The Endless River

                                                     

                                                     The Endless River

I live along the Colorado River, and throughout the year its changing moods are always interesting to observe.  Sometimes the river runs low, and sometimes it runs high.  There are times when its as clear as vodka, and others when it looks like chocolate milk (and sometimes that can be in the same day). I’ve seen trees and oars and coolers and full beer cans and dead beavers and people (live) floating by in it.  It can be as warm as bath water, and cold enough to make your genitals disappear if you fall into it during the wrong time of year. On some trips, anything you throw into it seems to get gobbled by a trout, and other days it takes nothing less than a stick of dynamite to move a fish. But in the winter, it can seem to the naked eye like its not even a river at all.  The Upper C gets covered under a blanket of snow and ice and seems like it ceases to exist. The crowds of the summer are long gone, and the River Road goes quiet.  

 

  This can be one of the nicest times to be here. Bald eagles are still stalking the few pieces of open water, mornings and evening the deer and elk can be seen crossing the road, and otters are easy to spot against the frozen banks.  In the morning, the trees and shrubs along the river form an icy coat caused by the disparity between the water and air temperatures.  This causes the river to look like its got crystal chandeliers along its length, at least for an hour or so before the sun melts it.   

 

But the river is not dead, or even dormant.  Under that ice, the river keeps flowing with all the force its had all year, though its just hiding from view.  But the river never sleeps, for it’s always there flowing by with it's ceaseless, perpetual power.  It might not be visible to the naked eye, but every second of every day of every month of every year that ole man river, he just keeps rollin’ along. Even though I may not be floating on it, or swimming and fishing in it, the river remains a big part of my life.  That’s because I shovel that snow off of it where is flows past my backyard, and ice skate on it.  Some years I get to enjoy that experience for longer than others. There was one winter that we got almost no snow at all, but that made great conditions for river ice. Other winters there's excellent ice until we get a big snowfall, and then with the snow too deep to move by hand, the skating season comes to an early end.   

 

  This winter has been great though.  It got cold early, and I was on the river by Thanksgiving weekend.  Most years, its not safe to venture out on until Christmas.  But its stayed cold this year, for most winters there's a week of chinook weather that warms things up, but we really haven’t seen that this season. It started cold, stayed cold, and is still cold. As a result, the river ice in my backyard is still two feet thick.  It usually starts to melt off around Valentine’s Day, but not this year.   

 

                

 

  This winter the ice has been perfect, maybe the best ever. Since the water was so clear and froze so quickly, you can look down into it and see suspended bubbles in it, like a lava lamp. Preparations for skating actually began before the ice even formed, back in the late fall. We had low water year in 2022 which caused algae blooms to form.  When the river level dropped in November, that algae now floated on the surface.  If I allowed the ice to form with that algae in place, it would make for a bumpy, uneven surface, so it had to go.  I wadered up and went out a couple of times with a rake and dragged it out.  If anyone saw what I was doing it would have made for a strange sight, for who rakes a river?, but I knew that it would make a big difference once the ice formed.  I also keep my dory tethered up to my dock for most of the year, so I can go out for a row whenever the mood strikes. I was also able to dislodge a lot of algae by putting my boat on top of it, and rowing hard back and forth.  

  

 When the cold weather finally came and the ice began to form, I used my dory like an icebreaker to ensure that we got a nice, flat sheet to begin with.  When the ice forms slowly, it makes ridges each morning as it grows. The first onset of ice was full of ridges, so I would backrow my boat onto it forcefully to break the bumpy ice off. Again, to anyone watching this process it would have looked very strange. Finally when the really cold weather came in, I was little late getting my boat out of the river so it got stuck in the ice like Shackleton’s ill-fated Endurance. I had to chop it out with an axe, and then hack away a spot to get my trailer into the river to pull it out.    

 

 

  But all that effort paid off for once.  The cold weather came in early and it stayed cold, which it doesn’t always do. One year we had our normal early weather and the river froze, but a warm spell in December melted it all off and my wife and I did a float on Christmas Day. Not this year.  By Thanksgiving weekend, it had already frozen to the point that I could get out on it, and that usually doesn’t happen until the end of December. The first few times I go out onto the ice, I usually wear neoprene waders, a PFD, and have a long rope nearby, just in case.  I went through the ice years ago trying to get a dog out, and don’t want to ever recreate that experience again.  

 

  The mountains have gotten lots of snow this year above 8,000 feet, but down here at 6,200 feet its been more limited.  There’ve been plenty of mornings that we’ve woken up to an inch or two of fresh powder, but I’m able to clean that off the river ice using a wide plastic push shovel. The resulting ice surface I’ve been able to maintain is about 350’ long, and from 15’ to 25’ wide. Over twenty years of trying to create skateable ice, I’ve learned that as long as I can keep the snow off of it, the sun will usually do the rest.  Each day the sunshine micro-melts the surface, and then it refreezes at night, so each day it becomes better and better.  Right now the ice on the river is extremely smooth. There are some cracks to be wary of, but they’re pretty obvious.   

 

 A couple of weekends ago, I invited over some friends with kids to play hockey on it.  It was great to see them enjoying the outdoor the way I did as a little kid.  Growing up, I learned to play hockey on frozen ponds in New England.  When I got older, I played on indoor rinks for youth and high school hockey, but it never felt as free and open as being outside.  I always felt like a great pond hockey player, but once I put on a helmet and pads and was surrounded by refs and lights and horns I was never more than average. There’s just something special about skating outdoors, and it doesn’t matter whether it daytime or nighttime. Last week was especially beautiful, as the full moon lighted up my rink and gave everything a blue glow. There was no need for a headlamp, for the moon and solar lights lining the ice surface was all that was needed.  

 

  It’s now the middle of February, and the ice won’t be on the river for much longer. On most years its already begun to melt off by now, and so I’m just going to try to appreciate it for as long as I can.  It was warm enough today to really soften up the ice, and a reminder that spring is just around the corner. When I got home from work it was dark, and before going inside I decided to see what effects the day's sunshine had created.  Approaching the river I was initially disappointed. The sun had turned my ice back into it's liquid form, and so my ice skating might be done for the year.  But then as I got closer, I realized that it wasn't water yet, it was still ice, but just so smooth that it looked like liquid. That was all it took to put a big gust of wind into my sails, and even after a hard day of work I was energized enough to go get my skates.

