Kayak Session Magazine — Fall 2017

Kayak Session is proud to collaborate with American Whitewater, a non-profit river conservation organization. Our mission is to show

kayaking at its best with amazing pictures of paddling on beautiful rivers. Without the hard work and dedication of AW, we would

have a difficult time portraying these incredible rivers, and it would probably become even more difficult in the years to come.

We would like to acknowledge this work and AW has agreed to keep us updated on some of the projects they are involved in.

For more information on these and other issues that American Whitewater is working on, go to http://www.americanwhitewater.org

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The Dolores: Reviving a River

for Paddlers and Fish

There’s nothing quite like seeing a river roar back to life each spring with

the cold snowmelt that is every river’s natural born right. When historic flow

regimes are returned to de-watered river systems, paddlers and native fish,

plants and wildlife win.

American Whitewater works with partners to restore flows to rivers impacted

by dams across the United States through a number of means. The most

common is through the hydro-electric relicensing process, but other times,

we work through community driven coalitions, negotiating to put as much

water back in a river as possible.

The desert region of the Southwestern United States is well known for its deep,

rugged canyons where sediment-rich rivers carve winding paths through

geology spanning millions of years. These canyons play host to some of the

world’s premier multi-day paddling trips, such as the Grand Canyon of the

Colorado River, the canyons of the Lower San Juan River, and the canyons of

the Green River. There is, however, a lesser-known river, the Dolores, which has

been slowly regaining repute the past few years. The Dolores wasn’t hidden

and waiting to be discovered. It was just that prior to 2016, the Dolores River

had not seen boatable flows for over a decade.

When paddlers first discovered the Dolores River, glowing reviews gushed

forth, comparing it to the Grand Canyon. Private paddlers explored and

commercial recreation blossomed. In 1984, not long after paddlers began

to frequent this desert treasure, the McPhee Reservoir was built and began

capturing Dolores River water to quench the thirst of surrounding arid towns

and farms. During the 1980s there were a number of uncharacteristically

wet years where there was enough water for everyone: fish, farmers and

paddlers. As agricultural acreage in the region doubled and towns were

guaranteed 100-year supplies of water, the Dolores went from being one of

the finest multi-day river sections in the West to an un-boatable trickle. Only

in years with an extremely large snowpack could the dedicated paddler

make a desperate attempt to paddle the river on short notice.

A trip through the lower Dolores starts near the town of Cahone, Colorado

with Ponderosa Canyon. Here, the river carves through a forest of giant

Ponderosa Pine trees framed by deep red, sheer-faced cliffs. Slickrock Canyon

follows, containing some of the most perfect sandstone grotto campsites in

the world. Many contain pictographs and petroglyphs, ruins, and artifacts:

ghosts of the pre-European civilizations who inhabited the canyon, such as

the Ancestral Puebloans and the Fremont people. A few more short and

interspersed, yet no less impressive canyons lead to the Dolores’ confluence

with the Colorado River near Moab, Utah. All told, the Lower Dolores River

offers 180 scenic miles of Class III/IV whitewater for paddlers to enjoy.

The diverse basin of the Dolores sustains rare riverside habitats, plant

communities, native fish, and wildlife. Since 2007, American Whitewater has

worked with water managers and public lands agencies to protect and

restore these natural attributes, and to restore recreational opportunities for

paddlers. A Dolores River stakeholders group was formed in 2010 to work

on a plan to save native fish by restoring a range of flows for paddlers from

McPhee Reservoir, while still honoring water rights for municipal use and

irrigation.

After a decade of meetings, prolonged by a cycle of drought years where

reservoir releases were not possible, a plan to maximize both fish habitat

and recreational flows was tested. American Whitewater leads the dialogue

to restore critical high flows for fish and river health, which provided flows

not seen by paddlers on the Dolores since 2005. The trade-off from these

negotiations meant a shorter boating season in 2017, but over 60 days of

optimal flows (1200-2000cfs), and four days of high flows of 4000 cfs.

The collaborative Lower Dolores Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation

Plan calls for a diverse team of stakeholders, on which American Whitewater

represents recreation interests, to help manage releases. In 2017, with a

full reservoir and healthy regional snowpack, the team put out updated

forecasts every few days, allowing paddlers to plan in advance for their

Dolores River trips for the first time since the construction of the McPhee

Reservoir. And plan they did, with hundreds of kayakers, rafters, canoeists

and SUP enthusiasts putting on the river day after day. During these flows,

scientists were able to survey the canyon for fish populations. They found

all three native fish in the river. Noticeably absent were smallmouth bass, a

species known to decimate native fish populations.

Restored flows to the Dolores has proved once again that returning water

to a river benefits not only paddlers, but local economies, native fish

populations, and the entire ecosystem that relies on that cold mountain

water flowing downstream.

Words and Photography: Evan Stafford