaned forward, her long handled net at the ready.

 

But the goose wasn't tired, she was setting us up. Just as Terena was lining it up to net it off the left side of the boat, the goose did something totally unexpected. It suddenly made a hard U turn to the left, and dove deeply underwater, shooting straight back upstream towards us like a white torpedo.  Not only was this  unexpected, it was something that I didn't even know that a goose was capable of!  I cranked a hard backstroke with the left oar of the dory while forcibly pushing on the right, turning the boat as quickly as I could hoping to get the bow somewhere near her escape route.  Terena sprang over to the right side and dropped the net straight down into the river as far as it would go.  I couldn't see a thing, and assumed that she had missed it. She thought so too, until she began to feel the weight in the unseen net. Terena raised the long handle up hand over hand until the net emerged with a huge white ball of dripping feathers in it.  She pulled it out of the river and got the surprised and defeated goose into her arms. I couldn't believe that she pulled it off. I thought that we were going to be spending the rest of the night chasing this damn thing around.  

  Soon the goose was in the dog crate we had brought, and we rowed the rest of the way to my shop takeout in total darkness.  I didn't have a vehicle waiting there, so after we got in I had to jog the mile back to my house in my neoprene waders along the train tracks over a pair of bridges to get her car.  

 As of this writing, the two geese seem to be getting along OK.  The plan is to leave her and her goosegroom locked in their shiny new enclosure for the rest of the week, to hopefully become friends and bond. We'll let them both out next weekend, and if she runs away again then that'll be the end of it for me.  Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue is ceasing operations for the season, so she can go shack up with one of those Canada geese that love to fertilize our yard.  

Jack Bombardier 

 

 

 

Raking The River

                                        Raking The River

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours out on the Colorado River in my boat raking the weeds out of it. Its often said that there's nothing new under the sun, but I'm pretty sure that I was the only person in the world doing that. The reason for pulling them out was to prepare the river for its next seasonal recreational phase, ice skating. The river is a source of enjoyment all year round, from fishing and floating and swimming in it while its in a liquid form, to playing hockey on it when its frozen. 

Raking the weeds out of the river isn't something I have to do every Nov ember, but only becomes necessary during years when the river has been low. 2025 has been one of those years. After a decent snowpack last winter, the amount of water that actually melted off and found its way into reservoirs upriver was disapointingly low.  This is a trend that's been happening for several years now. As the climate becomes warmer and drier, melting snow that used to be deposited into our hydrological bank account now evaporates instead, or becomes absorbed by drier soil. 

 

There are several reservoirs upriver which collect all of that snowmelt in the spring, then release it later in the summer. In what used to be "normal" years, the Upper Colorado River would see peak runoffs of about 5,000 cfs.  In good years like last year, it hit 8,000 cfs. The year before that, 6,000 cfs. This year it peaked at around 1,500 cfs, which that had some negative side effects. If one was hoping for some whitewater fun, the Colorado was not your river this year. With the river running that low in June, water temperatures rose to seventy degrees which caused aquatic vegetation to bloom.  With the water that warm, fishing had to be done before noon or ideally, not at all. It also led to some odd scenarios, like the Eagle River running higher than the Colorado for a couple months. But the dams which taketh the water away can also giveth. All of that water which was held back in the spring got released in August, which raised and cooled the river. The reservoirs which store that water are the reason the Upper Colorado River is the wonderful fishery that it is today. In the absence of any dams and reservoirs to hold back the water, in a dry year like this this summer the flows might have been around 200 cfs, with water temperature in the eighties. That is not prime trout habitat. Having the river flows so controlled is mainly a function of a portion of its annual flow being sent east under the continental divide, to water farms and fill taps. But the upside to this management regime is to help create a terrific place for trout to live.  

One reason that the Upper Colorado River between Kremmling and Dotsero is one of the greatest in America is that it sits in the sweet spot between supply and demand.  When water calls come on from Shoshone or the Grand Valley or San Diego or anywhere else downriver, that flow has to come right past my backyard. Maybe one day, if all the dire climate predictions come to pass, the Colorado River will might run dry.  However if it does, it'll be the last river in the southwest to do so. 

