Pining For The Piney

                                                                 Pining For The Piney

 Some people may assume that fishing guides get to fish all the time, or at least more than they get to do.  That may or may not be true, it depends on the guide and who they are being compared to.  I know that there are a lot of retired men and women out there who get to fish a lot more than I do, because I've met more than a few of them. I'll hopefully live long enough to be one of them myself someday.

  But between running shuttles seven days a week, driving a propane truck, and being on the water myself floating lucky folks down the river, there's not much time to actually go fish any distant waters, or even those closer to home. Luckily, there are many good places to fish locally. One of these places is on the western flank of the Gore Range, only an hour's bumpy drive from Vail. At the top of that drive is Piney Lake, one of the most photographed spots in all of Colorado. The lake borders the Eagle's Nest Wilderness, and rugged peaks just seem to rise right up out of it. It can be a busy place, but its not unknown to fishermen, so I don't feel like I'm outing a hidden spot that people don't know about already.  They occasionally have a guide working there to offer advice and services, and you see plenty of people toting fly and spinning rods. But for some reason, most of those fisherpeople head to the lake, and a smaller number fish the river above the lake, but I've never seen anyone fish below it. 

 

There's a private concession there with a small restaurant and store, cabins, outfitter tents, canoes, SUP rentals, and a big deck overlooking the lake upon which many wedding vows each year are exchanged. Piney Lake is a beautiful and inspiring place. In late summer,  once the lake levels drop and the algae blooms, moose come out and stand in the shallow areas of the lake slurping up their aquatic salad bar. I've seen moose on most of my fall trips to Piney Lake. Last September, a pair of moose were sloshing around twenty feet away from the deck, right next to where solemn commitments made between two loving people (which may last between forever and six months) are made.

The reason I go to Piney so often is to deliver propane, and I've been doing so for almost ten years.  The whole operation is off the grid, so its powered by a pair of propane generators supplied by a tank farm of four 1000 gallon tanks. When those tanks get low, I go up there with a full propane "bobtail" truck, and fill the four tanks.  This happens about once a month while they're open, which is from around Memorial Day until the end of September. That means I go up there four times a year, and get to see that upper watershed in all of its phases that don't involve being buried under the snow. 

The drive usually takes about an hour plus from Vail, and then I spend an hour filling the tanks. Then, before making the hour drive back, I try to fish a little.  Its usually only for an hour or so, but even just a short amount of time spent along a high mountain stream is mentally restorative. Sometimes being out there trying to fool a ten-inch brook trout feels like one of the reasons I'm living on this earth to begin with.  I often get that same sensation when skiing aspen trees.

 

  The peak that dominates the view from Piney Lake wedding deck is called Mount Powell, named for the famous explorer who made the first recorded trip down the Grand Canyon a few years later. John Wesley Powell was among the first group of white men known to have climbed to the top of the peak that now bears his name.   Whenever Powell's name is invoked, it seems obligatory to mention that fact that he only had one arm, lost to a cannon ball in the Civil War.  For most people, climbing mountains and rowing boats with only one arm wouldn't be high on the list of things they would want to do. Powell was obviously not most people.  It seems appropriate that a mountain which bears his name has waters which flow all the way down to the canyon he first explored. 

The section I usually fish on the Piney is the stretch that runs from the outlet of the lake down to where the road going to the lake crosses the creek about a mile away. The first time I drove up there was over twenty years ago, while dating the sensational girl who later became my wife.  She was looking forward to driving up there to see the bridge which crosses the Piney, which was designed by her dad Jerry years before when he worked for the Forest Service. The Piney is a classic freestone Rocky Mountain stream, not very large but clean and cold and full of small eager brook trout.  Brookies are sometime looked down upon in the Rockies as they are non-native fish, technically an invasive species. When headwater streams are being prepared for the reintroduction of native cutthroats, "cleaning" those waters by using a piscicide to poison the existing fish populations.  These fish are usually the offspring of rainbows, brookies and browns that were put there by well-meaning fish biologists many years ago. But even though brook trout don't "belong' in those waters, angling for them is still one of my favorite ways to pursue fish. Part of that is due to where they live, which are almost always scenic. That's because brook trout love clean, cold, clear water, and that type of water is usually found high up in some watershed.  The other thing is that brookies are among the most beautiful creatures found on this green earth.  Cutthroats and golden trout have their advocates, and for good reasons, but for me brook trout embody everything I love about fishing.  Brook trout have stunning beauty that's almost impossible to capture by either photograph or paint, though many try.  The only way to really appreciate one is to hold one in your hand, while it's still wet. Also, brookies were the native fish from where I came from in New England, so they were our cutthroats. A fly that's well cast and mended on the Piney River will almost always result in a small brookie trying to eat it, even if it's too small to fit in its mouth.  

 

The stretch of river above the lake also has its charms, most noticeably the gigantic mountains that are almost distracting in their presence. There are some deeper pools that form behind beaver ponds here, and the fish tend to be bigger.  Perhaps that's why this stretch sees more anglers on it, but its not crowded and with all the meanders there's plenty of room to spread out. 

 

 

I've never fished the lake from a boat, but have fished the creek's inlet into it. One of these days I'll bring some kind of watercraft up there to do that, or use one of the lodge's canoes.  But I've never been a big stillwater guy, because fishing in lakes and ponds feels kind of boring to me.  Watching a fly or indicator just sit there on the water's surface while waiting for the tug seems very random, and requires little skill beyond rigging the appropriate tackle and depth. No real casting or mending are required.  Being on a lake also deprives one of the sublime music that only a river can make, like some natural Mozart symphony. I love everything about high mountain streams, from how they look and smell, but especially how they sound. You don't get that on stillwater.

 

                    

On my last trip this fall, I drove my truck about halfway to the bridge and pulled over to wet a line. There's really no bad spots, its all fishable.  I rigged up an elkhair caddis and my first decent cast fooled a small trout, but when I set the hook I missed the fish.  Working my way up the stream, I got a rise in every pool and missed them all. Finally I hooked a brookie and brought it to the bank, sticking my hand in the pure water to cradle it. It was only a few inches long but pretty as hell.