Sometimes I skate with music playing through Bluetooth headphones. Last night I couldn’t decide what to listen to, so I decided to just choose an album at random.  The music my fingertip found was “The Endless River” by Pink Floyd.  This made me smile, for with a title like that it seemed to be the perfect choice. It’s not a great album but it has its moments, and it was a perfect soundtrack for the skating I did on the river’s surface that night.  The ice was so smooth that I could see the stars reflected on it’s gleaming surface. The river looked and felt like it was in a liquid state, not frozen. Jesus may or may have not have walked on water, but this was much better than mere walking.  This was low level flying, like one of those swallows I love to watch in the summer whiz by snatching up hatching caddis flies. Skates allow one to move in ways not possible in any other manner.  You can swirl and cut and glide and spin and feel more like a god than a mere human.   

 

I wasn’t planning to be on the ice as long as I was last night, but I just couldn’t help myself.  I’d skate up and down the length of the ice in a straight line, or cover the expanse of it making zig zag patterns from one side to the next. In spots I’d just make tight circles going clockwise, then form a figure eight by circling hard in the opposite direction.  All sense of time and space got distorted until it finally became irrelevant. Sometimes I’d use my LED hockey puck and practice stickhandling and shooting on my goalie net, which is adorned with solar minilights. After Pink Floyd there were other good tunes playing in my headphones, and it seemed like every time I’d think about stopping some new good song would start, and I’d keep on skating hard for another five minutes. Before I knew it, I looked at my watch and realized that more than three hours had elapsed since I first strapped on my skates.  I was beginning to feel a bit tired, and ready to quit, but then another great song would start…

 

 The best thing about this winter is what it portends for the rest of the coming year.  A big healthy snowpack is just what we’ve been needing for a long time.  The last time the snowpack looked like this was in 2011, and that was the year the Colorado River reached 12,000 cfs, and my backyard was under water for two months.  I don’t expect to see that kind of volume this year, since the reservoirs are lower to start than they were then, and the snow now melts off earlier than it used to.  But still, we should have some kind of runoff this year, and with that a decent flushing flow that the riverbed could really use.   

 

  Its been a long time since we’ve had a good runoff on the Colorado River, and even though I’m primarily a float fisherman I really enjoy running whitewater. Now that I’m on the wrong side of sixty years old, I’ve been wondering if there would ever be another good water year in my lifetime.  After all, if I were an hourglass, there would be more sand in the bottom of it than there is left in the upper half.  But this is looking like the year that I and every other river lover in Colorado has been waiting for. 2023 is off to a great start, and I can’t wait to see what the next few months will look like!  

 

                                                   Jack Bombardier

The Lost Summer

                                                                         The Lost Summer

Tomorrow is the first day of September, which means that summer is for the most part over.  Of course, from an astronomical standpoint summer still has a couple more weeks to left.  But its come and gone so fast that it feels like it never really began.

This is probably because it's been over two months since I've done a fishing float. The Upper Colorado River got so warm this year (for the second year in a row), that a voluntary fishing ban was imposed which was just lifted this week.  Back on the 4^th of July, I was one of the first people to begin agitating for a closure, since river flows were dropping while daytime air temperatures were climbing. It took a couple of weeks for it to happen, but by then me and most other conscientious guides had already stopped fishing the Upper C. The reason that the "voluntary" ban was necessary was really to raise awareness among the general public that there was a problem. The water temperatures went over seventy degrees for three weeks, and without a ban there were still plenty of people out trying to catch already-stressed fish.

Of course, closing the river down to fishing also pretty much shutting down my own fishing and shuttle activities. Over the past couple of years, as the shuttle business has grown I've slowly reduced the amount of floats I've done myself. Since the weather seems to be windier and hotter than it used to be twenty years ago, I'd rather watch the young bucks out in that hot wind pulling hard against the oars while I drive by in their air-conditioned Tacomas to their takeout.

Making matters worse, the Hog Island driftboat I usually leave in the river tied to my dock was up in Steamboat for most of the summer getting several leaks in the hull repaired.  I used it for a float trip in June when the water was a bit low, and whacked a few rocks with it.  It took a little longer to get all of those cracks repaired, and so I wasn't able to take it out each evening as I've become accustomed to with the the dog and cat on board.  This left me river deprived and out of shape. Its been back in the yard for a few weeks now, and I'm a much happier and fitter person as a result!

This summer was also a little bit wetter than the past few, and that has had some positive and negative effects. The good thing was that the wildfire season so far has been much better than projected back in the spring.  There have also been other upsides, such as its been great for beekeepers, since more rainfall results in flowers producing more nectar.  But the occasional short, heavy deluges that the monsoon rains dropped on the river basin as they sped by also left the Colorado River in an almost perpetual off-color state.

To feed my fishing jones, I've chased little brookies and browns up on the Piney River below the outlet from the lake, and down in the Deep Creek canyon.  Catching small wild fish on dry flies is a lot of fun, but it is nice to occasionally make casts longer than twelve feet!

But now, the weather forecast for the near future looks to be drier than its been for the past two months.  The monsoon pattern seems to have broken, and with that the Colorado River should be finally clearing up as well. Reservoirs upriver didn't have to release as much water as they might have in a drier year, and are in good shape heading into fall.

This has been in some ways a lost summer. But things were similar last year as well, and September and October were wonderful. Here's to hoping that the next two months will be so good that we all forget what we've been missed for that last two. Which is, the splendid and sublime joy of spending a day floating down the Colorado River, on clear and cold water full of hungry trout!

