Whither The Runoff?

                                 

                                  Whither The Runoff?, Or The Endless Winter

Its May 22^nd, and as I prepare to take an English couple out for a scenic float today I’ve been nervously scanning the skies.  The sun keeps peeking out, teasing us with the promise of a warm afternoon, but all around up in the hills the Flat Tops are showing off a fresh layer of snow.  Yesterday Vail Pass was closed for much of the day, and the mountain snowpack (which should be melting off by now) is only growing instead.  The last month has been cool and cloudy, and as a result the above 9,000 feet it still looks like the middle of winter.

 Last week I skied Arapahoe Basin, and instead of the bikini tops and shorts one might expect in mid-May, everyone was still wearing winter coats and goggles.  There were some of the best spring conditions ever, and since last even more snow has fallen there.  Beaver Creek closed a month ago, I’ve tried to make at least one high speed dash over Vail Pass per week to get some runs in. Three hours of driving for three hours of skiing is a fair trade. This season, A Basin opened some  terrain serviced by a new lift called The Beavers.  It’s a stupid name for a fantastic new place to ski. Ten years ago A Basin opened Montezuma Bowl, which increased the area’s acreage by 80%. And now this new area, which is like having one of Vail’s Back Bowls suddenly appear out of nowhere.  How wonderful to be twice surprised by a place I’ve skied for over thirty years. 

 A Basin also has a special place in my heart due to the fact that last summer, I was lucky enough to be able to buy a chairlift from them that was being removed in part to make room for the new Beavers lift.  It is now located only a couple of feet from the Colorado River, right in my backyard.  My wife and I try to sneak in a short cuddle there into our busy days whenever possible.  The chair is supported by a tall green frame made of 6 X 6 lumber, and attached to a pipe from which it freely swings.  As a result, its almost impossible to just sit in the chair without moving, it seems as though just blinking one’s eyes causes it to move.  Within moments of sitting in it, we are invariably set into motion, extending our legs and just swooping back and forth as if in some scenic schoolyard.  A Basin (which opened in 1947) still has two chairlifts using these exact same chairs.  The Molly Hogan lift, which is the very short beginner lift right next to the parking lot, and the Pallivicini lift, one of Colorado’s most famous, which services very steep terrain.  It is also the most direct way to the new Beavers area.  Now when I sit on my chair in my backyard, I can close my eyes and imagine that I am being whisked uphill to 12,450 feet, the former elevation that my chairlift seat used to go to three times an hour, eight months a year.  And when I am on the Polly lift, closing my eyes immediately transports me right back into my yard again.  Two of my favorite places on the planet now have this bond which pleases me to no discernable end. 

Its definitely been a ski season to savor, maybe the best I can remember in my thirty-three years of living in Colorado. The cold weather came early, and the river running season was over by the first week of November.  Ice formed along the edges of the river then, and just kept building rendering the boat ramps unusable.  I kept thinking that the early ice was just a fluke, but river ice doesn’t lie.  Meanwhile, Beaver Creek ski area opened a few days early, which they had never done before.  It stood in stark contrast to Thanksgiving of 2017, in which the Beav opened late, and didn’t really have decent skiing until Valentine’s Day.  In many ways, 2019 has been the anti-2018, and that trend continues. This past winter it snowed early and often, and here it is in late May and the snow keeps coming! 

Coming on the heels of the year we had last year, this is all good news.  This is exactly the type of water year we needed to get our reservoirs filled back up. The news is even better in the southern part of the state.  The San Juans had an even worse water year in 2018, but this year they got even more snow than in the central and northern mountains of Colorado.  Having the snowpack melt slowly like its been doing is also a best case scenario in terms of collecting and storing the water than otherwise might just run off to Lake Powell.  Of course this water will end up down there anyway eventually, but a slow runoff means that the water can be released in a controlled, regulated and optimized fashion. Since the Front Range takes about 70% of the water that would otherwise flow west in the Colorado River Basin, that’s good for both sides of the Continental Divide. 