 

  What the Piney is like between Jerry's bridge and the confluence with the Colorado River twenty miles away is still a mystery to me.  I did a short hike from the bridge down once and the trail and creek got very brushy. It didn't appear as though there would be room to cast a fly even if there were trout in there worth casting to.  But being able to have the time to better explore that middle reach is on my bucket list.

When I first moved to Colorado,  I spent more time on and around the lower Piney, where it meets the Colorado River at State Bridge.   The Piney flows about twenty miles straight north from the lake to the river, with only one small irrigation diversion. Right above the confluence of it and the Colorado River is a small campsite overlooking it. There was once a great saloon nearby called the State Bridge Lodge, and I'd camp above the mouth of the Piney and walk the mile to the bar at night.  The Piney is a loud, splashy river which barges into the Colorado River creating a huge spinning eddy at some levels. The white noise it creates makes for wonderful sleeping, at least until the middle of the night when some creaky old freight train comes screeching around the corner from across the river.  The train's headlight casts a blinding atomic flash to go with the armageddon soundtrack, which can be slightly disruptive to the great night's sleep you were having only minutes earlier. 

The State Bridge Lodge also became the place I'd meet my wife back when she was still my girlfriend, and it was a magical place.  It was a bar that was open to everyone, from hippies to rednecks to bikers to tourists to fishermen to rafters to hunters to cowboys to bicyclists to campers and to anyone or anything on feet, hooves or wheels. After my now-wife and I made our move the mountains twenty years ago, the State Bridge Lodge was the one place we'd feel comfortable driving to for a night out involving cocktails. Since our drive our home was along the Colorado River Road which has almost no traffic, it felt pretty safe.  Then about fifteen years ago, so lowlife bastard burned the place down, and I hope that a new, lower level of hell was created for him (or her) when they lose their mortal coil. 

The Piney is also notable for another reason, and that is the USGS gauge located just upstream from the Colorado. During spring runoff or during the monsoon season, the Piney gauge gives one a very good window into what the mountain snowpack is doing.  Its a very direct look into how fast or slow its melting, with not much in the way of headgates above it. There are even times when the Piney has a greater volume of water in it than the Colorado, which seems crazy to think about. But in bad snowpack years, when the melting snow is held back and stored in reservoirs on the Colorado, wild streams like the Piney rush and crash down the mountainsides to the waiting river below.  Once in 2002 I camped at my usual spot above the confluence, and from that vantage point the Piney was clearly the dominant tributary. It was during peak runoff and the Piney was flowing at a thousand cfs, while the Colorado River flowed meekly past at a mere 400.  The Piney thrust into the Colorado River hard from river left, its dark turbid flow overwhelming the clear olive water coming from the reservoirs above. The whole river below the confluence was a boiling mass of whirlpools and sticks. 

I got the idea to take my cheap ducky for a ride down the Piney, before hitchhiking up to float the Colorado later. My usual pattern was to stick my thumb out in front of the State Bridge Lodge (where people had to slow down), and catch a ride up to wherever they went. I'd do the same put in as them, inflate the cheap ducky stuffed in my backpack, then float down to my campsite above the Piney. Sometimes that would make for a quick day, if I only went up to Rancho Del Rio.  But if my ride went all the way up to Pumphouse, then I'd be in for a longer float.  I tried to just go with whatever trip fate dealt me.

 I hiked along the fire road which paralleled the Piney for about a mile to the bridge where the USGS gauge and a gate blocking the road was. Along the way, I kept looking at the raging torrent that was the Piney River.  The Piney is officially called a "river", but that's giving it too much credit.  "Stream" is really a more apt descriptor, and "creek" or "brook" also give a more accurate image of it than "river" does.  But on this June morning, river" seemed entirely appropriate. The Piney was basically pure whitewater froth from the bridge to the Colorado River, with both banks lined by stiff brush and rocks, the occasional log or branch blocking one side.  The more I looked down at the torrent, the less of a good idea it seemed to be. I was still young enough to feel invincible, but old enough to know better. By the time I got the bridge, I was hot and tired and didn't want to schlep my pack and paddle back to camp.  The Piney looked cool, refreshing and terrifying.  I thought, how dangerous could a little stream like the Piney be?

I clambered down the steep bank and blew up my ducky using lung power.  One hundred exhales each into the right and left tubes, then fifty into the floor. There wasn't much room along Piney, but once I was ready I straddled the ducky and side-hopped into the crashing water. The ducky shot off and I almost lost the paddle in trying to hang onto my little boat.  The surrounding landscape went by in a blur, and I used my paddle more to deflect oncoming obstructions than to actually paddle.  It seemed as though in any given moment there were ten different things I was flying past which could puncture the boat or me. It was like an arcade game or amusement park ride, but with real potential consequences. The thought of bailing on this hazardous endeavor occurred to me, but even if I wanted to get out there was nowhere to go.  It was Colorado River or bust.  I covered the mile of the Piney in what felt like ten seconds, though it was probably at least twenty. The banks widened and spread apart and suddenly there was the Colorado River, moseying along minding its own business when suddenly this impudent little mountain stream came barreling in with a whooping idiot riding its impatient power. When I hit the Colorado River, I shot all the way across to the far bank, totally missing the takeout to my campsite.  The two flows merged and twisted and I let myself spin around in the whirlpools, laughing.

The Piney River is one of Colorado's treasures, one that I hope to make more memories on in the future.

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

For what its worth, as of October 4th 2023, the Lower Upper Colorado River is in as fine a shape as I've ever seen it, and I've lived and guided here for twenty years. 2023 might go down as the best year this river has ever had. The flows are high, the water is cool, the browns are hungry and the foliage color is at peak.  It's heaven on earth, right now. I'm pretty busy already with all of the irons I have in the fire, but if anyone wants to taste perfection on the water now is the time to come here. If I can't find time to take you, find someone else who also knows this stretch or come wade fish it for free. 

