Jonathan Waterman - Running Dry: A Journey From Source to Sea Down the Colorado River

This book is about my five-month journey down the waters of the Colorado River. I had many escapades, made many more friends, and saw firsthand how these waters are parceled out to all of us living in the American Southwest.

The Colorado River is Calamity, arguing with its split personality, Beauty. From mountains to desert to delta, with breathtaking vistas and rapids, no other American river system has so many endemic fish species, lawyers, and silt. The river can be the color of dried blood or clear as hospital saline, squeezing and roaring through colorful canyons. More than a billion years of time can be read on the layered strata of surrounding walls. It has the most precipitous drop on the continent, two and a half vertical miles from the Rockies to the Gulf of California; and to the west, it is canalled another 200 feet below sea level, to the farms of Imperial Valley. In the unrestricted flows of a forgotten era that boatmen call the Predambrian, the river carved out the Grand Canyon, carried 160 million tons of silt each year to the sea and routinely razed bridges, towns, and farmlands. In the Post-DamNation era, several hundred miles of legendary rapidsByers, Gore, Glenwood, Westwater, Cataract, and the Grandleave many white-water enthusiasts thinking that the Colorado River is intact. Sadly, its not.

The delta is parched. Upstream, more than 300 miles of river are flooded by reservoirs and blocked by dams. Through a labyrinth of canals and aqueducts attached to these man-made lakes, the 1,450-mile river is diverted to several million acres of farms and 10 percent of the U.S. population. The reservoirs can store more than four times the rivers annual flow. Several years before the national recession, the number-crunching water operators of the Colorado River Basin warned that the rivers holdings were in danger of being overdrawn, with its customers living on false credit, its habitat on the verge of bankruptcy.

Like many Westerners, my well pumps water out of the ground before it can run into the Colorado River. After half a lifetime of far-off adventures on northern ice, I wanted to explore my arid backyard. I took my pack raft and kayak and then went to look for answers. I wanted to let the water carry me from source to sea so that I could understand the extent of the crisis, get to know the river, rethink my familys water use, and see what might be left for the future.

Mostly the business of running downstream kept me well occupied. I snowshoed, happily trespassed around dams and under barbed wire, paddled some rapids, and infected my feet in wastewater. In canyon depths, beneath snowy mountains, in solitude with multihued rock, or while bracing my kayak, the river moved mesometimes right out of the boat. Because I didnt begin the trip as an expert white-water paddler, I found a new challenge around every corner. When in doubt, I portaged, accidentally swam, or brewed coffee on the shore and pondered my fate along with that of the river and its dependents.

The river touches countless lives. On my journey, I met many of these peoplesome at work, some at play. There were burly engineers devoted to reclaiming water and a belligerent rancher trying to kick me off the river as it flowed past his land. I spoke with a Las Vegas water manager who could spout out acre-feet figures as quickly as a blackjack dealer slings cards. I rode with boatmen who lectured adroitly on geology, bird identification, and photographyall in the midst of navigating rapids. I saw the devastating effects of the drying river on a Native American community. I met a water-conserving farmer installing underground drip irrigation. And I enjoyed food, shelter, and hospitality all along the wayfrom boaters on Lake Powell to Mexicans living along the dying delta.

Unlike other us-versus-them environmental issues, I found that the shrinking Colorado River is different. Were all in a similar boat trying to keep it flowing and understand whats at stake.

Of course, I survived, learned a lot about these waters, and had a ripping good ride. What remains is figuring out how to save the Colorado River for us and for our children.

Carbondale, Colorado, January 2010

On the last day of May, after the heaviest winter in 20 years, I shoulder a pack with a large satchel of my mothers ashes, a pair of snowshoes, and a deflated Alpacka raft with collapsible paddles. The Colorado River begins seven and a half miles and 1,500 feet above.

Early this morning, we drove for an hour from the arid eastern plains of Colorado toward Longs Peak, 14,259 feet. Plains farmers used to gauge their summer water supply by gazing up at the mountains wineglass-shaped snowfield, visible from a hundred miles away. If the glass wasnt filled, it foretold a bad crop year. This year, the snow has spilt out over the entire mountainside.

Before the understaffed Rocky Mountain National Park rangers could begin charging at the park entrance, we drove above the tree line and past the oft-studied peak on Trail Ridge Road, confined by ten-foot snowbanks. A vertical mile below, we reached the Colorado River trailhead.

In contrast to the windblown eastern side, were deep in snow. The Rockies rake incoming storms, pull the moisture onto the western slope, and funnel the empty winds out over the eastern plains.

The high altitude, opaque stream water beside us turns chocolate as the temperature rises, and water begins to pour out of untold ravines, unlocking mud banks, thawing snowfields, and bursting toward sea level more than a thousand miles away. The pace of my hiking companion, Brad Udall, quickens, even though his packfreighted with heavy-metal backcountry skis and bindingsis a great deal heavier than mine. Brad is vexed that the Colorado River no longer reaches the sea. The water beelining past our feet and wetting our socks should slake the thirst of you, me and thirty million others who live in this gargantuan river basin, or evaporate from immense desert reservoirs downstream.