Memorial Day weekend is only a couple of days away, and the skies are supposed to be finally clearing. This should trigger the runoff, and so by this time next week it may all be a very different story.  Back in 2011, when we had a similar snowpack, there was one week where the Colorado River went up 1,000 cfs a day for several days in a row, finally peaking at 12,000 cfs.  This year, the river did get up to 2,500 cfs a month ago, then dropped to 1,500 over a two week span, then crept back up to 2,500 again, and is currently sitting at 2,200 cfs. Its made for a slow month for my fishing and shuttle business, as the river has been in this in-between mode where its too high to fish and too low to get the whitewater crowd excited.  Plus, who wants to camp in a 40 degree drizzle? 

This all bodes well for the coming summer.  Even if for some reason the wet pattern we’ve been in just shuts off completely, that big layer of snow sitting above 9,000 feet is like Bill Gate’s bank account only in water form. By the end of June, all of Colorado’s reservoirs should be full or close to it, which gives us some breathing room should 2020’s weather patterns revert back to what we had in the summer of 2018.

 Since most of you receiving this are on my Fishing Contact list, there was one positive note to the lousy water year we had last year that might reap benefits this summer.  Low water years are generally good for the young rainbow trout born those years, since they are not having to deal with heavy flows and debris.  So the ongoing revival of the rainbow trout that started here with the one-time stocking of Hofers in 2012 might just get an additional shot in the arm. 

  One final note to close spring missive is too mention that I had a small segment in a story that Channel 7 News from Denver did about cloud seeding. Cloud seeding is something that I have a usual relationship to, since it touches my life in several different ways.  First, I have a cloud seeder on the hill above our house, part of a network that stretches across Eagle County in a semi-circular pattern financed by Vail Resorts.  These stations are arranged, coordinated and managed by a third party who direct the various station operators  when to operate, based in local climactic conditions.  How much additional precipitation falls due to the seeders running is still subject to some debate, but the consensus is that it adds some.  

Secondly I work for the local independent propane supplier who provides the fuel that runs the cloud seeders, so I know where they all are.  (One of them requires backing my bobtail propane truck backwards around the slim, curving track of Beaver Creek’s snowmaking reservoir for about 400 feet with steep drop-offs on either side). Thirdly, I am an employee of Vail Resorts, driving their on-call mini-buses for fun, profit, and a ski pass.  The better Vail Resorts is doing, the better it is for everyone in Eagle County, directly or indirectly. Lastly, as a river guide my livelihood is just as dependent on that snowpack in August as it is in February, perhaps even more so. 

The one potentially negative concern I hear about cloud seeding is the idea that if we are “taking” water out of the sky that might have fallen elsewhere, it deprives other places of precipitation they might otherwise have gotten.  In effect, “stealing” their water. Its something that I’ve often thought about most myself, and many places this might well be true.  But in Colorado, where 80% of the water falls upon the Western Slope and 80% of the population live to the east, we have a rather unique set of circumstances.  Here we have the infrastructure to collect and manage that water in a way that it benefits both sides of the Continental Divide.  In a year such as this, with horrible flooding in the midwest, keeping the water here closer to its headwaters sitting safe and sound in big mountainous buckets for later release is the best possible thing to do with it. With apologies to Vail Resorts, I really don’t care that much if the snow falls on the Golden Eagle run at Beaver Creek, or some remote creek I’ve never heard of.  As long as it falls somewhere upon a western watershed, every extra drop of that water has the potential to be put to its most beneficial use, whatever and wherever that turns out to be. 

 So if you’ve ever been curious about cloud seeding, Channel 7’s story is pretty good primer. I will also note that although I might have accidentally said an intelligent thing or two on the river that day, the one comment I did make might have slighted employees of a major American fast food corporation.  If so, I sincerely and genuinely apologize. I would never want to impugn anyone doing good, honest, hard thankless work, for short dollars. 

 The link to the story is at, https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/360/360-should-we-have-more-cloud-seeding-in-colorado .

I hope everyone reading this has a great summer, and that you are lucky enough to make it up here this year!

                   Jack Bombardier

Confluence Casting LLC 

970-524-2775 – shop

303-378-2149 - cell

For Every Season, Turn, Turn, Turn

                           There Is A Season, Turn Turn Turn…



It’s the middle of April, and the seasons are changing from winter to spring.  I’ve come to love these overlapping periods in which one can fish, ski, play golf or do just about anything on a given day.  The golf courses in the lower parts of the Eagle Valley have opened, the Colorado River has been in nice shape for fishing for the past two weeks, and Beaver Creek ski area is still open for a few more days.