Jack Bombardier

Gordon The Golden

                                                         Gordon The Golden

For several years, I've been watching a golden eagle from my fishing shop that I've come to call Gordon.  There is a big, stripey rock formation called Sleeping Indian Mesa just across the river, and it dominates the view from everywhere around. Gordon can often be seen sitting in a dead tree on top, watching the pasture below for lunch in the form of the many gophers who live down there.  Sometimes he just hovers in place a thousand feet in the air without moving a feather, wings canted just perfectly to catch the thermals.  Then, he'll see some unwary gopher, tuck his wings tight to his body, and rocket down to the ground like a missile.  At the last moment, his wings open wide and with talons outstretched, grabs the gopher in one fell swoop, and flies back to some cliffside perch with his lunch companion.  With so many gophers living on the property, seeing eagles catch them is a fairly common occurrence.  Watching eagles do their thing can be hypnotizing.  We do occasionally see bald eagles as well, for there is a large nest just down the river from my shop, but they don't hang around for long since this is Gordon's neighborhood. 

My mother-in-law is also a fan of the eagles, and a few years ago we pooled our resources to transform a dead tree on the property into a carved eagle as a birthday present for her.  When they bought their place in 2006, there was a large, beautiful cottonwood tree growing where their irrigation water emerged.  The tree was eighty feet tall and had a graceful, arching shape like an elm.  Then a neighbor needed a place to pasture some horses, and my in-laws offered their pasture as a temporary place for them to stay.  Over the few months the horses were there, they got bored, and bored horses often engage in a behavior known as "cribbing", in which they chew on fenceposts, barns and trees.  In their time in the pasture, the horses chewed all the bark off the cottonwood that they could reach, and within a couple of years the cottonwood tree died. 

Driving past the tree whenever we visited the in-laws used to sadden me.  That tree was so perfectly shaped and healthy, seeing it in that state was rather depressing.  Then one day I was in Glenwood Springs, and noticed a tree in front of a house on Grand Avenue that had been carved into two eagles fighting over a fish, with a pair of bears below looking up at them.  I got thinking that maybe whomever had created it could do something similar with our tree.  So I knocked on their door one day, and got the name of the artist who lived in Delta.  For my mother-in-law's birthday that year, we all kicked in some funds to pay for our tree to get transformed from the sad dead relic it was into a unique work of art.  The artist charged $700 per day, and in two and a half days using a variety of chainsaws completed his task. The result was amazing.  He put a level of detail into it that defies description.  Every feather, talon and even the eagle's facial expression are incredibly well rendered. People driving through the area who are aware of it have been known to come all the way down to their property just to look at it. 

 

 

Watching Gordon for as long as I have, I knew that he had to have a nest up on those cliffs somewhere but could never figure out where.  Then one day I was running a river shuttle, and up near Jack Flats noticed a Colorado Parks and Wildlife truck with a woman standing up in the bed of it peering into a spotting scope.  There had been bighorn sheep in the area that spring, and I assumed that she was looking for them.  We pulled over to talk to her, and she said that she was looking for eagles, not sheep.  I told her that I didn't know where there were any eagle nests in Jack Flats, but that there was an eagle living somewhere close to my shop.  She asked if I would show her, and so she followed me there. 

As we pulled down my drive, I looked up into the tree on top of Sleeping Indian and was disappointed to see that Gordon wasn't in his usual spot.  She got out of her truck and I pointed up to the top of the hill, apologizing for the fact that the eagle wasn't cooperating. Just after saying that, he flew right over our heads.  She whipped out her spotting scope, and watched where Gordon was headed.  I told her, "I know that he must have a nest up there somewhere, but I don't know where".  After about ten seconds of looking into the scope, she said, "Got it!" and offered the scope to me.  I looked in, and there was Gordon, sitting on a small pile of sticks, perched in a cleft in the rock face about three hundred feet up. Now that I had a specific place to watch, I bought a spotting scope myself to keep an eye on Gordon, but didn't see him in that nest very often.  He still spent a lot more time up in his tree, surveying his dominion, so I'd often show Gordon to my float customers before or after a trip.

 

Then one summer my wife's nephew lived on the property, and he took to shooting gophers out in the pasture with a .22 rifle. I'd notice that Gordon would hang out above him watching, and when a gopher got shot he would fly down and snatch it before they would even stop twitching.  It occurred to me that a gunshot was like a dinner bell for Gordon, when he heard that sound he knew that an easy meal was waiting for him.  So I bought some steel shot shells for my twenty gauge, and built a small rock cairn that I placed in a spot that Gordon could see from his perches and that I could see from my shop.  One day I saw him hovering above the pasture maybe 100 feet high, looking at all the gophers running around below.  I used the twenty gauge and shot an unwary gopher, and instead of just leaving it where it lay, I walked over to it. I picked it up, and called out to Gordon overhead waving one arm and loudly calling, "Cheep Cheep Cheep!", which is how I call to ospreys on the river. I held out the dead gopher so he could see it, and walked it over to the rock cairn, making sure he could see me.  I waved again, "Cheep Cheep Cheeped!" a few more times, then went over to my shop to watch.  Gordon waited until I was gone, slowly dropped lower in the sky, and then swooped in to grab his prize.  I watched him fly up towards Sleeping Indian, and he ended up not in his nest but on some different rocky perch.

 

Over the course of that summer, I shot perhaps a half dozen more gophers for Gordon, and with each one he hung out closer and closer to me.  Sometimes I wouldn't even make it as far as my shop before he impatiently grabbed his meal.  But last summer, the property where that pasture was changed hands, and it was no longer getting irrigated. The irrigation used to flood the gopher tunnels, and that would drive them in large numbers up onto the surface where Gordon or I could get them. As a result, I was only able to shoot one gopher for Gordon all year.  By June, the grass had grown too tall to even see the gophers any more, and so Gordon was on his own.  

One of my shuttle drivers Dave who lives on the Derby Mesa Loop Road had a great view of a golden eagle nest that how could look down into from his backyard, and those eagles had two eaglets to raise. It got me wondering if I'd ever have a nest with an eaglet to watch from my place.  Last fall, I began to notice that Gordon had gotten a girlfriend, and the two of them would engage in some high-altitude acrobatics.  Though I never actually saw them mate, I knew that this type of behavior was basically eagle foreplay, and that perhaps there might be a baby eagle to see the following spring. One morning I drove to my shop and parked round back. I looked up to see Gordon and his new girlfriend up in the two dead trees on top of the hill.  I raised an arm and loudly called out, "Cheep Cheep Cheep!".  They quickly left the trees, circled around a couple of times, and then tucked in their wings, which meant they were planning to lose altitude quickly.  They did just that, making a beeline towards me.  They came my way like two small missiles, dropping very fast and zooming past twenty feet over my head.  I couldn't believe the sound they made, it was like a pair of jet aircraft as they whooshed by. It was absolutely thrilling.  