 Later this summer, that precious water finally got released. Once the level rose, the weeds and algae became hidden. The river may have been too low and warm to fish in the summer, but September and October were perfect. There were few better places to fish in Colorado than the "Lower Upper" Colorado River this fall. But now the river has been drawn down to 500 cfs, and all of those weeds have come to the top, or rather the surface has come down to the weeds. Those weeds will ruin my ice for skating, so they have to go.  So that's why anyone looking out on the river the other day would have seen a crazy person in a boat hauling weeds out of it with a rake.  

It was a lot of work, but it will be worth it later this winter when I'm flying around on the ice like my twelve year old self, pretending to be Bobby Orr. 

Jack Bombardier

 

 

The Game Changer

                                                           The Game Changer

 

 

March the fifteenth represents a notable day on my calendar, for its the day that the USGS river gauge located on the Catamount Bridge goes back online.  It delivers real time information on what the river is doing from then until November fifteenth each year, and over the past several years that its been there its proven to be a real game changer for those who recreate along the Lower Upper Colorado River. 

  The gauge near Catamount was very welcome when it first went in several years ago.  Before then, trying to determine the actual flows on the river past my backyard involved adding the number for the gauge at Kremmling to the number for the gauge on the Piney River. Or, one could take the number from the gauge at Dotsero, then subtract the figure from Kremmling. You could also take those two numbers, and average them out.  Whatever method chosen, it was only a rough estimate the didn't factor in the various other streams and creeks that added to the Colorado's flow, or the irrigation headgates and pumps that pulled it out.

  The new gauge changed all that.  It was installed at the behest of the Upper Colorado River Wild and Scenic Stakeholder Group, an organization that I became a member of not long after. From a shortcut on one's phone or laptop, it became possible to check not only the river's flow, but its water and air temperature as well. This was huge, not only for the flows but for the water temps, which are very important to an angler.  A trout's metabolism is very much dependent on the temperature of the water they live in. At the low end of the temperature range in the spring, when the water rises to fifty degrees, the fish and the bugs they eat become active.  Time to go fishing. Later in the summer, when temperatures begin to approach (and sometime exceed) seventy, its time to stop fishing, and to use the metrics provided by the gauge to initiate ways to mitigate those warm temps, sometimes by provoking the release of water upstream from reservoirs to cool things off.

 

 

  For example, a couple of years after the Catamount gauge went in, we were having a dry summer.  That winter's snowpack had been subpar, and the following spring had seen very little rain.  As part of normal reservoir operations, flows had been held back during what would have been a meager runoff, and for a while that had made for great fishing during the period when the river in its unfettered state would have been high and dirty.  But by mid-summer, the bill was coming due and not only were water temperatures climbing, but algae blooms were beginning to blossom on the river bottom. Through this, I was checking the flow and temperature of the river every day watching nervously as temperatures climbed. 

 

  Then one day, I took a family out on a scenic float, and as usual we had a wonderful day on the river. The sky was bright and sunny, but it wasn't as much of a white water float as it might have been since the river was only about 550 cfs, instead of the thousand cfs it might have been. But there are no bad days on the water, and they had a good experience.  However after they left, I was down at my takeout cleaning the mud off my raft and while standing in the water noticed that it felt warm.  Not warm as in not cold, but warm as if I were in my hot tub. I went up to my shop, booted up the PC and clicked the bookmark to the Catamount gauge. I was shocked to see that the water temperature there was exceeding seventy degrees Fahrenheit!  At that point, I had only been a member of the Stakeholder group for a couple of years, but had the email addresses of all the other members.  So I wrote an email and copied everyone on the list, noting the warm temperatures on the river, and asking if there weren't some way to get some water released to aid the trout population in the river, and to forestall the growth I'd been seeing of the algae.