 This winter has been one of the best I can remember in my 33 years of living in Colorado.  The snow came early and often, and there’s even more on the way to finish the season with.  All that plentiful white stuff made for great skiing, but the flip side was that my work driving a propane truck was quite a bit tougher this year.  After only having to put my tire chains on twice over the previous winter, this year I often chained up twice a day. The deep snow also buried many of the underground tanks I that have to access, some so deep that even the fiberglass poles we marked them with were also hidden. It feels like I shoveled more snow this year than I have since I was thirteen years old.



 But now as the days grow longer and warmer, the time has come to focus on the spring and summer ahead.  The deep snowpack covering the Rockies should make for a banner water year.  In addition to being good news for fishermen and farmers, we should also see something this spring that’s been in short supply the last few years – white water!  Travelling down the river in my big cataraft is a wonderful experience in all but the worst weather, (and if the weather promises to be bad we generally don’t go).  But add some big waves into the equation and now you can really have a memorable day.  The beauty of the section of Colorado I float is that the river canyon was carved in part by big spring flows that used to come roaring down each spring before the dams were built upriver. Though the original purpose of those dams were to collect water on the west side of the Continental Divide to be sent east to where the big population centers are, they’ve had the incidental unintended consequence of creating a fine trout fishery below them.  This also means that even in a “big” water year like we have on tap, peak flows are still only half of what the river’s natural channel can accommodate.  Smaller rivers like the Eagle, the Arkansas and Clear Creek can be quite dangerous in high water, due to the boulders in the middle of the river and the strainers along the edges caused by trees and other flotsam.  But on the Colorado, big water means huge wavetrains that are fun and safe to ride, almost like being on a cantering horse.  The only obstacles worth noting on my regular stretch are the two bridges that must be avoided, and one of those was recently replaced by a much more rafter-friendly design.



 Another positive aspect of the coming big water is the effect it has on the fishing.  Many float fishermen look at the period of runoff as being a great time to go fish in a lake, and will avoid rivers until the flows come down.  But a little appreciated aspect of high water is that it tends to concentrate the fish into fewer areas of the river, namely the big eddies that the Colorado is noted for.  As the river begins its rise in early May, the heavy current goes up into the willows along the bank and deprives fish of good holding water.  The rising water also tends to be carrying a lot of sediment which makes the water almost opaque.  Those few weeks of rising water are a difficult time to be a Colorado River trout.  But once the waters begin to recede, for a couple of weeks the river becomes a great spot to float for the fun of the big waves and for catching fish.  Since the water is still high, the fish are still in the eddies, sometimes stacked like cord wood.  But the water clears as the level drops, the fish can now see well enough to hunt and feed and they’re extra hungry, since they may not have much to eat over the previous few weeks.  The water temperatures also tend to rise during this period, which  tends to increase their metabolism.  And since many fishermen are still avoiding rivers during this time, people in my boat tend to be the only ones holding fishing rods.



 Four years ago I began offering a river shuttle service for the other commercial and private boaters who come out here.  This year, I was hoping to wait to start doing shuttles until the ski lifts stopped running, but the river was ready before I was.  After a ski season as perfect as this one has been, I’ve been reluctant to flip the switch in my brain from “ski” to “fish”.  The snow is deep and soft and I want to keep making turns in it until the brown earth beneath begins to show.  There will be opportunities this spring at Breckenridge and A Basin to get that skier’s high, but they are a longer drive away and getting there and back devours a whole day.  So for the next two months, the rocket box on my car will be stuffed full of ski and fishing gear, ready for any adventure that Colorado has to offer. 



  Last week, I met up with some folks who are members of a group that I’m in which is developing a plan to help protect the Upper Colorado River. We met to put in three temperature loggers to track water temperatures over the course of the year. I was hoping to get done in time to go to Beaver Creek later in the afternoon and get some runs in, but we took so long making our way up the River Road that by the time we got to State Bridge, getting to the Beav in time was out of the question.  And so at our last stop, when two members of our party broke out their fly rods, I did the same.  Being compelled to fish instead of ski is just one of those hard decisions that a Coloradan is forced to make sometimes. 