  Jack Bombardier

Fire In The Sky

                                                     Fire In The Sky

2023 has been a great summer to be living and recreating on the "Lower Upper" Colorado River.  Thanks to a thick healthy snowpack, we had our first real runoff since 2019.  In the wake of the receding water, sandbars have emerged which showed the river shifting and changing in new ways.  We even ended up with beautiful new sand where my yard meets the river. Big water in the spring helps create healthy riparian ecosystems, and its how rivers are supposed to work.

 Spring was wet, but then the early summer was dry, and as a result the Colorado River has been exceptionally clear, with only one fishing day lost to off-color water. But things changed, and the summer weather patterns known as the monsoons were beginning to develop.  Last Sunday night, storms moved in along with some very loud and very close lightning and thunder.  Around six pm, there was a loud crack of thunder which was almost instantaneous with the flash of the lightning it was created by.  When that happens, you know that it was very close.  It was as loud as anything I'd ever heard.  

 Eventually the storm passed, and I didn't think much about it, but the next morning we awoke to the sound of a helicopter hovering nearby.  Seeing and hearing helicopters around here isn't unusual, since at the Eagle Airport there's an Army training site where pilots learn to fly them in the mountains.  I drove over to my shop, and from there I could see a thin column of smoke coming from the top of the hill above my house, with the chopper hovering near it.  That atomic boom from the previous evening had apparently left its mark with more than just sound, started a small fire.  We had shuttles to run upriver, but when we got back the helicopter was still hanging around the fire, keeping an eye on it.  The smoke was coming from atop the rocky cliffs above my house,  which was thankfully downwind.  On our last pass the helicopter was gone, but at the Colorado River Ranch we saw it on the ground, surrounded by a couple of hot shot crews and a support vehicle with a fuel truck. Behind the truck as a large cargo trailer with gear spread out all over.  A couple of men were leaning over what looked like a large red inflatable swimming pools.

 

"I think that's one of those buckets they use to haul water", I said to my shuttle driver and neighbor Donna, whose house was even closer to the fire than mine.  When I picked her up earlier, she was on her front step watching the fire and the helicopter, both uncomfortably close to her new log dream home.

  Upon our return from running shuttles, the helicopter was no longer at the River Ranch, so we figured it was up in the air delivering water to the fire.  As we drove up the road we looked for it, and then as we rounded a corner Donna cried out, "There it is!" Sure enough, the helicopter shot up into view tugging a bright red bucket below it, racing to the top of the hill towards the smoke.  I dropped her off at home, then went to mine to enjoy the show.  My wife said the helicopter had been pulling water from the river from our backyard, but by then the helicopter had started scooping it from just below Donna's house.  I drove down to a spot closer so that so I could watch it, and found a great spot to see the helicopter and its very skilled pilot do their thing.  Each lap between the river and fire took less than five minutes.  The chopper would hover above the river, lower itself just enough to sink the bucket, and then race up to the fire. He would find just the right spot to unload its contents, then zip back down to the river to repeat the process.  It was very entertaining to watch, and it was also reassuring to know that a potential danger not far from my home was being dealt with so quickly and effectively.  After an hour of those loops, the column of smoke was gone and the fire was out. Those who like to complain that the government can't do anything right haven't seen wildland fire crews in action.

That night the summer monsoon rains finally came, and the next day the river turned bright red and muddy and unfishable. On the evening before the rains moved in, I went to my backyard and stood on the end of my dock.  I rarely ever skip a quick trip to the river whenever I get home after a long day. Its only twenty strides from my driveway to my dock above the river, and the psychic pull of the river is usually more than I can resist. Even just standing there for five minutes soothes my soul and calms my spirit like nothing else. The air was very still, and the river as clear as vodka, but overhead a huge malevolent black cloud was moving in. But far south and below the cloud was a short strip of clear yellow sky, beyond the black cloud's backside, and that yellow hue gave the river's surface an eerie glow.  To the north, there were other dark clouds emitting elaborate bursts of chain lighting.  In the gap between the bottoms of those clouds and the top of the Flat Top Mountains, the sky was orange and purple and the frequent lightning bolts made for quite the show, with the distant cracks of thunder breaking the otherwise still evening air.  It made me think of the John Denver lyrics, "I've seen it raining fire in the sky" (of course, he was describing meteor showers, not lightning). I grew up back east, and hearing "Rocky Mountain High", and as a twelve year old was the first time I'd ever heard of Colorado. Fifty years later, its still left an indelible imprint on my consciousness.

The mountains were to my right, but as I watched the electric display I heard the unmistakable sound of a trout breaking the surface of the water.  I looked to my left and saw what remained of the riseform spreading out into the river, then disappearing.  It had just sipped a fly only fifteen feet out, just downstream of my dock. I hadn't been fishing in my yard lately, but knowing that there was a trout feeding so close by made me want to grab my rod. What fisherman doesn't feel their pulse quicken by the sound of a feeding fish?

In another part of my yard stands a retired chairlift from A Basin, supported by a wooden frame of 6' X 6' timber. The chair itself hangs on a pipe, so that it can swing naturally the way the chair used to do back when it was carrying skiers up to their destination at 12,450' and the top of the mountain.  When I sit on my chairlift, I can close my eyes and imagine myself with skis atached to my feet, making that trip up the hill on the way to my next run.  When I'm at A Basin, I can close my eyes and pretend that I'm back in my yard beside the relentless flow of the river.  On the back of the chairlift frame hangs a seven foot three weight rod, handmade for me by one of my best and oldest friends.  There it sits at the ready, so I went over and got it, then went back to the dock to see if I could fool the feeding trout. 

It was almost dark, but the river still had just enough dwindling light left to see my line, if not my fly.  From the south the big black cloud drew closer, and it was obvious that the still night wasn't going to stay quiet for long.  To the north, the distant lightning show continued, and I knew that I could watch the fly or the lightning, but not both.  I stripped out some line, made a cast, and realized that I had no hope of actually watching my fly drift, i for it was way too dark.  Much of the fun fishing dry flies is the pleasure of watching them ride the river like little sailboats, while mending the line to keep them moving along that way, and then (hopefully) seeing a trout's head emerge from it's liquid world to sip that little sailboat made of feathers and fur. There would be none of that this evening,  since I couldn't see my fly and was more interested in watch the lightning show anyway.  So I stripped out more line, flipped it out towards the center of the river, and kept looking right while my fly floated away off to the left. 