Critically, I also added a link to the Catamount gauge to help bolster that request. I had already been living on the river for ten years by then, and used to monitor river temperatures by means of hot tub thermometer attached by some orange twine to the bank in my backyard.  This was less than scientific. But by adding the link to the gauge upriver, I wasn't making some anecdotal argument, my plea was backed up by actual data the was both objective and shareable.

Once the raft was pulled out and put away, and phone calls returned, I went back to check my email before going home.  My Inbox already had a response from a member of the Stakeholder who worked for the Colorado River District, who said that he had seen my email noting the warm water in the river.

In it, he said that the as a result of the readings from Catamount, they River District would be releasing some water from Wolford Mountain reservoir the following morning, from the lowest outlet of the dam to get the coldest water possible.  I was elated.  I had written an email only an hour earlier, not really expecting much, and suddenly had the knowledge that the river was going to be getting a little bit of help starting the next day.  It wouldn't completely fix the problem, but it would help.

  The next morning, I got to my shop and fired up the PC.  Checking my email, I noticed some other messages from the Stakeholder group.  One was from an employee of Denver Water, and another from someone with Northern Water, both entities from the Front Range who supply water to folks living from Fort Collins in the north to Denver in the south.  Now, its a pretty popular opinion for people on the western slope of Colorado to despise the Front Range water providers for "stealing" water that should be flowing west, instead of being pumped and piped east to where the majority of Colorado's population lives.  Its an opinion that I used to share.  But there are two factors to consider.  The first is that dams and the reservoirs they create are not inherently good or bad. What is important is how they're managed. Without dams, the trout fishery that we enjoy on the Upper Colorado River simply would not exist.  Yes there would be big flows in the spring, scouring the river and spreading sediment, but in late summer of some dry years, there might not be much water in the river at all, and temperatures would skyrocket. It would not be conducive to brown and rainbow trout, which after all are not native to this river.  The cutthroats that are would be higher up in the watersheds, enjoying those cooler waters.  The second thing to remember is that many of the employees of those water providers aren't sitting around all day plotting ways to steal that water from the western slope.  They also enjoy recreating on the western rivers themselves, they just happen to live on the other side of the Continental Divide, and their job is to see that the bulk of Colorado's residents have water to drink, and to shower and flush the toilet with. 

 So that next morning, I was happy to see that one of those emails was from an employee of Denver Water who had seen my email. This was a man with whom I'd enjoyed cold beer around a warm campfire at a Stakeholder Group campout a couple of weeks earlier. He wrote that he had seen my email from the previous evening, and as a result Denver Water would be releasing extra water from Williams Fork reservoir that very morning.  But the good news wasn't done yet.  There was another email from a member of the Stakeholder group who worked for Northern Water.  She said that after my email had been distributed around their office, it was decided that pumpback operations out of Windy Gap reservoir would be curtailed earlier than planned, with the result that more water would be sent down the Colorado River! 

  I found myself in a pleasant state of shock. I had written an email the previous evening, not expecting much to come of it, and here it was twelve hours later, and sweet relief in the form of cold water was already on its way to rescue the Colorado River!  I have no doubt that being able to add a link to that email made all the difference.  It wasn't just some crank of a fisherman yelling at the kids to get off his aquatic lawn, it was hard, objective real time data that couldn't be ignored or disputed. Cooperation, not conflict.  Bridges, not walls. The pen is mightier than the sword, indeed. 

  Then a few years ago, the gauge got even better.  More metrics were added to the Catamount gauge's output, including Turbidity, PH, Conductivity and some others.  From an angler's perspective, the new Turbidity reading became as important as flows or temperature.  Below State Bridge, the geology surrounding the Colorado River becomes much softer and more colorful. As a result, heavy summer rains can quickly turn the river opaque with sediment in colors ranging from red, brown or green, depending on where the point of discharge is.  If one is boating the river for the sheer pleasure of the experience, an off-color river is not a problem, and can even make the ride more beautiful. But to an angler, trying to fish off-color water is a no go.  I have  seen people catch fish in mud, but its rare. Most anglers will cancel their trip or fish somewhere else if the river is really dirty. Having that information in hand before driving all the way up to your put can make the difference between a great day or a bust.

