The first time river guide Bart Baldwin ever dipped a paddle into whitewater, he was rafting Oregon’s Upper Klamath River. “It spoiled me,” recalls Baldwin, who grew up near the river. That initial experience sparked a passion for paddling that Baldwin parlayed into a career that led him across the country—and back to the Upper Klamath, where he’s operated Noah’s Rafting Company since 2008. He discovered that the “UK” whitewater had few equals. “It was unique,” Baldwin says. “It wasn’t natural by any means, but unique.”

Timed releases out of JC Boyle dam created surges in the river’s flow and some of the biggest (class III and IV) rapids in the Pacific Northwest. And the water was a comfortable temperature: Unlike the bracing snowmelt that many rafters brave across the western United States, the Upper Klamath water that flowed from Boyle Reservoir and Upper Klamath Lake farther upstream was known for its warmth. The crowd-pleasing day trip accounted for more than 50 percent of Baldwin’s annual revenue.

But summer 2023 was the last season for the dam-dictated Upper Klamath. JC Boyle and three other Klamath River dams were dismantled between July 2023 to October 2024, and without those timed, high-volume releases, the Klamath no longer offers its famously thrilling whitewater. The river, which had been dammed for over 100 years, has yet to settle into its new normal—and it’s unclear whether it will have sufficient flows to be navigable at all.

Saying goodbye to that income, and to the rapids that inspired Baldwin to devote his life to running rivers, came hard. The Upper Klamath, which runs through high-desert western juniper forests that grow in volcanic soils, “feels like home,” Baldwin says. “I spent 30 years up there, and they were some of the best years of my life.”

The removal of JC Boyle and the other three dams is the world’s largest-ever dam removal project, affecting a 41-mile stretch of the Klamath River flowing between Oregon and California. Built between 1908 and 1962 to generate electricity for nearby communities, these four hydroelectric dams submerged indigenous lands, blocked salmon passage, and created pockets of warm water where toxic blue-green algae thrived. Deconstructing them promises to repair significant social and environmental damage, and consequently, many people celebrated when the smallest of the four dams, called Copco Number Two, was removed in summer 2023. Drawdown of the other three reservoirs continued in January 2024, and the project was officially completed in October. Keno Dam, which sits far upriver, was left in place because it has a fish ladder and provides irrigation for farmland.

This change promises, in the long-term, to improve water quality and allow salmon to reach their former upstream spawning grounds. But there are unwelcome tradeoffs: People who lived and worked along the dammed Klamath had built homes and businesses that relied on its series of reservoirs and rapids, and many of these stakeholders had opposed the dams’ removal. Since the dams have come down, property values along the former lakes have declined. The region’s sprawling farms and ranching families also fought the project because the dams routed water to their lands. And some environmentalists question whether salmon can or will return to upriver spawning grounds. Rafting outfitters anticipate significant financial losses now that dam releases no longer produce the rapids that attracted boaters. People stand to lose not just money, but also their identities.

Envisioning a New and Undiscovered River

Historical and scientific records yield only a few clues about what the Klamath River was like before it was dammed. The annals confirm little beyond the fact that fall- and spring-run chinook salmon, Pacific lamprey, and steelhead trout all used to migrate to some unconfirmed point near the headwaters of the Klamath River, at marsh-ringed Upper Klamath Lake.

The Klamath that living people have come to know starts there, at a shallow basin that hugs the eastern edge of Oregon’s Cascade Range for 25 miles. Those warm waters flow through Keno Dam, JC Boyle Reservoir and Dam, and into Copco Lake” before spilling out through Copco One and Copco TwoÌęand passing myriad agricultural diversions along the course to Iron Gate Dam. From there, the Klamath picks up speed as it slices through northern California for 200 miles to meet the Pacific Ocean near Crescent City.

Baldwin, a lifelong adventurer, can’t help but feel curious about the potential for continued exploration on the newly free-flowing river. “There is some opportunity here,” he says of the transformed stretches of riverbed. “We’ll push off in boatsÌęand wonder what’s around the corner. We’ll run something with no beta, and that’s so unheard-of in the Lower 48,” Baldwin says.

Already, he’s scouted , a stunning 1.7-mile chasm of columnar basalt that had been dried up by Copco TwoÌędam. Future flows there may range from 5,000 to 10,00 cubic feet per second (CFS) in winter to 700 to 1,000 CFS in summer for class III and IV rapids. “That was pretty cool to see,” says Baldwin.

Because the flows on the future Klamath River will be lower than the summertime surges facilitated by the dams, big rafts probably won’t be able to negotiate the new runs. Baldwin is mulling the possibility of offering multi-day fishing trips in small catarafts that can plumb technical water through remote canyons.

“I don’t know if salmon are going to be teeming through that section. I hope they do,” says Baldwin, noting that large-scale, water-hungry agricultural operations have appeared along the Klamath River and challenge the return of historic flows. “I hope that with the dams out, that entire river system will heal, and be better in the long run.”

That vision tests Baldwin’s faith. Nevertheless, he’s putting plans in place—in part because he enjoys seeking solutions to novel problems that haven’t already been solved. The future is uncertain, but it could be exciting. “I could be a taxi into some of the newest and most unique fly-fishing spots in the US,” says Baldwin.

Connecting Past and Future Visions

Since 1918, salmon and steelhead have bumped their heads against the aptly-named Iron Gate dam, the lowest of the four dams and an impassable barrier for migrating fish, which was removed on May 5 of this year. Installing fish ladders and updating the aging hydroelectric infrastructure at Iron Gate and other Klamath River dams wasn’t worth the expense, decided PacifiCorps, the energy company that operated the dams. And so, after decades of protests from the region’s indigenous tribes, California and Oregon issued approval for dam removal to restore habitat for four keystone fish species: Chinook salmon, Coho salmon, Pacific lamprey, and steelhead trout.

“Conifer forests benefit from the marine-derived nutrients,” explains Keith Parker, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe, one of several entities that’s working to restore the Upper Klamath and its sea-run species. Salmon, steelhead, and Pacific lamprey spend most of their lives in the ocean, which fattens them for their long migration (totaling hundreds of miles) up the Klamath River to reproduce. Their eggs feed other fish, such as bull trout, and their carcasses enrich the soil to nourish some of the world’s tallest, oldest trees. Multiple, cascading ecological processes rely on these fish.

The fish have both biological and cultural significance, explains Parker. “They have fed our people since time immemorial with high-quality protein,” he continues. The Yurok people now eat a primarily commercial diet, but Parker is hopeful that the return of the salmon could help them reconnect with ancestral foods and traditions. His tribe suffers disproportionately from obesity, diabetes (at twice the national average), and poor mental health. are 14 times higher than the national average.ÌęParker believes that sourcing local, nutritious food is an important step towards better community health.

Parker considers the fish population and the Yurok people intertwined. “My people were wiped out to fewer than 1,000 of us, and the salmon experienced their own genocide,” says Parker. The Klamath River’s current salmonid population represents just two percent of historic levels. “Yet they still persist,” continues Parker. When he imagines the future of the Klamath River, he looks to the distant past.

“Salmon are in the fossil record,” Parker says. The oldest salmon fossils in Oregon are . That history gives him confidence that they will return, which many people outside the tribal community view as uncertain. To Parker, a hundred-year lapse can’t permanently interrupt a five-million-year-old habit.

