Grand Gusher

I am still trying to sort out how I feel about all of it. I am talking about the river.

The first weekend in April I was fortunate enough to find myself on just about the finest weather days you could imagine fly fishing on the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry. Located 15 miles below the Glen Canyon Dam. Named for the fellow who lived at the Lonely Dell Ranch and schlepped his fellow Mormon pioneers, wagons and all across the wild and muddy river at the only spot in 400 miles that could be crossed, it is now the site of a dock and boat ramp. If you are coming to fish this is where you meet your guide. If you are coming to ride the pontoon boats down from the dam this is where you get out. If you are rafting through the Grand Canyon, this is where you start.

So, here we are, literally in the middle of no where. There are peregrine falcons dive--bombing ducks and red tail hawks coasting on the wind thermals and trout spawning on thousands of redds and boats racing up and down.

Outside of the river gorge there is nothing. Not a tree, not a bush; just the most vibrant and well-aged rock formations you could ever imagine. The condors are hanging just below the edge of the cliff where the front yard of the lone house we are lodging in culminates.

I found myself wondering about the people who live there (there are not too many of them-most commute back and forth to Page, Arizona) and if they somehow over time forget how incredible the scenery is much the same way we slowly forget that $1.30 per gallon gas was once expensive.

A couple of weeks prior there was a huge big release from the dam. They started this a few years back to see if it would mimic the river in its wild state, creating sand bars and beaches. One big impetus for this was the humpback chub, an endangered species with a human public relations machine behind it that rivals that of any major movie star. The thought is that maybe the release would help augment the chub’s habitat thereby increasing its chance to survive extinction.

But the chub is not the only stakeholder in this barren place. In order to make this happen a confluence of dozens of stakeholders -- the power company/operator of the dam; the drain the Lake Powell folk, the river runners and local guides, the EPA, US Fish and Wildlife, AZ Game and Fish, a gaggle of interested scientists-- was needed to get the open the dike. Well, they did it, but not before they put in place a whole bunch of funding to run lots of scientific tests.

So among the wildlife on the tiny bits of shore lining this 15 mile stretch, you will see, if you look carefully, some metal equipment that is “tracking” those fish with electronic finder devices attached to them. Not the chubs, but the trout. According to the data, even with this gusher of water, the trout pretty much stay put.

Incidentally, the trout are plentiful but not indigenous. Even so we are on a catch and release program with this fly fishing endeavor.

And every day, all day, there is a boat in the water staffed by a couple of college age looking gals tasked with taking water samples. Seems they really are guessing about the impact of these gusher flows. Impact on what, you might ask. The fish? The shore plants? The rocks? The water itself? If we know more will we be in any better shape than now in terms of manipulating it? To what end? To save the chub? To save the guide industry? To save the pleasure of trout fishing? To keep water in the Grand Canyon? To keep water in the zillion mile long ditch that flows to our urban doorstep?

I can’t figure out if this headache is from thinking about all that or just from the unavoidable after effects of the sunburn on my lips.