  With some familiarity using the gauge metrics, one can look at what the gauge is displaying and imagine what's been going on along the river and its surroundings. On clear sunny days, the air temperature rises, plateaus, and drops again in the afternoon.  But on partly cloudy days, that afternoon line becomes jagged, as each time a cloud passes the temp drops, then zooms back up with the sun.  If a front passes and the clouds mean business, the temperature will drop and stay low.  If it rains locally, the flows will increase a little, and sometimes by a lot.  If the rain falls on a tributary or dry wash that runs through soft geology, then the turbidity number might spike.  By knowing where the sediment is coming in, anglers can adjust their plans by going either above the point of discharge to find clear water, or far enough below it to get their day of fishing in before the muddy water drifts down that far.  The river flows at about 2-3 mph, so one can estimate the time it will take to reach a point downstream if you know where it enters a river, and when.

All of this is possible thanks to an innocuous river gauge that one could drive past without even noticing.  The term "game changer" is very overused these days, but relative to the USGS gauge at Catamount, its probably an understatement.

In the past few years, these additional metrics have been added to the USGS gauges at Dotsero and Kremmling as well, which give river users a very comprehensive look at just what the river is doing at any given moment. I've been living along the Lower Upper Colorado River for over twenty years, and running a float fishing business for almost as long.  I used to field lots of calls from anglers and other outfitters wondering what shape the river was in, especially in the late summer once the monsoon rains began.  The Catamount gauge has made me somewhat irrelevant as they've learned to read the gauge, and I'm fine with that.  I've got better things to do than answer those calls.

  If you are an active river user who doesn't have all of this information at hand for your particular river, it would be worth finding out who is bankrolling that gauge.  The USGS does the work of installing and maintaining the gauges, and translating their output into a form that you can read on your phone. If your river is prone to off-color events, volatile flows, or mine discharges, it might be worth looking into having the gauge on that river retrofitted with these new metrics. 

  Jack Bombardier

  Confluence Casting

Here is the link to the Catamount gauge. (I usually select the link for, "Legacy real-time page" near the top to see the parameters I'm interested in displayed on one page)

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?cb_00010=on&cb_00020=on&cb_00060=on&cb_63680=on&format=gif_default&site_no=09060799&legacy=1&period=&begin_date=2025-03-06&end_date=2025-03-13

 

In Praise Of Federal Employees, Or Papa Needs A New Set Of Oars

 To All,

 Its that time of year again, when all of the bills come due from various state and federal agencies as well as insurance, all in service of providing floating and shuttle service for you, the general public.  In addition, on my last trip of the season last fall, I managed to break an oar while running Pinball Rapid through some very skinny water. Time for some new oars!

  For that reason I'll be having an early season sale, something I haven't done for a couple of years.  As always, if you buy a trip now, it won't expire until I do, so if for some reason you can't make it out here this year, you will still get another bite at the apple the next, or whenever so long as I'm still breathing (and rowing). You can pay with checks, credit cards, or Venmo.  The price for a full day of fishing the prettiest stretch of the Lower Upper Colorado River is $450, but I'm only going to sell a few at that price! When you purchase I float, I'll send you a certificate so that you've got something tangible to hold onto, so trips can also make good gifts.

  Soon I'll be completing my sixty-fourth trip around the sun, so replacing my heavy ten foot oars was probably due. I can still row all day without effort while I'm on the water, but the moment my big cataraft touches the sand at the takeout, I suddenly feel every stroke all at once. Rowing back to back days isn't an option anymore, for it takes me a full day of not rowing to get over a day on the river.  My last set of oars lasted over twenty years, which amounts to many tens of thousands of strokes into the Colorado River, (and fewer into the Eagle, Roaring Fork, Yampa, Green and Gunnison rivers).  What I'll be replacing them with will be the lightest damn oars I can find, which will be pricey.  But if they can extend the amount of years I can keep doing this, then it will be money well spent. Plus, it will add to the time you can cash in on your discounted trip, so its a win-win for everyone!  