This year, when I started going round my shop again to get ready for the coming season on the river I'd see Gordon and his girlfriend (whom I started calling Glenda) doing their thing.  They would either be up on top in adjoining dead trees, or flying about together.  I kept checking the nest, but there was still no sign of any activity around it. One day there was a gopher not far from my shop, and I popped it with my shotgun, and brought it over to the rock stack with Gordon watching me the whole time.  I got back to my shop, and Gordon came down quickly to get his lunch.  I watched him fly back to the cliff using binoculars to see where he took it, and this time he went to a different spot a little further west than his old nest. It was immediately obvious that this was a much more active nest than the one I'd been watching for years, this one had eagle poop all around it.  He left the gopher there and flew off, and so I set up the spotting scope to start watching that nest.  I didn't see anything else moving in there, but now at least I had a new spot to keep an eye on.

A few days later I was back at my shop, and noticed that the gophers had a new freshly-dug hole about fifteen feet from my shop door, and I could easily watch it from in there. Sure enough, within minutes a gopher popped his head out, and was quickly dispatched.  Hearing the shotgun's report, Gordon appeared from nowhere and flew motionless just above, and this time I watched him again as I flew to the new nest.  With the 60X scope trained on him, he sat in the nest tearing at the gopher, but there was no sign of either Glenda or a baby eagle.  But then I saw a spot of white, which at first I thought was eagle poop until I realized it was moving. It suddenly popped up and there it was, a baby eaglet! The adult eagle was giving the eaglet small pieces of gopher that the baby eagerly devoured.  Gordon was a dad!

I spent the next hour squinting into spotting scope, utterly transfixed by what I was seeing.  It was a sight that I'd spent years hoping to see.  In the three weeks since, I've shot a half-dozen more gophers, wanting to do my part supporting the new eagle family. And Gordon continues to get closer and closer to me after I've loaded up his lunch buffet rock, once coming so close to my head that I got ready to duck.  When I do feed him now, his normal routine is to carry the gopher up to the new nest, and then fly towards Glenda to let her know that lunch is ready. But then he flies back to me at the shop, and hangs out for a few moments right over my head, as if to say "thank you". And whenever I drive over to my shop now, Gordon usually appears from whatever perch he's been hanging out on to say hello.

Its been a very windy spring, and I've been worried that the eaglet might get blown out of the nest. After all, only one of the two eaglets that Dave was watching that spring made it.  After a couple of weeks of watching two baby eagles, one day there was only one.   There were three days in a row last week when I didn't see Gordon's baby, but then I finally saw its little white head again, so apparently they chose their nest site well.

I don't know how much longer I'll get to watch my eagle family do their thing, for someday soon the eaglet will be big enough to fly.  Hopefully they'll stay in the neighborhood, and I'll get to watch them for a long time.  But they've already given me some great memories that I'll never forget!

  Jack Bombardier

 

Epilogue -

Over the next few weeks, the little eagle grew.  It went from looking like a little chicken when it was all white, and then looked like a bald eagle when its body turned brown but it's head was white. Then for awhile, it began to appear like an osprey, the back of its head was brown with a white face.  Finally it became mostly brown, and I began to see it perched on the edge of its nest, instead of at the back where it used to be It had been one of the windiest springs in memory, and I worried that it might get blown out.  I also worried that its first flight could be its last. The nest was above a 200' sheer drop, followed by another 200' foot steep pitch only slightly less vertical.  

On a Friday morning, I watched the eaglet for awhile as it sat looking over its domain.  Sometimes, it even seemed to look back at me.  Did it know that I had been its benefactor for those past few weeks, and that its full belly was due in some small part to me?  On Saturday we were busy doing shuttles, and I didn't have time to look for it.  I looked on Sunday, and didn't see the eagle, though mom and dad were out and about cruising.  Over the next few days, I'd look each morning when the sun was illuminating their abode and didn't see the eagle, or the adults in the nest either.  The nest seemed to be empty, and that made me feel a little empty, too.  I'd see Gordon and his mate occasionally, and would check the nest only to see, nothing.  

A couple of weeks went by, and I had given up on seeing the eaglet.  It was probably Gordon's first attempt a parenthood, and now that he was experienced maybe the next time would turn out better. Perhaps the second time around, he and his mate would do a better job of keeping their baby away from the edge.  I saw Gordon up in his favorite tree, and then saw Mrs; Gordon flying around, too.  I grabbed my binoculars to check the nest, but as had been the case for the past two weeks, there was nothing to see except for the eagle poop staining its flanks.  I put the binoculars away, glanced back up, and saw...a third eagle!  This one was following the second, but using its wings a whole lot more.  Eagles often seem to fly without hardly moving a muscle, they just stick out their wings and magic happens.  This third eagle hadn't quite mastered that effortless ability yet, and was flapping its wings like an osprey. It had to be the baby!

Gordon sat in his tree and watched his mate do some flight training, until mother and baby flew into Gordon's tree.  For a few moments, all three eagles sat there together and it made me so happy to see that I almost became emotional.  Their repose didn't last long though, and soon they were all in the air together and I wished that I could join them.   I don't know what the future holds for Gordon and his feathered family, but knowing that the eagle is literally off to flying start feeds my soul!

Epilogue 2 

Its now April of 2025, and Gordon (or an eagle that looks a lot like him) is still doing fine. He still gets fed gophers as often as I'm around to do it. There is still another eagle that flies around with him, and occasionally a third. And he's gotten bolder and bolder over the years, coming closer to me all the time. When I fed him last week, he appeared only moments after I put the gopher on the rock. He first appeared about fifty feet in the air above me. There was a stiff wind at my back, and in his beaked face, and he used the breeze to just hover there like a hummingbird.  Gordon got closer and closer until he was only fifteen feet away. Then like a shot, he swooped past my head so close that I could feel the wind he created when he went by.