Parker also draws inspiration from more recent proof of salmonids’ resiliency.Ìę“There have been close to 250 dam removals in the western US, and the common thread among all of them is that within a short period of time—literally months—biologists found juvenile salmon and larval-stage lamprey above the dam sites,” he said. As of this writing, As of this writing, Chinook salmon have started to into the previously inaccessible water above the Iron Gate dam site, roughly 150 miles from the California coast. They haven’t yet reached the former JC Boyle reservoir, 32 miles farther upriver in Oregon.

Focusing on the Future

After Danny Fontaine moved to the shores of Copco Lake in 2011, he’d spend the mornings and evenings on his dock, casting a fishing rod for perch, bass, and crappie. The water shimmered just below his lakeside home, with a 150-step staircase linking his back door to the shore. Some days, he captained a pontoon boat across the water; other times he launched his motor boat.ÌęNow, the lake has receded back to a river.

His home sits among a small cluster of buildings: There’s the defunct Copco Lake Store (which Fontaine owns and hopes to remodel), the fire station, the Community Center, and its outdoor swimming pool. These buildings and the residents they serve : nobody knows for sure how the river—or the local economy—will regenerate. Amid that climate of precarity, Fontaine’s work as a real estate agent has dried up.

But Fontaine is training his eye on the future. He seeks solace in tangibles such as the Copco Lake Store and the interior remodeling that it requires. “Thinking about that makes me feel good,” he says. His hope is that rafting outfitters might find a way to continue to offer float trips on the new river, and that those boaters would use the future store as a resupply station. Maybe creating a new campground would give visitors a reason to come to the community that once occupied the southeast end of Copco Lake.

Such visions of the future help Fontaine accept this change. He also reminds himself that the Copco residents will persist, even without the lake. Throughout the year, the Community Center hosts monthly dinners involving area residents. Fontaine or his husband Francis Gill, a trained chef and the Community Center’s president, typically cooks for the group. “Everyone out here is fairly tight-knit,” says Fontaine.

“Nobody here has sold their house because of the dam removal, nor do they plan to,” he says, concluding, “We won’t be able to have the water, but we’ll be able to have the community.”

The post After the Klamath Dam Removal, Residents Grapple with an Uncertain Future appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

The Storm Hits Ìę

I wake up at dawn on Friday, September 27, because the wind is howling around my house and trees are snapping at their trunks and being pulled out of the ground by their roots. From the window I watch the treetops sway and listen for the crack of wood. I hope I can echo-locate the snap so I know where the giant timber is going to fall. At every sound, I worry something will land on my house.

Two large white oaks, one of which is at least a hundred years old (I count the rings later) are pushed over by a massive gust and careen towards my neighbor’s house, where three little girls under the age of 10 live. As one barely misses the walls and crushes a trampoline outside, I slump in relief.

Rain is coming down in a steady stream. The power goes off a few minutes after I wake up. Water is the next to vanish, an hour later. Cell service disappears in the early afternoon. Asheville has wind gusts of 46 miles per hour.

Nobody expected a storm like this in western North Carolina. Hurricanes usually hit the state’s coastal regions, not the mountains. We knew there would be rain and flooding, but nothing at all as catastrophic as what came. My wife and I lived through Asheville’s last hurricane flood, in 2004, when the French Broad River surged into low-lying parts of town. Meteorologists called that event a one-in-100-year flood. They’re saying this storm is a one-in-1,000 year event. I don’t know a single person who evacuated, nor did I ever hear any calls from officials to do so.

When the worst of the storm abates, around noon, I walk into the street and gather with neighbors to make sure everyone is O.K. Kids are crying. People have huddled in their basements. A neighbor who’s a doctor walks up saying a woman at the bottom of our hill has a gash in her neck that won’t stop bleeding because the roof of her house fell on her in bed. Trees are down all over and there’s no clear path to get the woman to a hospital, so I run around looking for a way that a vehicle could get through the carnage. So many power lines are down, so many cars are smashed, so many trees are leaning on homes, and stunned people are standing in their yards. My neighborhood of 19 years feels foreign.

I find the safest way to walk the woman with the neck wound to a point where I think a car could meet us, and I reach a friend who’s headed into my neighborhood with a chainsaw, already out trying to cut through the madness, and have just enough service to tell him where to go before my phone dies. I walk the woman up a hill, with the doctor who’s telling her not to remove the bandage from her neck because you don’t mess with neck wounds, and the woman is crying. She’s afraid of the wind and the trees—after the roof of her house just fell on her.

My friend with the truck and the chainsaw is there, exactly where I told him to meet us, and the woman enters the vehicle and they head towards the hospital. I don’t hear how she is for another three days because there’s no cell service, and nobody hears from anyone unless in a face-to-face conversation.

I go back to my own house to assess the damage and hug my wife and children.

By the end of the day, a crew of men in a truck I’ve never seen before have chainsawed their way through half of the downed trees in the neighborhood. These aren’t city crews or electric-company employees. These are dudes in trucks doing what they can to help.

This is just day one.

The Aftermath of the Storm

Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina, turning the city of Asheville, the South’s greatest outdoor-adventure town where I have lived for 20 years, and the surrounding mountain communities into a federal disaster zone. The French Broad River crested at more than 24 feet, wiping out the entire River Arts District, a collection of restaurants, breweries, hotels, and art studios a mile west of downtown. Biltmore Village, a hub of higher-end hotels and restaurants and shops, is similarly trashed, whole buildings gutted by the force of the river. Entire neighborhoods have been washed away, with houses and trailers floating downstream and piles of broken lumber everywhere.

I’m incredibly fortunate. Our basement flooded, but no trees hit our house. Nobody in my family was hurt. We live in higher terrain and not along the river corridor, where the worst flooding occurred. So many people are in far worse shape. As I write, 71 people have been confirmed dead across the county. Search and rescue helicopters and ATVs are still looking for missing people every day.

The first few days after the storm were isolating. Navigating the roads was tough because of the downed trees. Nobody had cell or internet service, so we couldn’t check the news or message anyone. I didn’t know the extent of the destruction beyond my own neighborhood. Eventually, we learned to get in the car and listen to the city’s press conferences at 10 A.M. and 4 P.M. every day to grasp the context of the storm. I worked on cleaning up my neighbors’ yards and some trees in the road.

I was lucky in another way, too. We have an old hot tub in our backyard that became our sole source of gray water, and remains so. I used five-gallon buckets to move water from it to our bathtub so we could flush toilets. I cooked meals on our propane grill, pulling food from the fridge before it went bad.

At some point, I learned that the Chamber of Commerce a mile up the street had power and their WiFi was radiating into the parking lot, so twice a day I walked up there to send messages and check the news. I started a fire in the wood stove in our basement to try to dry the water out. Of all the damage Hurricane Helene caused, this is as minor as it gets.

In talking with neighbors, we heard there was no gas for cars because the stations had no power, and that none of the interstates or highways were letting vehicles in or out. We heard other towns—Chimney Rock, Burnsville, Spruce Pine, more—deeper in the mountains fared even worse than Asheville. We learned that the city had organized points of distribution for water and food.

Besides the destruction, mostly what I saw is people taking care of each other. The guy who owns the trendy cafe on the corner a few blocks from my house cranked up his giant pizza oven and served free burgers and chicken sandwiches, feeding 1,500 people. Other neighbors chipped in, setting up stands with free stew and hot dogs.

We were all walking all over the neighborhood and town, asking people we didn’t know if they needed anything.

Almost two weeks after the storm, we still have no power, internet, or running water. I’m still moving water to flush toilets, getting drinking water from distribution points, trying to keep a fire in the basement stove. Cell service came back about six days after the storm.