I occasionally looked downriver, and the line began to straighten as all of the slack ran out, so I began to fish it like a wet fly, making short strips. Now that the fly was underwater, there was no need to watch it anymore, so I turned back to celestial display over the Flat Tops while twitching the line downriver.  The big cloud was overhead now, which made me wonder how conductive a graphite fly rod was.  Standing out on the edge of the dock holding a rod aloft with lightning nearby might be a great way to win a Darwin award.

Then there was another crazy double chain lightning that went off over the mountains, followed by a tug on my seven weight. I looked left, raised the rod tip, and was rewarded by the sight of a foot long trout skipping across the surface of the river, doing its best impression of a tarpon.  The river had been getting warm over the past week, so I didn't want to play him for long, and I tried to bring him in quickly.  The single fly he had in his mouth was old and coming apart, and usually when I hook a fish off my dock I just drop the rod tip to let them shake it out of their mouth. But that was more than the old 7X tippet could take, and he broke my ancient Adams off before I could give him slack.   But it was fun to have the little trout on for even a moment.  The tug, as they say, is the drug.

The rain drops began to splat loudly on the river's surface, then on the dock, and then on me. By the time I returned the rod to it's chairlift frame, the rain began in earnest and I had to sprint to my house to avoid getting soaked. But I had my few minutes by the river, and had hooked a trout, and had seen fire in the sky.  John Denver was probably holding a joint in his hand when he had his inspiration, but I got to hold a fly rod in mine.

Jack Bombardier

Life And Death On The River

                             Life And Death On The River

                                                                                           Walt's Eddy

When I think about rivers, and they're on my mind a lot, its usually in a positive light.  Rivers represent life and connection, their analog to the human animal are the arteries that that carry blood all around our body.  They pulse with energy and a raw power that can make one feel both insignificant and godlike at the same time. The geologic corridors they carve create pathways for our roads and railways, and are themselves conduits for fish and bugs and sediment and happy people in carbon-neutral motion

From a recreational perspective, rivers are playgrounds upon which we fish, swim, row and ice skate. Since I've spent so much time filling my soul beside moving waters, it can be hard to remember that cold flowing rivers can also have another side, a darker one. Rivers may exude a potent life force, but they are not sentient. 

 We humans think and care a lot more about rivers than they think or care about us, which is to say not at all.  At its most basic level,  a river is nothing more than water molecules being pulled by gravity downhill almost against their will.  Whether a human being has a good or bad experience on a river, makes absolutely no difference to the river.

 

  This spring, rivers in Colorado have been running high due to the thick blanket of snow we got this winter.  Partly because of that, there have been several people who had the last swim of their lives in the past month. This is unfortunate, as in some cases these tragic outcomes could have been avoided.  But whenever one ventures out onto a river, there's always a chance that something unexpected may happen.  Sometimes that's good, like when its a big brown trout on the of a line. But if is bad, it could be a drowning person rushing towards the end of theirs.

  There have already been a few people who've drowned on the Upper C already this spring.  Two weeks ago below State Bridge, a boat with a man rafting with his eight year old son suddenly came to an abrupt stop in the swift moving water. The anchor hanging off the boat's stern had suddenly dropped into the river. This forced the stern down into the water, and the resulting force began to separate the raft from the frame.  Somehow the child ended up trapped under the raft and drowned.  This sounds like a very unusual circumstance, but early in my boating days a similar thing happened to me. Not the drowning part, but my anchor slipping into the river and halting my boat's progress.  When it dropped, it got caught on the knot I'd put into the end of the rope to keep from losing my anchor. The current was so powerful that I had to cut the rope and write off the anchor.  But I'll never forget how quickly my boat came to a stop.  But my boat is a cataraft, and the water flows right through. That man and his son probably felt the same sudden sensation.  To think that one minute you're floating upon the Colorado River, having a wonderful day, instilling the love of rivers and being outside to your child, and in the next instant you find yourself in a life or death situation. 

Makes the river feel almost cruel. 

  Then last week, a woman was rafting below Pumphouse and fell out of her raft at Eye Of The Needle, a notorious boat-eater especially at high water.  Her two children were outfitted with what were described as "Wal-Mart quality" PFDs, while the mother wore none. Today, they don't have a mother anymore.  How can people be so ill prepared? It shows a lack of respect for the river and its power.

In the past, I've seen people floating below Pumphouse in anything that floats, including cheap air mattresses.  But thats been in low water, not the full beautiful flushing flows we've had this spring. A river at 5,000 cfs is usually a very different animal than the same river at 700 cfs. There are a lot of new boaters who've bought in to the whole wonderful rafting lifestyle since 2020. They've only seen the river at rock bottom flows, so they think that they know a river well.  But I hope that everyone who comes out this summer to row the Upper Colorado River can successfully adapt to the higher, faster conditions.

 

 Last Friday, we were doing our last shuttle of the day running a truck and trailer from Catamount down to Dotsero.  Along the way, we just passed Rancho Starvo and I noticed my neighbor Walt and another man on the shoulder of the road, looking upstream at the huge eddy above Walt's house.  As I drew closer, I noticed the stranger wearing a PFD and farmer john wetsuit.  I thought I might know what they were looking for.  Earlier that morning, my in-laws spotted an empty blue kayak floating past their house. This man was probably looking for it. So I stopped and asked them if they were looking for a kayak, and he responded No, that had nothing to do with them, they were looking for a swimmer in the river. 

  I got out of the car looked upriver towards Walt's Eddy. The old road bridge at Red Dirt used to be very dangerous, but several years ago it had been replaced with a more boat friendly design.  The old bridge used to ensnare boats frequently, and whenever it did whatever flotsam that fell in would get trapped in Walt's Eddy. Out in the middle of the river there was something floating, but I couldn't tell what it was. The man in the wetsuit was making his way down to the river through the thick willows.  I asked him, "Is that him?" and he replied that he wasn't sure if it was the swimmer, or just his PFD.  Walt and I watched as the object floated around, hoping that the current might carry him further down to where we could catch him.  Normally this is what this eddy would do, but the wind was blowing hard that day and keeping the floating mass stuck up in the top of the eddy.  "Yeah that's him!" the man shouted. 