 A couple of days ago, Gordon gave me the time to go get my phone before coming in for his meal. He was a bit of a slacker, it took him almost two minutes to move in. Instead of going directly for his dinner, he stopped in a tree next to the rock cairn. This gave me time to maneuver around and get a better shot. Gordon hopped around to some lower branches, and when I made the cheep! noise he flew down for his prize.  I'll include a link to the video.

Jack Bombardier 4/23/25 

 

 

 

                                    A River Reborn

 

Last night, there was a public meeting in Granby explaining the details of the new channel that will be built around Windy Gap Reservoir. This new channel will reconnect the Colorado River for the first time in over thirty-five years, and will in effect create over a mile of new river.  This "connectivity channel" has been dreamt of for almost as long as the negative impacts of Windy Gap became apparent.  But near the end of the evening's presentation, an unexpected piece of news was revealed that gave the night a very bittersweet twinge. 

  If you don't know, Windy Gap reservoir was built on the Upper Colorado River in 1985 by Northern Water to supply drinking water to growing communities along the Front Range.  Although the dam that was created doesn't look like a very imposing structure, its had an outsize effect on the Colorado River.  The "lake" itself that the dam creates is not large, but its very shallow and has the effect of warming the river water.  It also blocks passage of bugs, fish and sediment, and was also the trigger to the outbreak of whirling disease in the 1990's that had a devastating impact on Colorado's rainbow trout population. 

For thirty years, residents of Grand County have been trying to scientifically prove the deleterious effects of the reservoir, and for the last twenty have advocated for a fix to the problem.  That solution was to create a free-flowing stretch of river to run alongside the reservoir.  This effort was led in part by a man named Bud Isaacs.  Bud was a successful oilman who bought property along the river to feed his love of fishing, only to see the river's vitality diminish in the years after Windy Gap went online.  There is an excellent book about this whole story called "Oil and Water", written by Stephen Grace which goes into all of this in detail. 

I wasn't a good friend of Bud's, but I did take him on a fishing float years ago on my stretch of the Colorado fifty miles downstream from his.  We've stayed in touch irregularly since, since he's on my contact list of people that I send my infrequent blog posts to.  He's often sent me a short appreciation of whatever it is I wrote about. Since getting feedback like that is the whole reason that I write in the first place, I've always liked knowing that someone was reading my missives and enjoying them. 

Even though the connectivity channel, or Windy Gap Bypass as its also been called, has been talked about for years, its only been in the last few years that its really picked up steam.  As its inched closer to reality, my sense of excitement has only increased.  There are a lot of dams in this country that just shouldn't exist at all, or were built with short-term goals in mind that didn't take into account the long-term or collateral effects they've caused.  This might be effects like blocking salmon migrations, or evaporating precious water by being built in the desert, or just by drowning healthy ecosystems.  The problem is that dams are big, expensive projects, and once in place they are very difficult to get rid of.  That is what make the Windy Gap Bypass so unique, the river is being restored but the dam and its functionality will remain, albeit it in an altered form.  It will be a win/win scenario that should ultimately satisfy everyone, a very rare outcome in our contentious world. 

 

Last night was set to be the public debut of the Windy Gap Connectivity Channel.  After years of planning  and rumors, the actual design was unveiled along with the timeline for getting it done.  I received notices from the Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited with the meeting details, and planned on driving up to Grand County to attend.  Then last week, I got an email from Bud Isaacs also letting me know about the public meeting. He was hoping that might be able to go and lend another voice of support to the project.  I told him that I was going to go, work and weather permitting, and that I was looking forward to seeing him.  He responded by mentioning something that I had forgotten, but he hadn't.  A few years earlier at the annual TU dinner at Devil's Thumb Ranch, Bud had been staked out near the front door selling signed copies of "Oil and Water".  Later that evening, I was asked to say a few words about the float trip I was donating, and used the opportunity to advocate for Bud's book.  I told the attendees that if they hadn't read "Oil and Water", they should.  I also said that a copy of the book should be given to every high school student in Grand County, and to everyone moving in or buying property there.  Apparently Bud liked that plug.  In the email I got from him the day before the public meeting, he wrote, "Thanks, it has been a long battle.  Write a short positive response to the address on the notice,  we need all the help we can get, you are the river, so it should mean a lot from you.   Thanks, Bud".

Yesterday a snow storm blew in, and the thought of making the drive to Grand County in that wasn't very appealing.  A few weeks ago I drove to Winter Park to ski, and ran my Sequoia off the Trough Road and into a snowbank in the process.  So instead I did the Zoom thing and attended the meeting virtually, which was better than not going, and definitely better than digging my truck out of snowbank.

The meeting began right on time at six pm, and the presenter's Powerpoint had lots of great details including maps and a very long list of the expected long-term benefits of the soon-to-be free flowing river. The connectivity channel itself was not a mere pathway for the river, but looked like it would have meanders, riffles and pools, as well as a presumably healthy population of insects and fish someday.  With a little imagination, one could visualize standing in the middle of it, flyrod in hand. At the end, there was an opportunity for people to ask questions and comment on it.  I chipped in my two cents, congratulating everyone involved for being able to put together such a unique and ambitious project. I only wished that I could be there in person, and to shake the hands of those that were responsible, primarily Bud. 

Then a gentlemen named Tony Kay who was involved with this crazy idea from the beginning got up to say that Bud Isaacs had also called him asking him to attend.  He said that he was on his way over Berthoud Pass when he had heard that Bud had passed away earlier that day of a heart attack.  This was the most shocking thing I'd ever heard over a Zoom meeting, or in any other venue. The man who was most responsible for the restoration of the Upper Colorado River was no longer with us, or able to bask in the glory of a job very well done.  Bud should have been there to receive well-deserved handshakes and pats on the back but was instead gone.  It was like Moses leading his people to freedom, but not getting to enjoy that fruits of that freedom himself.

So someday soon, the river will live again.  The long-term benefits of that will long outlive me and anyone else who is reading these words.  But it seems a cruel twist of fate that the man most responsible for that happening will not get to wet a line himself in the river he helped create.  It underscores the small amount of time we get to be on this planet, and how hard it is to leave it in better condition than how we found it.  It's too late to thank Bud for his efforts, but not too late to thank those for carrying the baton forward.  So to anyone who played a role in this project, whether it be the planning of it or its upcoming implementation, thank you!  And remember to tip your hat to Bud next year if you find yourself in the middle of the river he helped create.