  We fished the left river bank just below the confluence of the Piney, and at first things were slow.  There were no obvious bugs around, so we all kept trying different patterns to see what the fish we knew were there wanted to eat.  The rod I keep in my rocket box is a ten foot three weight Loomis, and since I already had a size 22 BWO dry fly rigged I started with that.  I didn’t get a single strike, which wasn’t surprising since there were no bugs hatching and no fish rising.  So I switched to a dry/dropper, and couldn’t move a fish with that, either.  Several different nymphs all produced the same result, nothing. 

When I was younger I didn’t mind getting skunked all that much, because trout usually live in beautiful places and just being in their neighborhood for awhile is justification enough for being there.  If a person put on waders and stood in the middle of a cold river for a hour doing nothing, you might want to call the authorities and possibly have that person’s head examined.  But put a fly rod in that person’s hand and now they are just fishing, not crazy. When the setting is pretty enough, (and where trout live it usually is), catching a fish is almost beside the point.  Since my companions were also not getting much action, in the past I would have been OK with not hooking anything.  But now I’m not just an average angler, but a Fishing Guide, one who is always supposed to be able figure out what it takes to make a fish eat a fly, even if they’re just sitting on the bottom not eating anything.  After an hour of futility, I decided to try and chuck a streamer out there to see if that would tempt a trout.  Since my rod was designed more for that size 22 dry fly I started with than for casting a much heavier fly, I shortened the leader and tied on a black unweighted Woolly Bugger, which was all that rod could handle. 



  I moved upriver a little to cast to the edge of some faster water, and on my third cast saw a pink flash and the line grew tight. It was a rainbow trout, and a big one.  The fish spun into the heavier current and my rod bent deeply.  I held the rod high and tried to give him a little line, but my line wrapped around the reel.  The fish was now in the current, and while I tried to unwrap the line off the reel the fish came off. I let out a loud expletive that my friends nearby, the two guys across the river, and anyone else in a mile’s radius all heard.  The angler on the other side of the river had seen my hookup and called out, “It looked like a big one!”, to which I nodded glumly.  As they say, the Tug Is The Drug, and now I was like a crack addict who had fallen off the wagon hard. I’d gone from pleasantly casting flies into the river with no expectations whatsoever, to really wanting to feel that sensation of having a fish on the line again.  I moved up to the next rock above and tossed the Woolly Bugger behind it, and on my second cast another rainbow bigger than the first came up and rolled in the surface film trying to eat it. Again the rod bent, but then the line went limp.  0 for 2.  Working my way up the bank, I was able to get a couple more fish to flash at the fly, including a small brown trout that chased it across a pool, but didn’t hook any. 



  It was getting late, and I had stuff to do at home, and so I waded back to my two friends who still trying to fool fish using dry/dropper combinations. They’d had a couple of strikes, but no fish yet to hand. I told them that the Woolly Bugger seemed to be doing the trick, at least to the point of proving fish were there, if not actually hooking one.  I was going to leave, but wasn’t quite ready to make the drive home smelling like a skunk, so a walked out to the end of a large log in the river to drop my fly into a bubble line I could just barely reach.  On my first two casts, there were the flashes of a fish chasing my streamer, and on the third cast one feisty brown trout finally caught up to it. It was only thirteen inches long, but it was Fish Number One for 2019.  I was able to drive home with my professional reputation intact, and not smelling like a polecat.

 

  The Colorado River might be in wonderful pre-runoff condition, but putting the ski season into the rearview mirror is still hard to do.  After all, there is an entire year ahead in which to go fishing, but the days left to ride a chairlift up into the heavens are numbered. And as the seasons turn, I’ll try my best to turn with them, rocket box stuffed full of wet gear.



                                                           Jack Bombardier

Stunning And Stocking

                                                         Stunning And Stocking                              

Yesterday was one of the most rewarding days of my life.  I got the privilege of carrying nineteen rare cutthroat trout up a wildflower-filled valley into Colorado’s high country, to be released into the wild and hopefully propagate as well.  It was the third time I’ve been lucky enough to help Colorado Parks and Wildlife this year, and they’ve all been interesting.