Every state and federal agency is on the ground. Cops, firefighters, and search-and-rescue teams have come from Indiana, New York, Ohio. There are well-organized official disaster-relief stations and smaller stations set up by civilians. There’s a hard 7:30 P.M. curfew. I’ve heard isolated events of attempted muggings, but mostly it’s peaceful.

Unable to work as a writer without internet or power, I spend my days volunteering. One day I’m cooking burgers at a community center, the next, knocking on doors around Buncombe County doing wellness checks. If you can’t reach a cousin or aunt or spouse in Asheville, you call and ask for someone to check on the person. Volunteers go out to people’s last known addresses and see if they’re OK.

Most of the people I check on are OK. I work on developing the friendliest of door knocks,Ìę something that says, “I’m here to help.” Only one person answered the door with a gun in a holster.

I’m having a hard time putting this into words, but in the midst of all of the destruction and despair that I’ve seen, I’ve also been overwhelmed by a sense of hope and gratitude. Is it cheesy to say this disaster has renewed my faith in humankind? Probably. But that’s fine.

Without water and power, schools are closed, so my kids spend their days volunteering or helping friends clean up their yards. They have sleepovers and walk a mile into town together, just for some semblance of normalcy.

Grocery stores opened on a limited basis a day or so after the storm. One person in, one person out, long lines. Cash only because there was no internet. Now the stores are taking cards again, and you can get much of what you need or want. Most gas stations are open again. The two coolers on my back porch are full of food, and I am still cooking all meals on the propane grill. I’ll need to find more propane soon.

Downtown is a ghost town. Asheville is a tourist draw and obviously there are no tourists right now. A lot of people have left town temporarily as well. Some businesses have boarded up, and only a few shops are open.

My hot tub is almost empty, which means I’ll have to figure out another source soon for non-potable water. I saw the destruction to the reservoir system. It’s extensive; the transmission lines, which carry the water out of the reservoir, were washed out after more than 30 inches of rain fell. The bypass line, which was built as a redundancy measure, also washed out. That particular line was buried 25 feet deep, but the land eroded so much that the pipe was carried away. Crews are working on rebuilding that pipe right now.

The Outdoor Community Steps Up

The day before the storm, I went to to drop off a couple of things for resale. Second Gear is a consignment outdoor-gear shop that gives gently loved items like camp stoves and fleece and tents a second life, an effort in sustainability and in making things affordable to people who want to go outdoors and may lack good gear and equipment. It has a great location in the River Arts District, about 100 yards from the French Broad River.

The next time I saw Second Gear, it was in a video on social media, being swept away by the river. The entire building.

A number of guide services, like paddle-board rental shops and shuttle operators like French Broad Outfitters and Zen Tubing, that were located on the river suffered similar fates. Wrong Way Campground saw massive damage, the river breaching several of their cabins.

The local climbing gym, Cultivate Climbing, closed their flood doors, which would typically keep water out of the building. The river level was so high the waters crested the flood doors, poured in, and turned the building into a swimming pool.

Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are closed. There’s no telling what sort of damage those mountains have suffered, because all resources right now are still dedicated to helping people in need. I’ve heard of groups of mountain bikers from the local bike club, called SORBA (for the Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association), hiking into small, isolated communities and chainsawing a path for those residents to get out to the nearest fire station.

I’ve heard of fly-fishing guides leading search-and-rescue efforts in the steep mountain hollers where they typically head up fishing adventures.

Several small towns, such as Barnardsville and Spruce Pine, in western North Carolina are isolated, the roads covered in mud and a tangle of pines and hardwoods. Nonprofits and small-town fire departments have been organizing groups of hikers to take supplies into people deep in the mountains who are cut off from the outside world. Volunteers with ATVs are incredibly sought after because they can get into remote places that normal vehicles can’t access.

The French Broad River Keeper, Hartwell Carson, who spearheads stewardship when he’s not assessing storm damage and reports of toxic sludge, mobilizes a crew of volunteers to cook burgers and hot dogs for various communities throughout the region. He’s lobbying for millions of dollars to be allocated to the area specifically to put out-of-work river guides on the job of cleaning up the French Broad.

Astral, an Asheville-based shoe brand that makes popular water shoes and hiking boots, is focusing on supporting remote mountain communities that saw severe hurricane damage. This week, Astral will take a van load of six generators to the tiny town of Buladean, which sits below Roan Mountain in North Carolina’s High Country.

The director of North Carolina Outdoor Economy, Amy Allison, is trying to coordinate coat donations from gear companies outside of the region. It’s warm today, but the temperatures are dropping next week. Many families here don’t have adequate winter gear, and will need coats, hats, and gloves as they navigate the new reality of going to distribution points for drinking water and moving flush water into their homes.

What’s Next for Western North CarolinaÌę

Almost two weeks later, I still try to turn the light on when I walk into a room. According to local press conferences, we’ll probably get power back some time this week, which is great. I’ve heard that the city is sending trucks to take out household trash. There’s no timetable as to when water will be restored. It could be weeks.

Living without running water for a couple of months is hard to fathom, largely because our kids can’t go back to school without it. Schools must have working sprinkler systems in case of fire.

Several families we know have already moved temporarily to other cities and enrolled their kids in schools. My wife is looking into home-school scenarios.

For a couple of days right after the storm there was a constant stream of sirens and chainsaws, but that stopped. Now it’s silent at night. It’s the kind of quiet you get camping in the middle of the woods, but I live on the edge of downtown Asheville. With no lights in my neighborhood, I can see the stars at night. I don’t think any of us will begin to understand the impact of what’s happened for months, when it’s safer and the destruction and loss of lives isn’t so palpable.

In the meantime, we carry on. I have a wood stove. I’ve hooked up a solar shower. I’m trying to work again. Tomorrow I’m cooking burgers for the small town of Barnardsville, 45 minutes north of Asheville. After that I’ll help a friend salvage the fence on his farm, then later in the week help another friend repair his campground. I think I’ve come up with a solution for water to flush my toilets, too. There’s a creek at the bottom of my neighborhood. I’ll put my cold plunge tub in the back of the truck and fill it from the creek with five-gallon buckets, then drive back up to my house and put the water in the hot tub.

It feels good to have a plan.

Graham Averill is șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű magazine’s national-parks columnist. He’s lived in Asheville for more than 20 years. If you want to help locals, lost its warehouse in the flood, and is still distributing food to those in need.

For more by this author, see:

9 Beautiful Mountain Towns in the Southeast

9 Most Underrated National Parks for Incredible Fall Foliage

The post This Is What It’s Like to Live in Asheville After Hurricane Helene appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I’m one of those people who will tell you that a river trip in the Grand Canyon changed herÌęlife. Last May, after joining a friend’s 50^th birthday celebration on a guided rafting trip on the upper portion of the canyon, I paddled, mesmerized by the spectacular shades of red and orange rock walls towering above me, their layers telling stories of geology, history, and the innermost workings of the Sonoran Desert. I’m sure our guides told us about all of it, but it wasn’t the details that movedÌęme. It was the river itself, the transformative power of being ferried by the wondrous lifeforce from our put-in to our take-out. I can’t say exactly how, but when I emerged from the canyon after six days of floating and sleeping alongside those flowing waters, I was different. I was better.