  Just then, Walt's wife Jan appeared from the back of their house.  "I've called 911!" she shouted.  Walt and I looked at each other.  "By the time help gets here, it'll be too late, if it isn't already".  Walt nodded. "I've got a raft in my backyard, but its not on a trailer". Then I thought about Walt's pristine 30 year old Ford pickup.  "Walt, can we use your truck to go get my raft?", and he quickly said yes.  "We'd better move fast, we're his only chance". I hollered down to the man on the bank, who was watching his friend spinning out around in the eddy, and yelled, "We're going to go get a boat!" With that, we sprinted away, me to my shuttle car and Walt to his truck. 

  My house is a half mile below Walt's, and when I got there I whipped opened the gate and looked for my PFD.  I couldn't find it, so I grabbed a small one that barely snapped around my waist. Walt was already backing in, and we quickly grabbed the raft and lifted it into the back of his truck.  Then I noticed that across the river, there was another man in a wetsuit next to what looked like a large ducky pulled up onto the bank.  I assumed he was part of the group.  "We're going to go get your friend, we'll be right back!" I shouted to him, and he nodded and slowly waved back. 

Walt and I tore up the road in his truck, planning on putting the boat in at the small ramp at Rancho Starvo, just above the swimmer.  But as we came upon the eddy, I saw the man in the wetsuit at the edge of the river,  with the swimmer not far off the bank.  "Stop the truck Walt, he's right next the bank, we won't need the boat.  Let me out!"  Walt stopped and I jumped out of the truck, hopped the fence, and sprinted across the pasture. When I pushed through the willows, I stopped at the water's edge and was a bit confused by what I saw. Only ten feet off the bank was the floating yellow PFD, with the back of a gray-haired head in the middle of it face down in the water. The man in the wetsuit was tossing a throw rope at his friend, trying to snare him to draw him even closer.  But he was only ten feet away!

  "Why don't you just go grab him?" I asked, and he looked at me with a confused expression.  He was in full river regalia, with a wetsuit and and PFD and knife and whistle, and I was in my street clothes, wearing a too-small PFD. He stood looking at me, and without waiting for a response I waded in after the swimmer, pushing some floating wood out of the way.  The water came up to my ribs before I was able to reach the shoulder strap of the unconscious man, and I pulled him towards the bank.  Once there, the other man grabbed his other  shoulder strap and we pulled him onto the shore. 

 

  We rolled him onto his bank, and pulled off his PFD.  He was bearded man who looked to be around seventy years old, and his face had a slightly blue pallor to it. I was hoping that this was due to the 55 degree water he'd been floating in.  "We've got to do CPR on him" I said, and when the other man just looked at me, I started in.  Being a licensed outfitter, I'm required to do regular First Aid and CPR courses.  For many years, my wife was an instructor for the Red Cross, and I could have just renewed my certification without having to sit through the whole course again.  But I've always done it anyway, wanting to reinforce that latent knowledge so if I ever needed it in an emergency, it'd be in some part of my brain that I could access. Taking First Aid and CPR courses is about learning skills you hope to never use.  Over the years, the recommended ratio of chest compressions to rescue breaths has changed, but I knew that at one point it was either 30 to 1 or 15 to 1, so I went with the former.  Doing the chest compressions was easy, but the first time I had to do the rescue breath I gagged a little and almost vomited. But the adrenaline was surging, so I bent over the blue man's face and blew into his mouth until I felt his chest rise a little.

  As I did CPR, the man in the wetsuit introduced himself as Mike (names changed) and told me what happened.  They had been running past the Red Dirt Bridge, a tricky spot upriver where a railroad bridge is immediately followed by the road bridge pylons. At this flow, the right pylon can be run on either side. The right line has a big, smooth wave that puts you right into a frothy wave train. If you hit it straight on, its wonderful, almost the river equivalent of powder skiing.  But run it sideways and the wave is big enough to roll a boat over, and that's what happened to the man I was currently trying to revive. At higher water levels the middle line is also doable, but there are a few big rocks in the channel to avoid.  

  Mike said he went through first and didn't like it, and motioned to his companions not follow him, but take the middle line instead.  But by then, it was too late and they both took the right line as well. Mike said that after he got through, he looked back and noticed that his friend (who I'll call Bob) had fallen out of his boat and was struggling to get to shore. One of the many questions I never asked Mike (along with whether they had scouted the bridge before running it) was why he hadn't eddied out to wait for his companions.  There is spot on river right, just above the alluvial fan of Red Dirt Creek, that's almost in sight of the bridge.  But instead, Mike not only passed that, but then went almost a mile below before stopping his boat just below Walt's house. In the process he passed the big eddy that his friend his friend eventually got sucked into, an eddy so tenacious you have to actively row hard to avoid getting caught by it.

  As I did CPR, I told him about the man I saw across the river from my house, and Mike told me that he was the unconscious man's brother, Pete. I told him that he might be able to row across the river to my yard from where he was, but it was difficult to do in this high flow.  Mike said that the brother wasn't a strong rower, and wouldn't be able to do it. 

  I was getting a little winded from doing the chest compressions, and Mike noticed this and offered to take over.  I leaned back to took a deep breath, but when I watched his technique I had to jump back in.  He was pressing on Bob's stomach, not his sternum, and his timing was too fast.  So I went back to doing the compressions on Tim's chest until I started feeling tired again, and began to wonder if all this effort was in vain. Mike said there was still no pulse, though with his face now warmed by the sun Bob was looking less blue, though still pale.  We were both shouting "Bob! Bob! Stay with us!" Mike slapped Bob's face a couple of times, a technique I don't remember reading about in the Red Cross manual.  Just about the time I was ready to give up, we heard distant sirens.  This gave me another shot of adrenaline.  I thought that I could keep doing this for as long as it took for more qualified get help to arrive.  Walt was still up on the road waiting for the first responders, and Mike left to go help direct them to the right spot. 