 The first volunteer day occurred in April, doing the annual fish census on the Eagle River. It’s part of an annual fish count that’s over twenty years old, designed to monitor river health after a Gold King Mine-like spill that occurred in the 1980s.  The process of doing a river census involves spanning the river from bank to bank with three rows of netters. The members of the first row (usually the biggest, burliest guys) hold a device called an electrode in one hand, and a long-handled boat net in the other.  Each member of the first row are connected to each other by an electric cable, and they have by far the toughest job, since both of their hands are occupied and they have no way to steady themselves in the swift current flowing over slippery round river rocks.  The second row follows right behind, trying to snag the stunned fish who tumbled past the knees of the first row.  The third row catches those the second row misses, and also drags floating fish corrals behind them.  Eventually all of the netted fish get brought to another corral-type enclosure that’s set up near the bank, where the fish are counted and their sex and species noted. This is something I help out with every year, since I find it pretty interesting to see what everything that is swimming in a river.  As a fly angler, I only get to see that which will take a well-presented fly.  But when you electroshock the river, you get to see everything in there that swims, and not just the trout.  These include whitefish, chubs, dace and my personal favorite, sculpins.  Its often said that healthy trout populations are a good indicator of a healthy river, like a canary in a coalmine, but that is even more true of sculpin. 

  The Eagle River that day was as cold as it usually is in early April.  I was glad to have my hands free, for I was constantly having to use my net to steady myself.  At one point one of the Parks and Wildlife officers in the front row stumbled back, and I rushed forward to catch him.  He was a big guy, but I was able to just keep him from going under and overtopping his waders.  On one previous river census I had done that myself, and it made for a cold, miserable rest of the day.    

  By the end of the day there was just enough time left to make some runs at Beaver Creek­.  The ski season was down to it’s last couple of weeks, and when it comes down to the end like this I don’t want to miss any opportunities to make some turns on the hill. Living in Eagle County one is constantly reminded of how much everything related to water is tightly tied together, from the frozen snowpack to the creeks, streams and rivers it transforms into later in the year.  The snow we ski on in February becomes the whitewater we crash through in June, and the habitat we try and fool trout in come August.  The well at our home beside the Colorado River is very shallow, for the water table sits only a couple of feet below ground. That frozen water we play on in the winter becomes that water we drink and nourishes our garden in the summer.  Its all one and the same thing taking different forms, and living here you are constantly reminded of just how connected by water everything is.

  My next opportunity to help Parks and Wildlife came in May.  This would involve electroshocking again, but this time on the Colorado River not far above my home.  Shocking a river the size of the Colorado involves doing it from a boat, and not standing in the cold water.  The rafts themselves have frames that are purposefully designed for this exact task, with diamond plate decks and railings that extend out over the front so that the two netters in the bow can lean over and capture the stunned fish.  The electric shock is delivered by an electrode mounted on the end of a boom that is lowered into the water. Electric power comes from a gasoline generator mounted under the seat, and the gas tank is located in the rear of the raft which helps weigh down the back a little.  But the whole boat is still very front-heavy, especially with two big guys leaning out over there.  Between the netters and the rowers sits a live well, and as fish are netted the netters swing the nettees around and into the live well.  When the live well gets full, we row over to the bank, where each fish is counted and a small hole punched into their tail.  The reason for the hole is to come up with a figure known as the Recapture Rate.  The same section of river gets surveyed again a week later, and by counting the amount of fish that get netted a second time, biologists can estimate what the total population of the river is.