Now, I wonder how many more people after me will get to experience the same magic. Climate change, a rising population, and unsustainable consumption of water in the southwest are threatening the very existence of the Colorado River that’s been running through the center of the Grand Canyon for six million years. It’s a complex issue that seven states and Mexico—all of which utilize water from the river—have been fighting about for years. And it’s a dilemma the recently dedicated $15.4 billion dollars towards trying to solve, including a Ìęto give $1.2 billion dollars to the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, and several Native American tribes in exchange for cutting their water consumption between now and the end of 2026.

The situation runs much deeper than keeping the water flowing so people like you and me can hoot, holler, and regenerate on rafting trips. But if floating the Colorado River through the belly of the Grand Canyon is on your bucket list, it’s time to put your plan into action. Wait too long, and there may not be a river to run. Or, at least, regulations on boating trip sizes may make securing a permit or a spot on a guided tripÌęharder than they are now. It could even make running the river more dangerous.

If rafting isn’t possible in the future, there’s no guarantee that another form of recreation—one that allows us to marvel at the canyon’s magnitude from the base of the canyon—will take its place. So before you start imagining being able to walk, hike, run, or even ride a bike down the center of the Grand Canyon, think about this: with the Colorado River drying up, the entire ecosystem will change. The animals who drink from the river, and eat the plants that grow from the river, will leave. Plant life will transform—more cactus than trees—and inhospitable heat will make recreation of any sort unbearable. And though adventurous pursuits may seem like a shallow concern next to water rights, agriculture, and livelihoods, most conservationists started as recreationalists. Right now, 27,000 people travel downriver through the Grand Canyon each year, and hopefully each one leaves caring more about preservation—good news for Earth, who needs all the help she can get.

The Colorado River Is Drying Up: How This Impacts the Grand Canyon’s FutureÌę

The Colorado River runs roughly 1,450 miles in its entirety, originating in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park and gaining momentum from snowmelt and tributaries as it winds south towards Mexico. It used to reach the coast, but has trickled to a dry, dusty wash miles inland since 1980.

According to Brian Buma, a climate scientist who works for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in Boulder, Colorado, every one degree Celsius of air temperature rise due to climate change-induced warming leads to a 6.5 percent reduction (plus or minus roughly 3.5 percent) in the Colorado River’s base flow.

“As the temperature goes up, we simply evaporate more water at every step of the process,” says Buma. Despite the great snowfall the region received this past winter, Buma says that by 2070, there will be a 20-30 percent decrease in snowpack around the Upper Colorado River basin, also due to climate change. “Drought conditions and a warmer earth mean water that might join a tributary that flows into the Colorado River evaporates (either directly or via plants) back into the atmosphere instead.”

Explosive population growth in the southwest also plays a role. The Colorado River Compact—which allocates water rights between the Upper (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming) and Lower Basins (Arizona, Nevada, California) was created and signed in 1922 when there were roughly 500,000 people across those seven states. “The assumption was that the population of the Southwest would never be more than four times the amount of that population,” says Sinjin Eberle, Southwest Region Communications Director with American Rivers, a nonprofit organization that works to ensure the health and vitality of waterways in the U.S. “Today there’s over 40 million people in the basin, with a 100-year-old framework dividing the river.”

Those states—and some of the IndigenousÌętribes in and near the river basin—use water from the Grand Canyon to sustain agriculture, for drinking water, and to exist, really. The water rights issue has been hotly contested for decades, and the situation is becoming more dire.

“You have an over allocated river to begin with,” says Eberle. “You have a sharply growing population and you have 20 percent less water. The bank account is over tapped.”

The recent agreement among the Lower Colorado River basin states should help, as they’ve all vowed to make cuts in how much water they use. But since the agreement ends in 2026, long-term solutions are still required in order to keep the river flowing.

277 Miles of SandÌę

Aside from sustaining life in the southwest, the river is sacred to at least 11 Indigenous cultures who have lived in and around the canyon. (The Havasupai, Halaupai, Navajo, and Pauite remain in the greater area.) The Colorado River carries with it the history and spirit of Native American life. The river also carries sand, which protects archaeological sites from erosion. “Without [it], they would be exposed, and they would erode and deteriorate. And people would go see them and mess with them,” says Eberle.

Sand is important for recreation, as well, because it forms and reinforce beaches along the shores of the river. Without the beaches, there’d be no place for boaters to camp each night.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation controls the flow of water out of Lake Powell through Glen Canyon Dam in Northern Arizona into the Grand Canyon. (And, surprise, Lake Powell’s water levels have become frighteningly low.) “The dam blocks 99% of the sediment going downstream,” says Buma, “which currently contributes to erosion and a lot of these archaeological sites are getting hammered.”

Eberle says the majority of sand that enters the Colorado River in the canyon comes from the tiny Paria River, but most of that sand just “sits in front of the Paria.” The Bureau of Reclamation occasionally orders a high-intensity, short-duration flood—a large release of water through Glen Canyon dam meant to move the sand downriver through the Grand Canyon, which helps rebuild beaches and sandbars. The Bureau like this in April 2023, the first of its kind since November 2018. Ideally, these high-intensity, short-duration floods would happen more often, but in recent years there just hasn’t been enough water to make it feasible.

A healthy, flowing river also scours the vegetation along the shores of the beaches—a good thing for rafters.Ìę“If they’re not scoured out, there’s just vegetation that encroaches on the beaches,” says Eberle. So even if the Colorado continues to flow through the canyon, a reduction in water overall could mean more vegetation and less room for boaters to camp.

How Recreation Could Change at the Grand Canyon

The National Park Service limited the size of rafting trips back in 2006 due to shrinking beaches along the shores of the river.ÌęSince then, a handful of forced flows out of Glen Canyon Dam have kept restrictions at bay; beaches have come and gone.

Luckily for those wanting to run the river as it diminishes in size, there’s no “magic level” that will preclude rafting, according to Janet Balsom, Chief of Communications, Partnerships & External Affairs Office of Grand Canyon National Park. The National Park Services says that the river flows between 8,000-25,000 cubic feet per second (CFS), and Balsom has run the river when it was at a mere 2,500 CFS. “Boaters will find a way, even if it’s in a Sportyak” (a small dinghy), she says.

If the river dries up entirely, rafting will obviously become impossible, as will the need for sandy camping beaches.

Aside from providing a watery playground for boaters, the river also currently serves as a cooling station for hikers, backpackers, and those seeking FKTsÌęrunning Rim to Rim (or Rim to Rim to Rim). Trail users in the canyon rely on drinking water from seeps and springs in the area, which, according to Balsom, haven’t shown diminished levels similarÌęto the Colorado River. “Although,” she adds, “that’s one of the areas where we wish we had more information.”

But without a river, foot travelers wouldn’t be able to dunk and refresh once they reach the bottom, and the entire canyon would run hotter. The absence of moving water would increase temperatures at an unknown percentage, while a decreased number of trees and shrubs (shade) would turn up the heat as well. The hottest place in the canyon, Phantom Ranch, has already recorded temps of 120 degrees Fahrenheit on severalÌęsummer days.

And bikes, which aren’t allowed beneath the rim now, still wouldn’t be allowed beneath the rim if the river dried up, says Balsom. “It really is about safety and non-compatible uses,” says Balsom. “Can you imagine bikes interacting with mules and hikers? And the medicals that would ensue?”

But beyond how we enjoy the Grand Canyon potentially changing, a trickle of a river creates a massive crisis for ranchers, farmers, cities, and millions of people who utilize water, energy, and food grown from a flowing Colorado River. And it would jeopardize the preservation of cultural landmarks and spiritual heritage of the 11 associated Indigenous tribes who consider themselves directly tied to Grand Canyon.