  Alone with Bob, I kept rhythmically doing the compressions though the situation seemed pointless.  I hoped that the combination keeping blood flowing to his organs and the cold water would somehow keep him alive until the EMTs could get to him.  An ambulance and a fire truck came speeding around the corner, and I heard the opening and closing of doors from the other side of the wall of willows.  I stood for a moment to see them, and yelled, "Bring an AED!" which of course they would have anyway. Knowing that help was almost here, I kept shouting to Bob, " Hold On! Stay With Me! Your Brother Is Waiting For You!", and kept it up until the firefighters came crashing through the brush. 

  There were three firefighters and a female EMT who directed all of them as to what they needed to do. We pulled Bob further away from the water and the readied the AED. The thanked me for my efforts, and at that point my role was done.  I was going to wait to see if they were able to bring him back, but I already knew that it was probably too late.  I didn't want to be there when they pronounced him dead, so I left and went back to the road where Walt was waiting. "How is it looking?" he asked, and all I could do was shake my head.

  We got into his truck and drove back to my house. After he backed in, we unloaded my boat and looked across the river at the dead man's brother.   Knowing how strong the current was, I shouted to him to hold on, I'd row over to get him.  My smallest boat is a ten foot raft with an oar frame that I go out in almost every night.  At lower flows I can row it pretty far upstream from my house, but at 5,500cfs I can barely get across the river and back even when rowing very hard. Of course when its just me and the dogs, the workout is sort of the point.  So I rowed upstream as far as I could, then pulled very quickly to get over the far side.  When I got close, the man extended his paddle and I pulled myself to the bank. 

  Pete didn't say anything. I thought that he might be in shock, though he wouldn't know what had happened to his brother yet so that didn't seem right. I didn't want to be the to tell him that his brother was probably dead, but since I left before that pronouncement had been officially made I still held out a bit of hope that the AED had worked a miracle. 

  "We got your brother out of water, and he's being worked on right now", I said.  No response.  "He was in the water for awhile, and he's got the best medical help doing what they can".  Still no response, the man just looked off into the distance.

  "He's not my brother" was all Pete could whisper.

  I offered to row him back across the river and bring him up to where his brother and friend were, but he said that he would rather wait here for a raft to come pick him up. I told him that might not happen for awhile, if ever, so he finally agreed to come with me. Since the water was rising, I suggested that we pull his boat further out of the river, and it gave me an opportunity to look at the raft they using.  I had never seen a boat quite like this, what I thought was a very large inflatable kayak (also known as a "ducky" or "IK") was actually called a Soar inflatable canoe, and it did have the proportions of a canoe.  It was sixteen feet long and had a quality build made from Hypalon, though it was very heavy and not very rigid.  Instead of sitting down inside of it like an inflatable kayak, the rower sat up high on a platformed seat, and looked like it would have a high center of gravity.  I learned to read water and have run rivers all over the west in a cheap two person ducky, but this thing looked like it would  be a handful.

  Pete got into my boat, and I backrowed as far upriver as I could. Once the current took hold, I rowed as hard as I could to get to the other side.  Pete weighed more than my Labrador, and with the extra load I almost didn't make it to back to my yard.  We pulled up to the bank and Walt helped secure us, and Pete got out without a word.  He left with Walt left to go upriver, and I went into my house to change into dry clothes and do some deep breathing. 

  Once I had dried off and changed, I still had to go to town to get to my next gig, driving a propane truck.  Before I did that, I had to go back upriver to see if the efforts to revive Bob had been successful.  When I got to Walt's house, there were a couple of emergency vehicles in his driveway so I stopped there.  I approached one of the firefighters, and asked him the question I didn't really want to hear the answer to. He shook his head and said that no, Bob was gone.  He'd been in the water too long.  Then I offered my condolences to Mike, and told him that I thought that Pete might be in shock, but he said that was just Pete.

Mike and a couple of the firefighters went down the bank to drag Mikes inflatable canoe out of the river, so I went too.  I was surprised at how heavy and spongy it was.  Even in the hot sun it was very soft, I could only imagine how flexible it must have been in the cold water.  It didn't seem to be a boat for running technical water in unless one was very strong and experienced. Later that night I checked them out online, and they did seem like a pretty perfect boat for some applications, such as when you need a boat packed or flown into somewhere.  They also offered an oar frame for them, and that would give a single rower much more power and control than a simple paddle.

   Mike left with one of the firefighters to go up to State Bridge to get Tim's truck and trailer.  They left Pete alone in the sun, bare-headed and still in his PFD.  He ended up spending the next couple of hours at Walt and Jan's, who made him a sandwich and gave him a cold beverage, saying next to nothing the whole time.

  The following morning, I spoke with Walt and then Mike on the phone.  Walt told me that Pete said very little that afternoon while waiting for Mike's return.  I then called Mike to offer some assistance in retrieving the other boat from across the river that Pete had left behind. I asked him about Pete's demeanor, and he explained that Pete was schizophrenic and on a lot of medications.  I told him that Pete said Bob was not his brother, and Mike said that Pete was kind of in and out of it,  sometimes not remeing who Bob was. He said that Pete lived alone, and that Bob had been his one solid contact to the world, checking in on him every day.  I assumed that Pete had been in Bob's boat, but I learned that Bob's boat was actually still downriver.  A local rancher had found it when it turned up in an eddy at his place, and he'd let the sheriff know. The boat still across the river from my house was the one Pete had been rowing, he hadn't been in a boat with his brother. That took me by surprise. Pete wasn't a strong enough rower to cross the river to my house, but it was OK for him run Rodeo, Pinball,  and the Red Dirt Bridge? I also learned one other tidbit. On Bob's boat, washed up a couple of miles downriver, was a portable AED.