  It was fun to be out on a section of river that I know well, and to be able to net the fish without having to stand in their cold environment.  On that day we had two boats doing the survey, one going down the left side of the river and the other surveying the right side. We set off down the river, lowered the boom, and began looking for the flashes of stunned fish to scoop out of the river and deposit into the live well. It immediately became apparent that we would have one obstacle to deal with, and that was the poor clarity of the water. Visibility was only about a foot, and there were many fish the we stunned that would flash for only a moment and then disappear into the murky water.  This was especially true of the many small sculpin I saw that never made it into my net.  Then a second problem began to become apparent, and that was an increasing amount of wind blowing upriver right back in our faces.  The natural state of things in a river is the flotsam in the water moves faster than objects on top of it, and so as the fish were temporarily knocked unconscious they quickly floated away from us and out of sight downriver.  Our raft was being rowed by a Parks and Wildlife officer named Kendall, whom I had worked with many times doing the Eagle River electroshocking.  She did the best that she or anyone could have in trying to push us down the river, but rowing the heavy, unbalanced boat in a stiff wind was a tall order.  I offered a couple of times to man the oars, and wasn’t too disappointed when she gamely demurred and pressed on.
              

  We were on a section of the Colorado River below an access point called Catamount, which has a very remote feel to it.  It is one of the few river stretches that isn’t paralled by a road, and it sees very little river traffic, especially since a local rancher blocked the only public access point below Catamount.  The other notable feature in this out of the way canyon is a very large Bald Eagle nest right beside the river.  This spring there were four eagles living in the nest, two big mature eagles and two fledglings.  We had already filled the live well once and were on our next round when the nest came into sight.  The two older eagles were there as always, but instead of flying away they hung out to watch, and they were soon to be rewarded for their curiosity. 
   Almost all of the fish we caught were released back into the water as gently as possible, with the exception of any long-nosed chubs we caught.  Those fish are considered invasive non-natives, and can breed with the native chubs which create hybridized offspring which are undesirable.  So the long-nosed chubs got tossed onto the bank after they were counted, and the eagles watching this closely caught onto that quickly.  No sooner would we push off the bank than they would swoop down, grab the unfortunate chub, and carry it off for a one-way ride to their big nest.  The eagles were clearly loving this, for it was Christmas time in May for them. 

  At one point, when the wind was blowing the hardest, I looked up to see a big bald eagle hovering ten feet above my head, watching the whole process with an intent gaze.  I tried to remember to keep watching the fish I was supposed to be netting, but it was hard to ignore the bald eagle who was close enough to shit on my head.  Kendall was pushing as hard as she could into the gale, but fish were tumbling away from us in the persistent current.  Suddenly the eagle overhead spotted a tasty snack, and plunged down into the water just ahead of the boat and came up with a fine brown trout, winging it away to add to the pile of fish filling up its nest.  It was a spectacular sight to see, and one I’ll not soon forget!  Our run down the canyon was finished way too soon, and I could have kept doing it all the way down to my house.  Again I was surprised by the numbers and diversity of the fish we caught, especially the numbers of mountain whitefish, which almost equaled the rainbow trout. 

 Even though the process of surveying the fish has to be much less fun for them than it is for those netting them (and way less than for the eagles), it was good to know that there’s a very good reason to be doing this.  In the past year I became part of a stakeholder group trying to come up with a plan to ensure the long-term health of the Colorado River, and surveys like this are critical to coming up with data to objectively measure where we are now and where things are going, for better or worse.  Living and working beside the Colorado has made the river almost as much a part of me as my limbs.  Even if I spend the rest of my life here along its banks, that will only be a small amount of time in the grand scope of things, and anything I can do during my short tenure here to ensure the river’s well-being is a worthwhile expenditure of time. 

  Then in July I got to participate in a third opportunity to work with Parks and Wildlife, this time planting some genetically pure Greenback cutthroat Trout into a high mountain drainage that had been readied for their arrival.  For many years there were considered to be three types of cutthroat trout existent in Colorado, the Greenback, Colorado River, and Rio Grande varieties.  Then, a few years ago a population of cutthroat trout were found on a single small stream called Bear Creek near Pike’s Peak that didn’t look like any of the other three. After some genetic analysis comparing them to cutthroat samples taken over a hundred years ago, it dawned on fish biologists that what had been referred to as Greenback cutthroats (which are found all over Colorado’s eastern-flowing watersheds) were actually Greenback hybrids, and not the real deal.  This lead to a multi-year effort to breed the true Greenbacks, so that they could be transplanted into other watersheds.  Having all of your genetic eggs in one geographic basket risks losing them in case of fire or flood. So my next project would be to carry some of these trout into their new home. 

