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