For now, stakeholders from every angle are working to find a solution for the canyon and the Colorado River that runs through it. “Our ultimate responsibility is the preservation of the resources as unimpaired as they can be,” says Balsom on behalf of the National Park Service. “And visitor uses are really secondary, because if you don’t maintain the integrity of the resource, you’re not going to have the visitor experience you want.”

“Water is everything,” adds Buma. “And we can’t make water. We can make all sorts of things, but we can’t make water. We just can’t.”

The post What Happens to the Grand Canyon if the Colorado River Dries Up? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Yosemite Valley will close to visitors from tonight through at least Wednesday due to floods as the Sierra’s historic snowpack begins to melt.

In a news release, the park said, “Western Yosemite Valley will remain open but could close if traffic congestion or parking issues become unmanageable,” though no services will be available. The closure area begins at El Capitan Crossover. Wilderness permit holders will be able to reschedule their trips, the park said; visitors who had booked lodges or campsites will receive a refund.

This closure comes about a month after Yosemite restored public access to regions of the park that were damaged by February’s historic snowpack, which brought 15 feet of snow to some parts of the park. A recent survey showed that Yosemite’s snowpack is 240 percent of average. And at higher elevations, the park experienced its ever recorded, which may translate into heightened flooding throughout May and June.

The National Weather Service of the California Nevada River above-average temperatures throughout the weekend. As temperatures rise, this season’s historical snowpack is expected to quickly melt, heavily impacting the Merced River. This could result in washed-out bridges and additional downslope damage. By Sunday afternoon, the river is forecast to reach a height of over 11 feet—one foot above flood stage—and to increase in speed, creating safety hazards for those within the area.

Besides the west side of the Valley, other areas like Hetch Hetchy, Wawona and Crane Flat will be open, but visitors to this area should expect higher levels of congestion, strict parking enforcements, and potential closures. Park officials recently warned visitors that emergency response times as the result of the flooding, as well.

Rockfall and flooding are common spring occurrences in Yosemite, but this year’s snowpack is likely to kick them up in severity. Additionally, trails that typically become accessible in the spring are unlikely to be accessible until July of this year. Route-finding in Yosemite’s snow-covered elevations can be difficult to impossible. Additionally, this year’s snowpack will likely contribute to as the season progresses although the water level levels fluctuate by day.

This could be bad news for Pacific Crest Trail and overnight hikers. One key bridge in nearby Kings Canyon National Park has been washed out in floods, likely forcing hikers to skip the section where it sits or take long detours to avoid it. Besides affecting hikers’ plans, the melting snow could also foil trail maintenance crews, delaying some improvements for another year.

Speaking to , park spokesman Scott Gediman said that additional flooding closures could last through June or even July.

“I’ve been in Yosemite for 27 years and I’ve never seen this much snow,” he said.

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Best. Winter. Ever.

That’s what skiers in the western U.S. have been saying, thanks to record snowfall throughout the Sierra Nevada and much of the Rockies. As of mid-April, California’s statewide snowpack is 237 percent of its average level. Utah recorded 201 percent—more snow this winter than it has seen in 40 years. Colorado can’t claim the season that Utah and California have had, but the powder is still piling up (and coming down), with a snow stash of 132 percent of its average. There’s been so much snow that some resorts around the country plan to stay open until July 4.

And it’s not just skiers who are enjoying a banner year: 2023 promises to be one of the most memorable rafting seasons in recent history.

According to Steve Markle, vice president of Communications for , one of the largest rafting outfitters in the U.S., “All the rivers are gonna be moving. Each watershed is a little different, but in general, we’re talking about bigger, faster water with fewer eddies.

“To see [the snow] stacked up across the entire West like this,” he says, “is unprecedented.”

Not only does the deep snowpack mean grander rapids on some of the most coveted whitewater, but that boating companies can run trips for weeks longer. Take the Yampa River, a Class IV trip through Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument. A typical rafting season there begins when the snow starts melting, in early May, and ends by mid-June, but this year OARS expects to run trips on the river well into July.

Yet bigger water also means bigger risk, so this is no season to paddle solo without substantial training. Hire a guide service to lead you down one of these waterways. Not sure about which guide service to trust? If a river passes through a national park, call or email the park for a list of trusted guide services with permits to run trips there. Ask a guide service about their safety practices. The best operators are increasing safety measures this spring, such as raising the minimum age for certain trips, paying their guides to take extra training, and, in some cases, running motorized support rafts to be on hand for rescues. Remember, too, that the water is cold, so plan ahead and use caution.

Here are five western rivers you can be stoked to raft this spring.

The Yampa in Colorado/Utah

Beginning in northern Colorado’s Flat Tops, a mountain range within Routt and White River National Forest, the Yampa runs for almost 250 miles before joining Utah’s Green River. The best section awaiting rafters is inside Dinosaur National Monument, on the state border: 47 miles of fast, Class III-IV waves and drops between the walls of sandstone canyons. If you have the skills and gear, you can apply for a via a lottery system from December 1 to January 31 each year—but know they’re limited and hard to come by. You can also book a , choosing between single- or multiday options. Peak Yampa season will run from May into July this season.

The Merced in Central California

The Merced flows out of Yosemite National Park, in central California, and typically has a short window for being navigable by raft, often ending by Memorial Day. This year outfitters expect to be able to run the river into August. During low snowmelt seasons, the Merced is a relatively tame, 16-mile-long Class III experience; this year, however, the record snowpack promises an extravaganza of Class IV roller-coaster wave trains. No permit is required to raft the Merced, but guided options are available and can be found .

Cataract Canyon in Utah

Cataract Canyon, southwest of Moab, Utah, might be the most iconic stretch of river rafting in the West. The canyon begins at the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers, doubling in force before carving through the red sandstone cliffs of Canyonlands National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Most guided trips down this 100-mile-long gorge last four days, are packed with Class III-V rapids, and include beach camping and hikes through side canyons. Find permits for individual trips , or skip the red tape and go with a . This year the season will begin in May and run into October.

The Owyhee in Idaho and Oregon

The National Wild and Scenic Owyhee, which wends through Idaho and Oregon, doesn’t actually run that often. In fact, due to lesser snowpack, most guides haven’t run trips on the Owyhee since 2019. This year, however, snow levels in the Pacific Northwest are over 250 percent of their annual average, promising rafting on the Owyhee through mid-May. The Lower Owyhee, which travels through Oregon’s high desert terrain, is the most coveted adventure; expect a mix of flat water peppered with Class III-IV rapids through 2,000-foot-tall canyons. The 55-mile multiday trip passes through desert badlands full of sandstone formations, tall sagebrush, and landscapes home to big game like antelope and bighorn sheep. Pull off to soak in a hot spring tucked into the grass on the river’s edge. See info on permits and guides . Owyhee season has already begun and is expected to wrap up in mid-May, so act fast.

The South Fork of the American in California

Another watershed benefitting from the Sierra’s massive snowpack is the South Fork American, just an hour east of Sacramento. It’s actually a dam-release river, with recreational flows allotted each year. During years of drought, such releases are typically only guaranteed on weekends. But this year rafters began running the rapids of the South Fork in late March—and expect to go clear into October Most people opt for the family-friendly day trip, with Class II-III rapids shooting through the foothills of the Sierra, but there’s also a popular overnight option that covers 21 miles. For more information, including how to apply for a permit, check out details .