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

Despite the events of the previous day, I was anxious to get out onto the river myself, but in a boat, not wading up to my chest.  I wanted to do the Pinball run down to my ramp, the river was up to 5,700cfs and it'd been years since it had been that high.  My neighbor Ben and his wife Marie were game to go, and their nephew Tim who was visiting was also going to come along.  Ben has his own raft, but doesn't do the Pinball run since a mishap several years earlier.  He was in the middle of Pinball when the blade on his downstream oar broke off, leaving him with just one oar.  Worse, he had no spare.  Our neighbor Randy was with him, and though I wasn't there Marie was up on the road running their shuttle and taking pictures.  With no way to change his position in the river, Ben ran into the cement bridge pylon and his boat flipped.  Luckily, there are worse places to swim (like the swift water below the Red Dirt Bridge), and Ben and Randy got out soaked but unhurt.

I've been trying to get Ben out on the stretch ever since, and he finally relented.  I've run Pinball well over 500 times, and have never had an issue with it.  The reason its called Pinball is that the left two-thirds of the river channel are pretty shallow at normal flows, and trying to get through there boats tend to "pinball' from one rock to another.  The thing that makes Pinball dicey is that there is a big bridge pylon over on the right side, which is why you usually try to run it left. There are also some rocks blocking the right channel, so staying right isn't a safe option. The trick to running Pinball is to start far right, and then once past a big rock a hundred feet upstream from the bridge, you backrow very hard away from the right bank, passing the bridge pylon off the right side.  Its kind of a counterintuitive way to do it, but following that path keeps you in the deepest channel when the water is low, (which seems to be our new normal). 

 

Pinball Rapid

 But when the river rises above 3,000cfs, the rocks on the right become covered in water, and that side is not only easier but much more fun.  The flow gets squeezed between the bridge and bank, and an enormous wave train is formed.  No hard pulling across the river is required.  My big cataraft has sixteen foot long pontoons, and was set up for two people in front and one in back. I suggested to Ben that he sit behind me, and see where I how I oriented and positioned the boat to run it. He agreed.  We put in at the dirt Pinball ramp, and after visiting the rock with the tetrapod tracks we were soon poised at the top of Pinball Rapid.  I was describing to Ben almost stroke for stroke what I was doing and why, the very epitome of confidence and experience.  The boat was about twenty feet of the bank, and I called back to Ben over the crashing whitewater that this position should get us through the right side of the bridge pylon with very little rowing. Even though I've run Pinball well north of 500 times, I've only run the right side twenty times or so, since the river is rarely high enough. Being able to do this line was one of the reasons I like to get out here in the first place. 

  Just as I got the boat where I wanted it, I made one more stroke with my left oar to fine-tune it, and heard a weird snapping noise.  The oar suddenly felt very heavy in my hand.  Looking down, I saw that the oar lock had broken clean off. Oh. Shit. I'd never broken and oar lock before, it didn't even his anything with it to cause it to break.  Guess it was just metal fatigue after 20 years and many thousands of oar strokes.

  Ben saw what happened, and launched to unstrap my spare oar.  "Don't bother Ben, that won't help, the oar lock broke!"  Since my left oar was now pointless, I handed it back to Ben to hold onto.  Its got a counterbalance weight on it, and if it fell into the water it would immediately sink to the bottom. Up front, Tim and Marie wheeled around and saw our predicament, while I took a second to consider our situation.  We were about a hundred feet from the bridge and closing fast.  Ben asked Tim to hang onto the loose oar he was holding, hoping maybe he could use to brace against whatever we ran into, and passed it up to him.  The bank was now even closer and I quickly realized two things.  One, were far enough right that that we wouldn't hit the dreaded bridge. That's good, since the bridge pylon at Pinball has flipped or wrapped more boats than I can count over the twenty years that I'd been living here. The second thing I saw was that were too far right to avoid hitting the far bank. I didn't know what running into that bank would do, since usually the river isn't high enough to be that far right, and I'd never seen anyone run into it before.  However, one basic rule of river running is to not run into things sideways, whether it be big waves or other obstacles.  With just the one oar trailing behind us on the right side, I couldn't affect where we would run into the bank, but could control what angle the boat struck the bank at.  All I could do was push or pull.  Pushing would drive us into bank sooner, while pulling would be the stronger stroke and buy us a few extra seconds.  The only problem with that would mean we would hit the rocky bank backwards, but that was still better than sideways. There was a big flat rock shaped like a taco shelI I hoped to hit, but not being able to see where I was going it would take some luck.

  "We're going to hit that bank!" I shouted "Everyone hang on and tighten your vests!"  I grabbed hold of my good oar with both hands and started pulling as hard as I could.  "Ben hang on tight! I'm going to try and hit it back end first!" The big cataraft spun hard clockwise.  I couldn't see where we going, but I knew the impact was coming any second. We just completed the 180 degree turn, and the boat struck the rock wall hard but  not with enough force to launch anyone from their seat.  The boat completed another 180 spin, and we were pointed right into the juicy wave train I wanted to be in before the oarlock broke

  We all yelled in celebration, though we weren't completely out of the woods yet. With Tim up front using the oar like a gigantic paddle, we managed to get the boat off into the willows river right.  Once into the soft current there, I dropped anchor and we all took a deep breath.

Everyone was OK and only mildly freaked out, but there was still the matter of completing our trip, which we were less than a mile into. I knew that I had a spare oarlock in my dory, which was back at my shop.  My first thought was that I'd get up to the road, jog back to my truck, drive to the shop and go get it.  Then another thought popped into my brain, and opening the hatch below my seat, I rummaged around a bit and found...a spare oarlock!  I had forgotten that it was even there! When I bought my dory a few years earlier, it came with two spare oarlocks.  I had never broken an oarlock, or known anyone who had, but at the time I figured that I might as well put one of the spares in my cataraft. And there it had been ever since, just waiting for something like this to happen. I held the oarlock up high for everyone to see, and we all let out a joyful whoop.