Jack Bombardier

"May simple joys in wild places enrich your life" - Bud's inscription in my copy of "Oil and Water"

 

          Photo of Bud landing a fishing in the Colorado River by Joe Amon, Denver Post 

 

              Note : The slides that accompanied the presentation can be found at, 

                     file:///C:/Users/Jack/AppData/Local/Temp/AppendixB.pdf 

 

     Slide #10 is the one that shows the new configuration of the river and reservoir

 

                   Dammed If We Do, Dammed If We Don’t 

Another fishing season on the Colorado River has passed, and the ice that’s begun to form every morning begins to grow. Soon it will thicken and cross entire span of the river in spots, and the river will look normal. But things aren’t normal, or at least what is “normal” these days is unlike what we’ve seen before.

This year river flows were as low as they’ve ever been, and the river was closed to fishing for a good chunk of the summer. What we really need is a whopper of a snowy winter to replenish the snowpack and fill the reservoirs next spring. But with another La Nina weather pattern on tap, that’s not likely to happen.

Lately I’ve been thinking about dams more than usual (and I usually think about them more than most sane folks).  Average people have more pressing things on their plate than worrying about where their water comes from, or how much is in any given watershed at the moment.  But living and making a living beside the Colorado River means that whatever water is being released from one of the many reservoirs above has a direct impact on my life and business. I’m also privileged to be a member of the Upper Colorado River Stakeholder group that is developing a plan to protect the river, and get to see some of the behind-the-scenes discussions that go into the river’s management. What’s made me feel hopeful is that all of the stakeholders around the table seem to have the best interests of the river in mind.  I’d like to think that whatever challenges we’re facing can be solved through good faith and cooperation.

Due to the ongoing drought (now twenty years and counting), the dwindling water levels of Lakes* Mead and Powell have been in the news a lot. The lakes* are now at their lowest levels since they were filled in the 1930s and 1960s. At the same time that dropping reservoir levels have been drawing attention, a proposed dam on a tributary of the Colorado River has also been in the spotlight, at least locally.  The Colorado Springs water utility wants to build a second dam below the existing Homestake Reservoir, which will flood a yet-undetermined number of miles of pristine valley. Water would be pumped from the lower reservoir to the upper, which has the existing infrastructure to deliver it to the Colorado Spring and Aurora.  So now there are two dams on the Colorado River at the forefront, one at the top of the watershed and one at the bottom. The lower dam currently exists but is on track to become useless, while the upper reservoir is still just hypothetical.  

Being a certified tree-hugger, I’m supposed to be automatically against any and all dams. I’ve consumed the Edward Abbey canon and had a dislike for Lake* Powell long before I ever even saw it.  But my view of dams is more nuanced and pragmatic than that.  My backyard is sixty miles downstream from the nearest reservoir, and it’s loaded with rainbow and brown trout that couldn’t live there without the cool, late summer water that the dams provide. And it’s not just because they aren’t native trout, for in dry years like we’ve been having the low water in summer would be far too warm for any salmonoid, even native cutthroats.  Because of climate change and transbasin diversions, there’s much less net water flowing down the Colorado River each year. But the dams also out smooth out the curve of the hydrograph over the course of a calendar year. We may lose the high flows of spring, but gain more water in the late summer and fall. We end up with more water in the river late in the summer during dry years, when there would be next to none otherwise without the dams to release it.  Dams aren’t inherently good or bad, it’s how they’re managed that’s important. The dams on the Upper Colorado River and its tributaries have helped create the wonderful trout fishery we have today.  

The fact that Lakes* Mead and Powell are at historic lows is well known.  But with each passing dry summer it becomes more apparent that the “lakes” are not on a sustainable course, in part because they are not lakes at all, but reservoirs. The primary reason for Powell Reservoir to exist is political, in that it gives the Upper Basin states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico) a place to store water for the Lower Basin states (California, Nevada and Arizona).  The fact that the Glen Canyon Dam is located where it is, just above the Arizona state line, is not an accident. The second thing that Powell Reservoir provides is hydropower, and a lot of it (at least for now).  The third benefit is that Powell collects and traps all of the sediment that would otherwise clog Mead. The fourth benefit the reservoir provides is recreational, but as the water level drops, one by one the marinas will be going off-line. I’ve actually made some good memories on and around the lake*, and can see why people love it so much in its current form.  If weather patterns don’t change by a lot and soon, Glen Canyon will be restored some day one way or another.  There will be new recreational opportunities to be had floating the canyon instead of motoring around on it as people do today. It won’t have as large of an economic impact as the current house and powerboat culture provides, but at least it will be sustainable.  

The reason that people like Ed Abbey wanted the Glen Canyon Dam removed is because it buried a spectacular canyon under hundreds of feet of water.  But the reason now for draining Lake* Powell is that it makes no sense to operate it under current climatic conditions. Its been estimated that the lake* evaporates between 300,000 and one million acre feet of water a year. Having a large body of water sitting  in the middle of an increasingly hot desert makes no sense.  The second problem comes from below, as the porous sandstone substrate the lake* sits atop leaks another unknown amount of water per year.  While the lake* might look like it’s storing water, what it’s actually doing is losing it.  Then there is Mead Reservoir.  It suffers from the same evaporation issues as Powell Reservoir, but it lies on a harder, volcanic substrate that isn’t as much of a leaky bucket.  Also, Las Vegas is dependant on Mead for drinking water, and the Imperial Valley for irrigation. What makes the most sense is to keep Mead Reservoir as full as possible, which will reduce the evaporation by cutting the surface areas of two lakes* in half.  This might mean draining Powell, but it’s slowly draining itself anyway.  This past summer, to try and prop up Lake* Powell water had to be released from Blue Mesa Reservoir in Colorado, Navajo Reservoir in New Mexico, and Flaming Gorge in Wyoming.  The higher that water is stored in a watershed, the less is lost to evaporation, and the more options you have as to when to release it. Sending it off into the desert is a stopgap measure at best. And where does a lot of that electricity go?  It goes to places like Phoenix, enabling what is possibly the world’s least sustainable city.  In the past twenty years, while the total water available in the Colorado River watershed has dramatically dropped, the population of the Phoenix metro area has risen from 2.9 to 4.5 million. Las Vegas has doubled from 1.3 to 2.7 million.  This is the very definition of unsustainability.