Graham Averill is °żłÜłÙČőŸ±»ć±đ’s national parks columnist. During the summer, he spends most of his time in a raft on dam-released rivers in the Southeast, but dreams of taking his family on a big, multi-day Western river trip.

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Dear Sundog: I was recently invited to a reunion of fellow river guides at a national monument. Some 75 river rats will converge in the same town on the same acre of land after many years working together, where lifelong relationships were forged, greatness had, etc. However, even with many of us entering the lottery for a permit for a day trip on the river, we couldn’t manage to win a single one. Would we be wrong to sneak on the river and launch without permission? Thanks, JensenÌę

Dear Jensen: You’re not alone in thinking that the lottery permit system for our western rivers has become absurd. Last year in Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado border, 18,000 people applied for the 300 overnight permits on the Green and Yampa Rivers. In 2021, vied for the 500 available private permits to float the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. Odds were grimmer still on the Selway River, which flows from Montana to Idaho, where just one of every 122 applicants won the lottery. Here are just a few things that are statistically more likely than drawing a Selway permit: death in a car accident, pregnancy on the pill, acceptance to Harvard,Ìę.

The number of permit applicants has doubled or tripled for many rivers in the past decade, while the number of permits for those placesÌęhas stayed the same. The causes are complicated: What used to be a slightly onerous chore involving paper checks, stamps, envelopes, and phone calls can now be performed online in minutes. The pandemic cancelled many 2020 permits but allowed holders to postpone till 2021, thus there were even fewer available launches.

As bad as it may seem, the lottery system marks an improvement from the previous waiting-list system, where applicants for a Grand Canyon permit waited as long as 20 years.

And so I feel your pain, Jensen, and having been denied any permits for three straight years, I feel the same urge to flaunt the rules and just sneak onto the river when I damn well feel like it.

There are two types of “pirate” trips. The first is stealthily pushing off from shore without being detected by rangers, an undertaking that generally involves the cover of night or some little known dirt-road access point. I don’t think that such a move is deeply unethical: if you follow Leave No Trace principals, your pirate trip won’t really affect the river or other people’s experience.

That said, I have to advise against it, citing theÌętragedy of the commons,Ìęthe idea that when people have access to a shared resource, but act in their own interest, they will quickly deplete the resource. Perhaps the prime resource these rivers offer is solitude. If one party makes a pirate trip, no big deal. If 100 groups break the rules, then you’ve got a circus. What’s more, pirate trips are extremely illegal, and rivers areÌęstrictly monitored, so you may face fines and being banned from future permits.

The second type of pirate trip is one in which someone has a valid permit but the participants presumably don’t know how to captain a boat and pay guides under the table to row them. This turns out to be even more illegal, as it violates laws about commercial licensing. It can result in boats being confiscated and, theoretically, could result in jail time.

All of this raises the question: WhyÌędon’t agencies simply increase the number of permits? For example, in Dinosaur, there are only four launches per day on the Green River, split evenly between private and commercial clients, a number which increases to six for the two glorious months when the Yampa is running. Surely the river could accommodate more!

Well, maybe not. Part of what makes these river canyons precious is their spectacular and inhospitable topography: often you are literally floating between sheer rock cliffs. There are very few suitable camps, and on a typical summer night, every single camp is taken, with groups of up to 25 people. To allow more permits would require somehow clearing and excavating more camps along the narrow riverbanks.

Sundog would argue that of all the public-lands sites in the U.S., western rivers are the crown jewel. Spending a week or two floating the Colorado in the Grand Canyon or the Middle Fork of the Salmon is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And as frustrating as it is to not get a permit to do such a trip every year, the current permit regulationÌęseems to be superior to any other in terms of protecting the exquisite character of these places.

So what to do when you don’t draw a permit? Look into the rivers that don’t require a permit. Many provide a similar experience. And as a last resort, which may cause injury to both your pride and pocketbook, you might have to break downÌęand pay a commercial outfitter to take you downriver.

UPDATE: Despite being locked out of permits via the lottery, Jensen reports that his group was able to snag several cancellation permits. This happens when those who win the lottery fail to claim their permits, so they are doled out on a first-come first-served basis. Jensen and his crew will be able to hit the river—legally—after all.

Got a question of your own? Send it toÌęsundogsalmanac@hotmail.com.

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Dear Sundog: I’ve been invited on a 14-day river trip on the Middle and Main Forks of the Salmon by a guy I work with who I’ll call Trip Leader. We are both guides on another river. Of course I said yes! But I’ve begun to suspect that he sees this as the beginning of a romance—we’ll be sharing his boat and presumably his tent. I see him as a friend, and I don’t want anything more. Since he’s never said anything explicitly romantic, wouldn’t it be presumptuous to tell him I’m not interested? Also, I’m worried he’d disinvite me, and I really want to go!

Part two of my question involves a bunch of other guys (some gals but mainly guys) that we also work with. Trip Leader doesn’t have many friends that he wants to invite on his permit, so he gave me free rein to invite whoever I wanted, so I’ve filled up the roster with a dozen dirtbags and kayakers who I want to hang out with. Given part one of the question, have I now overstepped my bounds? —Rigged to Flop

Dear Rigged: You have indeed floated into an ethical whirlpool here. The short answer is you have done nothing wrong by accepting this invitation. I trust your intuition that Trip Leader holds the hots for you; but if he can’t or won’t express it, then it’s not your responsibility to preemptively reject him. It’s likely that he may be hurt to eventually learn that you’re just not that into him; yet all suitors must one day learn that “let’s be friends” is not an excellent overture of romance. But having done nothing unethical does not insulate you from the turbulent waters of resentment that Sundog predicts will roil up about halfway down the River of no Return.

As for your hesitation to have a heart-to-heart for fear of getting kicked off the trip: that is indeed a bit murkier, ethically. Your hesitation indicates that not only are you quite sure of his unexpressed intentions, but that if he knew yours, he’d go it alone, or even invite some other damsel. Not great. But again, you can only work with the information Trip Leader is providing. If you two are unable to have a cursory conversation about who is sleeping in whose tent, then I agree with you: this relationship does not appear to hold much promise.

Now let’s address the issue of your tag-a-long dude friends. On the one hand, traveling in a pack alleviates the romantic pressure of being alone for a long float with Trip Leader. On the other hand, your quiver of buds might exacerbate his sinking, jealous sensation that you’re not that into him. Both of those outcomes seem par for the course of what you’re proposing here. If it turns out that you do develop a crush on one of these other dirt bag boaters, I’d strongly suggest waiting till after the trip to act on it. Love triangles on river trips are notoriously sour.

Your letter raises questions about dating in the wilderness. Climbing, whitewater, and backcountry skiing are dangerous and expensive, with a steep learning curve. Finding a partner who will provide the gear and expertise is a slick way to bypass outing clubs, novice meetups, and pricey NOLS courses. Meanwhile the hills are thick with lonely gearheads, good with knots and maps and transceivers, not so good with love-notes and emoting. Hence the romantically ambiguous outdoor outing. Are they really leading me up a hard route I’ve wanted to try, or is this a date? And on the flip side: Are they really into me or are they just using me as a free guide?