  Paying all of the fees necessary to various governmental entities each year is something I normally dread.  But this year, its not bothering me as much as usual, especially for the biggest check I write which is to the Bureau of Land Management.  The reason that I won't mind writing that check to the BLM this year is that our federal government is under attack by, well the federal government.  In the twenty years that I've run my outfitting business, I've dealt with many federal employees who work for the BLM, the US Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  I depend on weather forecasts from NOAA, and obsessively check the real time state of the river using gauge information provided by the USGS. Of course, saying that these people work for the federal government is not quite correct. These folks work for we the people, and each federal employee that I've personally dealt with has been professional, hardworking and diligent.  Now almost all of them are walking on eggshells, dreading the thought of checking their email and finding a message from DOGE waiting for them. 

  With as many employees as the federal government has, I'm sure that there are bad apples, and some deadwood that could be trimmed. I've just never dealt with any of those. But if you think that the federal government is too large, its worth noting that the number of federal employees is about two million, or about what it was in the 1960's. That's despite the fact that the amount of people they serve is much larger that it was then.  The portion of the federal budget their paychecks account for is 6%.  So although perhaps there are federal employees we could do just fine without, those cuts should probably be made with something more akin to a scalpel, not a chainsaw.

  Since the BLM is the big one in my world, its worth noting what they do here along the Upper Colorado River.  The BLM regulates the number of outfitters who ply their trade here, maintain the boat ramps, keep the bathrooms clean, and oversee the river shuttle services.  As busy as the Colorado River can get at times, especially above State Bridge, I shudder to think what it would be like without their oversight. On some rivers like the Eagle and Roaring Fork, which are relatively easy to get permits for, there are days when it looks like bumper cars out there.  Boaters crawl up each other's backsides on the boat ramps, then spend the day on the water doing the same, leapfrogging each other to get into the next good hole first. So, for as much river traffic there is on the Colorado now, it would be much worse without the BLM's oversight.  If one is willing to run some of the trickier sections of the river, solitude can still be found on the Colorado River.

  So even though writing that check to the BLM isn't going to make me jump for joy, I am proud to support the work they do.  And for this year at least, I'm glad to have some tangible way to show that support.  The Colorado River that we all know and love would be a very different place without the BLM, and the fine dedicated people who fill their ranks.

  Time to hop off the soapbox now. The 2025 river season is upon us. With what's shaping up to be a slightly subpar snowpack, the river is year looking like this. It will probably fish great this spring until the runoff begins in early May. Since reservoirs will need to be refilled, the runoff will probably not be a huge one.  This will be disappointing to those (like me) who enjoy smashing into big waves, but the upside is that all of that water being hoarded behind dams in the spring will be available to be released later in summer.  Whether the monsoons come in July or not, its good knowing that there are millions of gallons stored upriver that can be let out to cool the river off.  For that reason, the "Lower" Upper Colorado River is in the best spot to be in anywhere in the American southwest.  Its below the supply (Green Mountain, Dillon Reservoir, Williams Fork, Wolford Mountain, and Lake Granby) but above the demand (the Grand Valley, Powell Reservoir, the Imperial Valley, and other points south like Phoenix and San Diego). When those distant places call for water, it has to come through here to get there. There is literally nowhere else I'd rather be. 

  I hope that everyone reading this has a great summer, and a great job as long as they deserve to have one!

  Jack Bombardier

  Confluence Casting

  jack@confluencecasting.com

  303 378 2149 - cell

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The Laughing River

 

                             The Laughing River   

The other night when I got home from work, I opened the door to my car and heard a sound that was very familiar, though one I hadn't heard in months. It sounded like distant applause, or maybe a sitcom laugh track.  Then it realized that it was just the river, unbound from its icy tomb for the first time since November.  When I heard the rhythmic sssh-sssh-sssh music coming from the backyard, I knew that the large field of ice that had been quickly melting over the previous two weeks had finally floated off downstream. The Colorado River was indeed a river once more, and all vestiges of the ice skating rink we'd enjoyed all winter was gone.  There is no more definitive measure marking the transition from winter to spring I know of than the river ice melting away.  It happens slowly at first, then all at once. 