  Then there is the proposed dam at the top of the Colorado River watershed along Homestake Creek, just below the existing one.  The new project would be called Whitney Reservoir. It would seem to support the idea of reducing evaporation by building smaller reservoirs higher up the watershed, although water would have to pumped uphill to get to the upper pool. Is it possible that putting a reservoir there might be a good thing? Maybe it could be used to cool water in the Eagle River in the summer the way the Colorado does. If I don’t have a problem with the dams above me on the Colorado River, then shouldn’t another dam tied to the Colorado be a good thing?

 Not necessarily. The stretch of Colorado River below Kremmling I live and guide on is in a sweet spot, hydrologically speaking.  We are below numerous reservoirs run by several different water providers, but above most of where the water demands are coming from. The Front Range providers are usually capable of “providing” water on demand downstream when necessary, though referring to some of them as “providers” is a bit of a misnomer since their operations result in a net loss to the watershed.  The folks that they are chartered to provide water to live east of the Continental Divide, but water is taken from western watersheds and flows east instead under the mountains via tunnels. That said, in recent years Front Range water utilities have shown more flexibility releasing water westward during periods when they are not obliged to. This kind of collaboration has proven critical to maintaining river health during hot periods in the summer. There have now been several occasions since 2012 when the river water got warm and either Denver Water, Northern Water, the Bureau of Reclamation or the Colorado River District let water out of a reservoir to cool the river, sometimes in combination with each other.  When the water temps got above seventy degrees this past June, enough water was released to get the water temperatures down to where only a few fish were lost.  This year the extra water lasted until the monsoons came in July, and that natural mechanism was enough to keep the fish happy for the rest of the summer.  Of course one reason the river was so low to begin with was that dam operators were holding back the spring runoff, trying to fill their big buckets.  But in August, when other rivers in the state with less storage got low and warm, the cool water in those upper reservoirs was released, and the Colorado River was the place to be.  

That’s why I’ve had mixed feelings about the Homestake proposal. In wet years, some water that would otherwise flow into the Eagle and then to the Colorado would end up going east, being stored in the new reservoir pool. But in dry years, perhaps water could be sent westward to help the Eagle when it got low and warm.   A 1998 memorum of understanding between the Colorado Springs, Aurora and the Eagle River Sanitation  District specifies that 10K acre feet of water would go west, and 20K acre feet go east. There might be a net benefit to the Eagle River by having water available which could be released when needed.. But that would not be the primary purpose of an additional reservoir.  The main beneficiaries of a second dam would be for people living on the Front Range, not fish living in the west. 

The Homestake Valley is a beautiful and relatively accessible slice of heaven, but its rich wetlands (known as fens) are a much better way to store moisture than open bodies of water which evaporate it. A new dam project is also a continuation of an old, failed paradigm. The idea that western slope is the place for the Front Range to come looking for water is the old way doing things, and its time for some new thinking.  People keep moving to Colorado for good reasons, for it’s a great state to work and live. But where is the water going to come from to support them all?

Maybe if the cost of water were the same per gallon as unleaded gasoline it would slow the influx, but probably not.  People tend to think of access to clean water as a right, not a privilege. I came here from somewhere else too thirty-five years ago.  Colorado is a great place to live all year round (not just half the year like some desert locations). Conserving water will obviously need to be an important part of the future. But the lion’s share of water is used by the agriculture sector, and people need to eat as well. Other options need to be on the table.

One part of the solution might be to add reservoirs on the eastern side of the Continental Divide. The Front Range gets moisture from a lot of storms that miss the western slope, either by dropping down from Canada or spinning up from the Gulf of Mexico. I spent seventeen years living on the Front Range before moving to the mountains, and never realized how much nicer and drier the weather can be on the west slope than it is in Denver. We watch the Denver TV for the weather forecasts, and very often the live shots from there are overcast while we are looking up at blue sky. So why are Front Range water providers still so focused on getting water from dwindling supplies from the western slope, instead of collecting the precipitation that’s already falling on their side of the divide? Best of all, its gravity fed, with no pumps or trans-basin tunnels required.  

I’m not advocating for huge projects like Two Forks, but a series of smaller impoundments located up high, something like the size of Black Gore Lakes below Vail Pass.  In other words, many small buckets instead of one big one.  If some of that snow and rain could be collected in smaller reservoirs located east of the divide, water could be released when needed without complicated, expensive infrastructure.  It would then ultimately flow down to the Platte or Arkansas River basins naturally.  This past spring we had very little snow or rainfall on the western side of the Continental Divide, but plenty to the east.  Wouldn’t it have been nice to have some places to store all that bounty?

Where water is concerned, the time has come to start thinking outside the box, for it’s the one commodity that none of us can live without. The sooner we start planning for a future with less of it than we’ve been accustomed to, the better.  

  Jack Bombardier

* Not a lake

Midsummer 2021 Report, or A Tale Of Two Summers

                           2021 Mid-Summer Report, Or A Tale Of Two Summers

Its the mid-point of summer 2021, and for the second year in a row its been memorable for all the wrong reasons.  This year its not about an invisible virus or smoke from fires, but about water, or the lack of it.  Last year was the busiest that anyone has ever seen on the Upper Colorado River.  It seemed like with everything in the cities closed, people flocked to the mountains to do their recreating here. And a lot of those people bought rafts, kayaks, duckies and SUPs. Boat ramps and their associated parking areas were jammed beyond full. This year, its been mostly…crickets.  Fishermen have been mostly doing their thing on rivers like the Eagle, the Roaring Fork and the Yampa, which have had hydrographs that looked a bit more normal, if abbreviated.

Meanwhile,  over here on the "Lower Upper" Colorado River, the water has been low and warm for a month. Guides have mostly stayed off of it, though the same can't be said for the general public.  The "greeting" message on my shuttle phone line has been less than welcoming to prospective fisherpeople.