  I got up early that morning to make the drive over two mountain ranges, the Gore and the Continental Divide.  Herman Gulch wasn’t too far east of Loveland Pass, on the north side of I-70.  It was a sunny morning, and the parking lot was full of eager recreational hikers plus the fifty or so of us who were here on a mission of fish relocation.  Eventually we were all gathered for an explanation of our task for the day.  The truck bearing the precious cargo arrived at nine am on the dot and soon bags were being filled with a careful mix of water to air.  The bags were doubled up, and then nineteen wiggling little trout were added, from three to five inches long.  Each one of the volunteers got to put one of these trout bags into their backpack, and hike it up a steep trail to the meadows above that would become these trout’s new home.

  We were divided into five groups, with Group One releasing their precious packages into the lower stretches, and with Groups Two through Five going progressively higher up the watershed.  I assumed that everyone would want to go as high as possible, so I volunteered for Group Four to give someone else the chance.  But Group Five was two people short, so I jumped over to join that bunch. Soon we were getting our bags of trout and heading up the trail. One unexpected bonus of being in the highest group was that we got our trout first, and would be the first ones going up the hill.  Coming down the trail were lots of people who had gotten up there early for a quick hike, and some of them inquired as to our cargo, especially when they saw Boyd our Parks and Wildlife officer.  This was in large part Boyd’s project, and he was more than happy to let people know what we were doing.  Most were delighted to learn that were putting such rare fish into such a beautiful place.  I’d point to my backpack and ask if anyone wanted some fresh sushi.

                   

The first mile of the trail was pretty steep, and within our group of fish bearers we all found our individual rhythms.  I ended traveling at about the same rate of speed as Ryan, and we became trailmates.  It was a warm morning and took some effort, but the shade of the trees helped cool us.

Along the way we kept running into our other Group Five partners, usually stopped in the shade explaining our purpose to the downhillers. Colorado was undergoing a summer-long heat wave, and getting in your outdoor time in the cooler air of 11,000 feet seemed like a pretty good idea to a lot of people. Every mile or so, Boyd would plant a big wooden stake marking the ending of one zone and the beginning of the next.  The trail leveled off a bit and we passed through the top edge of the tree line, which had kept most of our hike shady.  Soon the cobalt blue Colorado sky began to show through the thinning canopy of pines.  It had been some time since I’d done such a strenuous hike, and with the heat and load on my back I began to feel a bit lightheaded.  But once we cleared the last of the trees and into the big open meadow above, I got a second wind.  The area where the trout were going to make their new home was just beautiful.  A large mountain peak loomed above us, and the hills were carpeted in uncountable numbers of wildflowers.  The cool mountain air was fresh and invigorating, and the sky the bluest I’d seen in a summer that had been filled with wildfires hazing things up.

  We got to our zone, and one by one the Group Five members peeled off to deposit their trout in some new spot in the river that Boyd would point out.  My legs felt so strong that I wanted to keep going as far up the hill as I could, and by the top Boyd and I were the last two left.  He showed me a small deep pocket in the river to put my fish in, then walked up to the last remaining hole where he would put his. 

  My trout’s new home was a triangular pocket about fifteen feet across and a foot deep, with the flow of the small creek creating a counter-clockwise eddy spinning around in it.  There were some deep undercut banks on each side, which gave the trout plenty of cover from the sun and predators.  The first step of the process was to put the bag full of fish in the river itself for five minutes, giving the water in the bag time to cool off.  For this step, I attached the bag to a root that stuck out and walked back to relieve myself and to take in the magnificent view. 

  These had to be the luckiest fish in the world.  I couldn’t imagine more perfect place for a trout on any living creature to live in.  We were mostly above treeline, which meant that wildfires should not be of concern.  The footrail we had hiked up had mostly disappeared down where the trees ended, so there shouldn’t be much human traffic up here. Also nowhere to be seen were any cows, which can be a detriment in some watersheds where cutthroat trout cling to existence.  There were also no mining activities above, with their potential for heavy metals leaching in. Ans since all of the other fish competitors had been removed already, these fortunate Greenbacks had this ideal resource all to themselves.  In the brief time I’d been there, I’d already seen a lot of midges on the water and just above it, and so the trout had plenty of food.  It was hard to imagine a better place to have placed them.