  This is an important seasonal marker where I live, for twice a year the river goes from being a huge asset in our lives to a liability, even if just for a short  time. Those two periods occur just after Thanksgiving, when the river ice is frozen but not yet thick enough to stand on, and in the spring, when it looks sound but is unsafe.  We have several labradors who consider our backyard and its adjacent waterway their territory, and during those two short periods of unsafe ice we can't let them into that space which is otherwise their slice of heaven, and mine.

 

  Late fall and early spring is also when another phenomenon occurs, river ice circles.  Ice circles usually appear in December and March, in a few specific spots.  One is just below the boat ramp at Cottonwood, and if you stop to watch, you'll see circle spinning slowly, like an album turntable.

  This winter past was pretty ordinary and normal, which is to say, wonderful.  Here on along the river corridors, it was a pretty lean year for snow. In Eagle, we got the Ice Castles, a temporary collection of water frozen and shaped into various tunnels, caves and passageways. Water, along with the air we breathe, is one of the two most essential components of the life.  When people use it to create something beautiful, even if it only lasts in our memories, its a reminder of life's fleeting nature.

Our house isn't in the mountains, but it is surrounded by them.  Along the river itself, we got a few small snowstorms, but nothing I couldn't clear off the river with my doublewide snow shovel.  As a result, we had almost three months of safe, smooth ice to skate on.  There were a few large cracks that formed, but they were obvious if you kept an eye peeled for them.  There were a couple of times I didn't, usually at night stickhandling a throw stick while being pursued by a pack of baying labradors.  Hitting those cracks at the wrong angle meant flying through the air ending with a hard landing, followed by a long slide across the smooth ice.  I'd look up at the night sky from my back, do a quick mental inventory to check if I broke anything, then have my reverie broken my five enthusiastic tongues licking my face.

  But now those days and nights on top of the river surface are over for now, and its time to back into the river.  The time has returned to begin cracking the bedroom window open at night, to let that sweet river music into our home and into our ears.  Today I went and got my dory, and its in the backyard now ready to be eased into the river, to resume its station tied to my dock.  Once its out there, I can just jump into it anytime I want to backrow upriver for a quick float involving no shuttle, or trailer, or any complication beyond unlooping my bow line.  Sometimes I'll take a dog, or two,

 or five, or the cat, or my wife, or maybe a neighbor.  Other times, I hop in after work and go for a twenty minute float, just because I can, and do it by myself to remember why I live here. If I've earned a happy spot in the afterlife, and it involves being in a boat on the Colorado River in perpetuity, I'll be fine   with that.

         ****************************************************

Its only the second day of March, and as such too early to predict what kind of season we'll have this year on the river. The snowpack is just OK, around normal, though there's still plenty of time for it to build up some more.  March is usually the snowiest month in Colorado, and my favorite time to ski.  The river is low and clear in my yard, and I've already seen a few riseforms from sipping trout.  But upriver, there is still a lot of ice in the river yet to melt.  If we don't get our "normal" March snows, and who is to say what is normal weather anymore?, then we might be in for a low water spring as the reservoirs are refilled.  This means that the fishing in May and June might be quite good of the runoff is subdued. However if our next "normal" weather pattern, the summer monsoons come late, then the river might get too warm to fish in July.  Of course being the first week of March, its way too early to speculate about any of that.  Right now I'm just extremely grateful to see the river back once more.  Although it never left, its sometimes easy to forget that it was there all along.  In January, it got so cold that the river froze all the way across, something it doesn't do every year.  For a few weeks, it was just a frozen wasteland, and seeing a polar bear trotting along its edge wouldn't have looked out of place.

  The story of the Colorado River for 2025 has yet to be written, but its a tale I look forward to having some small, supporting role in.  The river is awake and alive and laughing again, as soon we'll be while floating, swimming, fishing or just sitting beside it.

  Jack Bombardier