We’ve had two subpar winter snowpacks in a row, and the effect is telling now that we are in the middle of a hot summer.  Its not just that the snowpack has been smaller the last two winters, its also that they yield much less liquid gold into the watersheds than they used to. With warmer springtime weather, more of that snow either evaporates or is absorbed by the parched soil.  Yesterday, the USGS water temperature gauge at Catamount on the Upper Colorado River reported 76 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a crazy number to wrap one’s head around.  That is heated swimming pool territory.  Trout may be able to swim faster than Michael Phelps, but not in water that warm.  The backstroke is not their preferred means of locomotion, but it seems inevitable now that we’ll soon be seeing the pale bellies of trout here soon, and not their well-camouflaged backs.  The ten mile stretch between Two Bridges and Catamount has become one of the most popular fishing floats in the state of Colorado in its ten years of existence. But its also wide and shallow, and the sun has a very direct effect on it. There are deeper holes in the river above and below for fish to find refuge in, but not there. Attached at the bottom will be a link to the Catamount gauge, note how fast the sun warms the river up each morning.

  A month ago, water temperatures were high as well (though not as hot as they are now), and dozens of dead fish were seen one Sunday between Two Bridges and Catamount.  Colorado Parks and Wildlife was getting ready to pull the trigger on a voluntary fishing moratorium then, but some cooler weather moved in and we had a mini-monsoon period, which temporarily delayed that.  But a week or two of afternoon showers won’t break a twenty year drought.  We’ve since settled back into hot, dry weather with more of the same in the near future.  Things may worse this summer before they get better.   

 The river is flowing at 700 cfs as I write this.  That’s a bit higher than it was in June, but for this date the mean flow should be more like twice that. Earlier in the spring the discrepancy was much greater.  Lower water in the summer results not only in higher temperatures, but also an increase in the amounts of algae growing on the river bottom.  That algae sucks dissolved oxygen out of the water, so for the trout it’s a one-two punch.  Warm water (which they don’t like) combined with less oxygen (which they need).  This is not a good time to be a trout on the Upper Colorado River.   

  Then, two weeks ago there was a new wrinkle that I didn’t see coming.  We had a short, heavy rainstorm that caused lots of red mud to pour into the river between Pinball and Horse Creek.  These events are not that usual, though they’ve become less common in the last couple years. When these mini-floods happen, the Colorado River usually lives up to its name for two or three days, then clears.  The difference is that this time, two weeks later the lower river is still off-color, probably due to the lack of river flow to carry it all off.  The river bottom from Pinball down is coated in a layer of thick, red sediment that is probably not a good thing for the macroinvertebrates that live there.  Sometimes trout are referred to as being a “canary in a coalmine” as indicators of river health, but it’s bugs not fish that are really the early warning system. The insects go first, and then the fish because there’s nothing for them to eat (except each other).  What the river needs now is a good, high flushing flow to clean that muck out, but that’s something that won't until next May the earliest.  As dire as it looks now and for the rest of this summer, it’s actually the mud that I worry about more than the low water. It won’t be good for insects, and those repercussions may have a more lasting impact than whatever else happens to our other favorite aquatic creatures in the next two months.  

  I’ve been having lots of conversations regarding this situation with fishermen, guides, and my neighbors who live along the river. No one has ever seen the river look like this, especially this early in the summer. We are relative newbies here, having been here only 18 years.  But my life is intimately interwoven and tied to the state of the river, more than most.  Although guides have fishing the Eagle and Roaring Fork, this past 4^th of July weekend there were more than a few knuckleheads at boat ramps carrying spinning rods.  (The older I get, the harder it is not to say something).   

  Yesterday Colorado Parks and Wildlife made it official, implementing a voluntary fishing moratorium on the Colorado River between Kremmling and Rifle. I really wish that people could have fun outdoors on a river without having to hook (and kill) fish, especially in times like these when the fish are extremely stressed.  Even though I make less money doing so, for the past two (low water) summers I’ve enjoyed taking scenic floaters more than fisherpeople. Every fish in this river is a wild fish, not born and raised on pellets in a fish factory.  For some people, and I am one, the distinctions between native and wild and hatchery-raised are  important.  But for some, a trout is a trout.  And that’s fine, because if someone spends their time holding a fishing rod instead of gaping slack-jawed at a glowing screen, that’s some kind of victory. In a year like this, if you absolutely must wet a line then the best place to do it is on a lake, fishing for trout raised in hatcheries who were stocked in those high cold lakes for that express purpose.   

  This river has its ups and downs, and always has.  If you’ve been reading my email blasts for any time, you know that I’m more than happy to share when conditions are right.  More often than not, things along the “Lower Upper” Colorado River are sublime.  But right now, in the middle of July 2021, they are not.  As a member of the Upper Colorado River Alternative Stakeholder Group, I realize that Front Range water providers are aware of the situation and doing what they can. The water that’s being held back now will be even more important come August and September if we don’t get some rain. As much as I’d like to see more water flowing past my backyard now, knowing that its being held up above is like money in the bank. 

  My hope is that as the flows in the Eagle diminish, levels in the Colorado will rise to satisfy the Shoshone water call.  That water right is a very senior 1,250 cfs, and if the Eagle is at 300 cfs, then the Colorado would need to supply the other 950 cfs.  The Eagle might get down to 200 cfs this summer, which means the Colorado would have to rise to 1050 cfs.  If it stays clear and sunny that might not be enough to stave off fish kills, but its better than the 700 cfs we've got now.

  The summer of 2021 will be a good one for everyone who likes fishing to find some deep, high lakes to do it in. Or target a warm water species that's not just barely hanging on like our trout are.  Wild fish deserve our respect, and even if they’re not on the top of most people’s priority list, they need to be on the list somewhere. The dams in the upper basin of the Colorado River and its tributaries helped create the (usually) cold water trout fishery we all enjoy, and with balanced management they might help sustain it.   

  Even though hope is a poor strategy, I’ll still be hoping for summer rains, winter snows, and a big runoff next spring to clean it all away!

Jack Bombardier