 The next step was to open the bag and let some water in, again to gradually cool the water off.  For this I had to lay down on my belly in the cool, wet grass, while letting in the pristine water. It actually felt great doing this, for the day was hot even at 11,000 feet. It felt as though I was immersing myself into a new, foreign environment, too.  The environment I spend most of my time is at 6,200 feet, technically the high desert, and not the mountains.  The vegetation there is mostly hardy enough to survive with very little water, and the verdant band created along the river is the exception to its surroundings. Here though everything was wet and green and pulsing with life.  I took my waterproof camera out and tried to take pictures of the greenbacks as they swam out of the bag and into their new home. After spending their entire existence up to that point in concrete raceways, what would they make of their new environment? 

  I stayed in the tall wet grass on my belly that way watching them for way longer than necessary, for it seemed to me that what I was watching was something of a miracle.  This moment had been many, many years in the making.  First came the discovery of these genetically pure fish, the only such population in the world.  Then came the decision to try and breed them, and to distribute them in various parts of the state to so that if anything happened to their original habitat, there might be healthy populations elsewhere to ensure their genetic survival.  There had already been two wildfires that had come close to small stream they were found in, so losing them was an existential threat, not merely hypothetical. Next some suitable habitats needed to be found for them, and once those decisions were made then the current occupants of those lakes and streams needed to be removed.  Removing the other fish was a painful but necessary component of the whole process, since leaving them there would mean having them hybridize with the true Greenbacks, invalidating the whole experiment.  Where possible, anglers were organized to catch as many of the current occupants as possible, so they might be relocated to other areas.  But fishermen alone were never going to catch them all, so the final step of the removal process involved using piscicides to ensure a clean slate for the greenbacks.  All of those years of planning and action lead up to this final step, actually putting these fish into the small creek they would be spending the rest of the lives in.  I felt like a very lucky person to be given the honor of completing the mission, for climbing up that steep hill with nineteen greenback trout in my backpack was arguably the easiest phase of a multiyear project.

  It was fascinating watching the trout exhibit various types of behavior once they were set free into their alien environment.  Some of them immediately shot towards the dark safety of the undercut banks.  Others kind of hung about in the middle, as if wondering “What the hell?”.  But three of them immediately figured things out, and within minutes were up at the top of the eddy line sipping midges off the surface.  The trout were not fed immediately before their big trip from Leadville to Herman Gulch, so that when they got into the water they would be hungry and ready to feed.  I stuck my hand in the frigid water holding my camera still, trying to get some underwater shots, but the water was so cold I only lasted a couple of minutes doing that.  Finally I just put the camera away, and just lay there on my stomach watching these beautiful little miracles doing their thing.  The wet cool grass soaked my shirt and pants all the way through, but I barely noticed.  After my previous two experiences with Parks and Wildlife electroshocking fish, it was nice to be doing something that was non-traumatic or stressful to the fish. It gave one an almost god-like sense of power, to be bringing life and beauty to an already perfect place. Being a man I’ll never know what its like to give birth to another human being, so moments like this will probably be the closest I’ll get.  I lost all sense of time and place, and just lay there with my nose inches from the water watching them adjust to their new home, so very glad for the fact that I got to play very small role in making it all happen. 

                    

  Living in the mountains in an expensive resort area isn’t always easy.  I work four different jobs depending on the season, and rarely have a complete day off as a result.  So taking a day off now and then to volunteer my time with Colorado Parks and Wildlife isn’t always easy to do, but I always feel like its some of the time best-spent I’ll do all year.  Taking people down the Colorado River in my boat is almost always a wonderful experience, especially watching them experiencing it for the first time.  When I see a seven year old hanging onto a tenkara rod, connected to a feisty rainbow trout on the end of line, I see someone that I hope will someday grow up into a person who might one day love these rivers and mountains as much as I do.  And knowing that I might have made some small contribution to keeping that resource wild and healthy, for future people to enjoy, is the next best thing to making some tiny humans of my own!

                                                      Jack Bombardier