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.
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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