  Five hundred trips through Pinball without a problem, and just when you think its routine the river shows you that it can have a few tricks up its sleeve. Even though I have confidence running this very familiar stretch, I try to not let it turn into hubris.  I love and respect this river, but harbor no illusions that it feels the same way about me.  It doesn't matter to a river if a person is in it, on it, or under it.  The Colorado has been flowing down this canyon for millions of years , long before we got here, and will keep on flowing for millions of years after we're all gone.  As much fun as we like to have spending some of the best hours of our lives along rivers, they're not here for our entertainment. Rivers may keep our planet healthy and alive, but they're not an amusement park ride.

  So be smart and be safe out there, and don't become a sad statistic or cautionary tale.  I've personally experienced eight whitewater swims, and if I close my eyes I can remember each one of them in painful detail. One of them even happened in the same stretch of water where Bob drowned a week ago, when my wife and I fell out of a ducky just below Red Dirt at 7,000 cfs back in 2011.  The same thing could have easily happened to us, but we were lucky.  Counting on luck to see you through is a bad strategy, since good luck tends to run out at some point.  So take a First Aid and CPR course if you've never had one, maybe it will come in handy someday.  Hopefully you'll never need it. 

This summer has the potential to be the best the Colorado River has seen in many years.  Let's make it a year to remember for only the best of reasons.

          Jack Bombardier

More river-related drivel can be found at https://jackbombardier.blogspot.com/

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The Perfect Runoff

 

 Its the middle of June, and the “Lower Upper” Colorado River is flowing past my house at a healthy bank-full level 3,400 cfs.  A month ago I wasn’t sure what to expect from this year’s runoff, since we’ve been blessed with our deepest snowpack since 2011.  That year, the river was over 10,000 cfs for two months, peaking at 12,000.  My house is only about fifty feet from the river, and that year the river came right up to it, with my backyard under water for most of the summer.  Every afternoon, I’d wader up and go to the upstream side of our fence, removing the woody debris that collected on it so the river’s immense power wouldn’t drag it down.  The crawlspace under the house was sandbagged to keep the river out, and sump pumps ran for all of June and July to keep our house from becoming a houseboat.  

  The amount of snow we got this year is comparable to then, so I was prepared for the worse.  And sure enough, a month ago the river level rose quickly, from just above 1,000 cfs to almost 4,000 in just a few days.  I sprang into action, bought some new sandbags, dug out the sump pumps, covered my dock in rocks (to keep it from floating away), moved a trailer, and collected flagstones to make an apron on the riverbank to protect my chairlift, which wasn’t there in 2011.  With all of these preparations in place, the river naturally stopped rising.  For three weeks the flows remained steady, hovering between 4,000 and 4,200 cfs, and then began to drop. When I checked this morning, it was at 3,400 cfs, though a week ago it went down to 2,400cfs.  It seems as though this year, we won’t be getting the big water we’ve seen before after all. However there may be another bump in the flows coming in a week or two, if Green Mountain reservoir can get filled before all of the snow melts.  Dillon Reservoir is almost full, and the outflows from that into Green Mountain should be increasing.  With the lower reservoir already at 85%, it looks like it will fill this year after not projecting to earlier in the spring.  Once everything fills, we might see flows on the lower river come up as the runoff passes through.  

 

 

  Its been a cool, wet spring, and as a result the snow above has been melting slowly.  Last Sunday I went to A Basin for the last day of chairlift-enabled skiing in Colorado for the year.  The last day of skiing is always a bittersweet time of year, knowing that this will be the last time to do something I love for many months to come.  This year was a bit harder to take than most, because lack of snow isn’t why things are shutting down.  If the closing date was based on snow cover, the lifts could keep running at least another couple of months. Instead of the usual sunshine and bare sun-screened flesh, most people were dressed for the weather that would have been more appropriate in January than June.  There were a couple of young ladies who were willing to brave the elements, but for the most part the skiers and riders were bundled up.  

 

  The snowpack in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Colorado feed a large majority of the Colorado River’s supply for most of the basin downriver, all the way to Mexico and the Sea of Cortez.  However, knowing just how fast, or how high, or how long that water will run is always something of a mystery, given that its subject to many unpredictable influences.  Among those variables are, whether we have a cool or dry spring, what the daytime temperatures are, if the underlying soils are dry, how full the reservoirs are before it starts, and if there’ve been dust storms (from as far away as China) which create a dingy brown layer on top of the snow, reducing reflectivity and making it melt faster.  

 

  So the spring snowmelt can happen slow, fast, or somewhere in between. At one extreme, early hot sunny weather, followed by heavy rains, can make it come off all at once, which is what happened in Yellowstone a couple of years ago. At the other end of the scale, if you have an extended period of cool, just slightly wet spring days, the snow melts slowly.  This is what we’re getting this year, and in the big picture that’s just about the best thing that can happen. Higher inflows into the big reservoirs downstream should also buy a little more time for the lower basin states to come up with ways to use less water. Also good news.   

 

  This made for lousy spring fishing this year, but for the first time in three years we should have a great summer season.  For the last two years, low flows have resulted in warm water temperatures in July and August, effectively shutting the river down.  That should not be the case this summer. 

 

 This year, once the river dropped from its higher flows, it cleared pretty quickly and is already in good shape for fishing. Barring heavy monsoon rains later this summer, it should be a spectacular season on the Upper C.  And if those rains do come, oh well that’s all part of a healthy river system too, even if it makes abusing fish with sharp, pointed hooks more difficult. Before the heavy hand of man re-engineered the Upper Colorado River, with reservoirs, trans-basin diversions, and the stocking of non-native trout species, the river would not have been the wonderful fishery we know and love today. Someday, it will probably revert back to that state for one reason or another. Maybe it will be climate change, or a failed dam, or perhaps we humans won’t be here anymore to operate all of that complicated infrastructure.   

 

  But in the here and now, we have a wonderful resource flowing from the top of the Rockies (almost) down to the sea.  I hope that the Colorado River can stay as beautiful and vibrant and healthy as it is now for the rest of my days on this planet, and for the many generations yet to come. No one knows what the long-term future looks like, for its hard enough to know what the river will be flowing like next week. Until then, I’m going to just appreciate and adore and protect this amazing and precious ecosystem flowing past my backdoor as much as I can.  

   

 

                                              Jack Bombardier