When Sundog was but a teenage dirtbag, climbing the crags of Southern California during the Reagan years, these sports were still heavily dominated by dudes, and the sight of a woman on the end of a rope was met with hushed envy. It was not that we held the retro-grade chauvinism that said women weren’t capable climbers; however it was a near cousin. We were stunned. We’d determined that we didn’t have the soft skills to ever land a girlfriend: that’s why we were teenage rock climbers, after all. Now we had to wrestle with the seeming paradox: Ìęwatching a friend who’d devoted himself to the lonesome solipsism that used to be rock climbing who was simultaneously not merely in the company of a pretty girl in spandex tights but indeed tied to her, pelvis-to-pelvis, with a length of rope. How did he do that?

Times have changed, Rigged, and clearly you’ve honed the craft of paddling whitewater—you don’t need Trip Leader or anyone else to teach you. That said, he’s offering a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and you’re behaving ethically by accepting his offer. Do the trip. Enjoy. And let me suggest you pack your own pup tent at the bottom of your dry bag to hastily erect when the spirit moves you.

Got a question of your own? Send it toÌęsundogsalmanac@hotmail.com.

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The cover shot of —a wide stretch of the Hudson River—was taken not far from Piermont, New York, where the book’s author, Ben McGrath, lives with his wife and two young children. “It would take me half an hour to be in that same spot,” McGrath says. He often does paddle there, putting in right in front of his house. “I get up before the kids wake up, and go out on the river in my kayak,” he says. “It’s so beautiful.”

In early September 2014, another boater meandered past McGrath’s neighborhood: Dick Conant, a 63-year-old guy in old overalls, steering an overstuffed canoe. He tied up his boat the seawall in front of McGrath’s neighbor’s house and was invited in by the neighbor who was in the middle of celebrating his birthday with some guests, including McGrath. That’s where he first met Conant and learned of his plans to paddle all the way to Florida. McGrath, a New Yorker staff writer, ended up writing about Conant, who had paddled thousands of miles on the nation’s rivers over the years, tracing a watery course through tributaries, major waterways, and small towns along the way.

Nearly three months later, McGrath received a phone call from a wildlife ranger in North Carolina. A red canoe had been discovered overturned in Albemarle Sound, and its owner was nowhere to be found. Among the boat’s many contents was a piece of paper with McGrath’s phone number scribbled on it. McGrath decided to look into Conant’s disappearance, and what he discoveredÌęinstead was the story of an itinerant life of adventure that seemed at once inspiring, sad, and almost impossible in modern-day America.

The resulting book is an instant addition to the canon of literature on eccentric wanderersÌęseeking meaning in the outdoors. We chose it as the April pick for , and to wrap up our discussion, I spoke with McGrathÌęabout the legend of Dick Conant and his ultimate fate.

​șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű: You write inÌęRiverman that you moved up to the Hudson from New York City to connect with your youthful escapism and find your watery part of the world. Where did your affinity for that come from?
McGrath: I grew up in suburban New Jersey, which is about as non-adventurous a place as you can be. But we had a wetland, a sort of birding sanctuary, behind our house that was 150 acres or so—big enough for me to feel like I was, in my own mind, going Daniel Boone back there. It was a place of freedom. My best friend and I would go walking to what’s called a lake but was really more of a bog. We did once get an inflatable boat and launch it. We made it across to the other side before the marsh warden said no boats allowed.

I hate that there was a marsh warden.
Yeah, my attempts to explore that bog were kind of curtailed, but in our twenties, my friend and I did go on a ten-day canoe trip in the Florida Everglades together, which in retrospect is probably the longest time in the past 25 years I’ve gone without checking my email. Part of what I envied in Dick Conant was his ability to drop out like that.

As a formerÌęmagazine editor, I was struck by something you said early in the book—that if you’d heard about Conant in a press release, you probably would’ve ignored it. I’d feel the same way; you can get pretty jaded about those kinds of emails. Why do you think we tend to discount official adventure pitches?
Maybe there have always been people trying to call attention to themselves, but the digital age has made it easy for people to act as though they’ve got a whole promotional apparatus behind them. It’s easy for a lone wanderer to create his own stationary and make a press release and make it seem like he’s backed by the North Face or something. On some level, I tend to assume they’re doing it for the attention rather than the genuine urge to travel.

Conant is the opposite of that pixelated personality.
For sure. You had to talk to him to understand why he was different. You would immediately get that there was something legitimate about this guy. But then when you tried describing him to someone else—Hey, this guy just paddled past my house on his way to Florida!—two-thirds of them were like, Something seems off.

In Bozeman, Montana, where Conant sometimes lived in a lean-to he called the Swamp, people tended to describe him more like a vagrant. But on the river, he was Huck Finn or Forrest Gump or Christopher McCandless. I see the Forrest Gump connection: both represent a very innocent America, full of generosity and kindness. But at the same time, Conant has a Princeton Magazine interview with Paul Krugman in his canoe, and he spends his gambling winnings on The Journals of Lewis and Clark.
When I think about Forrest Gump, he keeps landing at these important moments in American history and interacting with prominent people in spite of being an aw-shucks nobody. That turned out to be true of Conant, too. There’s a moment in the book where he goes to Woodstock and Jimi Hendrix locks eyes with him and tells him, “Hey man, keep the Pope off the moon.” Everyone who grew up with him thought it was totally natural that, of all their friends, of course Dicky would be the one who interacted with Hendrix. So he did have a Forrest Gump way of being on the margins and yet right at the center of history at the same time.

So many people you talked with said that being with him reminded them of dreams they once had, of lighting out on a river or having that sense of freedom.
Totally. People projected things onto him in that way. They sort of imagined their version of him. One of the most interesting things about him is that, across the political spectrum, he was a kindred spirit to super-right-wingers and super-lefty hippies at the same time. They all thought he was their guy.

Another comparison that comes up is Christopher McCandless,Ìęfrom Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild. To me they seem a little different—Conant appeared to relish the society of other people, even as he ran away from society with the capital S. Whereas McCandless seemed to want to explore his own solo survival.
The first time that comparison was put to me was after I wrote my initial Talk of the Town story about Dick. I got a letter from a reader saying, “He reminds me not only of Forrest Gump, but of Chris McCandless.” At that point, Dick hadn’t disappeared yet. So that turned out to be prescient. And repeatedly, people would make that comparison.

To me, the main difference is their age—there’s about 40 years separating them. Chris McCandless died in his early twenties, and when I met Dick Conant, he was 63. But they both were successful, smart people who weren’t marginal characters as young people. What’s most compelling to me about Chris McCandless is the effect he had on the other people who met him. He was losing his faith in society with a capital S and going farther and farther out into the bush. But all the people who met him remembered him powerfully. What validated Dick as a character to me was the same thing that validated McCandless as a character, which is to say that he had a positive, powerful effect on everyone he met.

But I think because Dick was older, he had come to realize what he prized in life. He would meet young people in coffee shops who would speak with idealism about what’s pure and what’s not, and he would laugh and say, Oh, you’re young—you’ve got a lot of life in front of you. So by the time I met Dick, he had figured out that what he needed in his life was a healthy mix of nature on his own and then friends. And he found friends on the rivers. Had you met Chris McCandless at age 60, had he survived, that same thing might have been true.

Let’s talk a little bit about your writing the book. One acquaintance of Conant’s tells you, “Look, if you have his journals and you can’t make a book out of it, then you’re in trouble, dude.” Give us a sense of how much material you had.
So there are thousands of photographs—just the memory cards to his digital camera on his last trip, I think, had 4,400 photographs. Then in the storage lockers, there were hundreds of photographs from old Polaroids and thousands of slides I never even got around to looking at. There were maps by the hundreds, if not thousands, and marble composition books, separate from his 2,000 pages of typed manuscript-style journals. There were diaries of his life in the Bozeman Swamp, essays and short stories that he wrote in college, studying art, or in his twenties, working at a hospital. There were folders of files from his time in the Navy, including from a tribunal about his mental health, and questionnaires that he filled out while seeking alcohol treatment after getting a DUI in Wyoming in the 1970s. And there were receipts by the thousands, bundled up and organized with rubber bands. Even his canoe was full of receipts.

What was the weirdest thing in his canoe?
There were like 17 toothbrushes.

When you have that amount of material, how do you begin to put it together into a book?
This was the challenge—and also what was appealing to me about the project. I’d been doing a fair amount of sports journalism at The New Yorker, where you’re getting extremely limited amounts of time with famous people and lots of layers of handling. This was the exact opposite of that—full access to the inside of an entire human being. But you have to try much harder to think about what to include. It was easy to get lost in this stuff. Because I had met Dick and knew him to be an amazing person, I could just be endlessly fascinated. For example, he had all these calendars, and my wife had to remind me, Do you really need to see what he did in October of that year, as opposed to in November?

When was the last time you talked with Conant himself?
I got an email from him a month and a half after we met, in October 2014, saying, I read your article, good job. He was in Delaware at that point. And that’s the last communication I had. Then, a month and a half later, I get a phone call from a park ranger in North Carolina saying they’re investigating a missing boater.

Has any new evidence come up about his disappearance since you finished the book?
Nothing. I’m going down to North Carolina to the scene of his disappearance in a few weeks, and I’ll be curious to hear what else they’ve learned. Every so often I’ll get an email from someone who says, I think I met him. And they’ll send me a picture, and it isn’t him.

So he kind of lives on, paddling the rivers out there?
He does. He lives on in people’s minds. Definitely there are people who prefer—or choose, depending on how you look at it—to think that he is continuing to do his thing. On some level, what matters is that you believe that it’s possible. And the actual fact is sort of secondary.

To me, that sense of possibility was always what was most powerful about his story. So much of it seemed implausible, yet all of it was true. So the overall experience of immersing yourself in Dick Conant’s life story was of just being amazed at how much more is possible than you are willing to grant.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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“It’s just one of them things,” Mitch Glidden tells me. He’s smiling wide behind a thick horseshoe mustache. “You gotta get heads in beds.” When Glidden speaks, you listen; not only because he’s an inveterate storyteller, or because his eyes crackle like fireworks, or because he’s arguably the jolliest man in Hooker County, Nebraska, but also because he kneads together every syllable like a firm sourdough. You lean forward a little. You bend your ear. Come again?

It’s the night before the 14th annual Polar Bear Tank Race in the village of Mullen—a hiccup on Highway 2 in western Nebraska—and the community center is abuzz with volunteers. They’re stocking the bar. They’re shuffling papers. They’re stirring homemade soups in hand-me-down roasters. Behind us, a woman named Linda is wearing a dirndl and pigtails and carefully unpacking her landscape paintings: a rusty windmill, a snowy yucca, a preening egret. “Don’t forget me in your story,” she’ll later say, slipping me a brochure for as if it were a crisp Benjamin. (You’re welcome, Linda.)

For years now, I’ve maintained a cool distance from what Nebraskans call “tanking.” Not that I’m an especially seasoned paddler, but the notion of floating downriver in me as a little too on the nose. I’ve spent most of my career in journalism trying to complicate the popular perception of the Great Plains, especially my home state of Nebraska, and tanking seemed to reinforce just about every hayseed stereotype we’re associated with. Fill said cattle tank with six fat white dudes listening to Cornhusker football on a portable stereo while crushing a 30-pack of Busch Light and, bingo, we have ourselves a winner.

Regardless, no one has done more to popularize tanking than Glidden, and for good reason. He and his wife, Patty, now hunched beside him in a black jacket and blue jeans, bought the Sandhills Motel in 1993. Described by Google Maps as an “unassuming motel with a picnic area,” the Sandhills is the only lodge in Mullen, which is the only town in Hooker County, which boasts more than 23,000 cows but fewer than 750 people. Given the demographics, and the fact that Mullen—a dusty cow town settled in 1888—is at least four hours from the closest major airport, getting “heads in beds” requires more than clean sheets and satellite TV.

What it does have, however, is water. “The best water,” Patty interjects: the Middle Loup River, just two miles north, and its trickster tributary, the Dismal, 13 miles south. Both slither through the heart of the Nebraska Sandhills——and because they’re fed almost exclusively by springs discharged from the Ogallala Aquifer beneath it, rather than from surface runoff, they’re two of the cleanest and most uniformly flowing streams in the world.

“You can plan a trip here three years from now,” Glidden says. “The water’s gonna be there.”

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In late November 2014, a fisherman and his young son came upon an overturned red plastic canoe while they were out in the cypress swamps of North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound. The weather had been bad, and nobody was around. In the boat, according to New Yorker staff writer Ben McGrath’s new bookÌę, they found “bags within bags within knotted bags,” securedÌęby a carefully rigged web of ropes. In addition to maps and charts and water bottles, the canoe contained “seventeen toothbrushes, fourteen ChapSticks, six cigarette lighters, a sewing kit, a socket, a digital camera, three Louis L’Amour novels, a mud-caked Samsung flip phone, two thumb drives, eleven pens, a deck of playing cards, a marine radio, a four-foot extension cord, two CVS key fobs, John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography”—enough to fill two trailers. AlsoÌędiscoveredÌęwithin the hullÌęwas a piece of paper with McGrath’s phone number scribbled on it.

Several months earlier, McGrath had met an itinerant canoeist on the Hudson River outside McGrath’s home in Piermont, New York. Dick Conant, as the man introduced himself, was large and bearded; he looked like a river Santa, McGrath writes, a man “who had been dressing more or less exclusively in bib overalls since Woodstock.” As it turns out, Conant was a former janitor, surgical scrub nurse, and navigator for a Navy ship. He first took to the nation’s rivers in 1999 at age 49; living in Boise, Idaho, fed up with everything, he bought a plastic canoe at Walmart, plopped it into the Yellowstone River, and headed for the Gulf of Mexico. He’d been paddling off and on ever since.

We’re excited to announce that Riverman is the ’s April pick. It’s a remarkable work of nonfiction—the river wanderer kept copious notes on his travels (many of them found stuffed in the canoe),Ìęand through the seemingly fabulist tales in Conant’s journals, McGrath was able to track down dozens of good Samaritans and fast friends that Conant made along the way. What begins for McGrath as a fact-checking exercise turns into an exhaustive journey into Conant’s life on the water, as McGrath meets character after character who prove that nearly all of Conant’s diary entries were true.

Nearly everyone who encountered Conant remembers him as a seminal figure who provided a glimpse of freedom that most of us only dream about. Conant swills river water and lives on hot dogs, Tabasco sauce, and malt liquor. He stops in little towns and goes to church and the library. He reads novels and rubs household ammonia on his bug bites. Back in Bozeman, Montana, where he lived on occasion in a makeshift camp, people saw him as a vagrant. Yet on the river, he was a folk hero.

Before Riverman, McGrath wrote not one but two New Yorker stories on Conant: , when the two met, and , after he heard that Conant had disappeared. Sometimes you read a book and think, Huh, the article was enough. Not so with McGrath’s debut effort, which gives readers an indelible American character, a mashup of Huck Finn, Christopher McCandless, and Forrest Gump who thrives in a riverbank subculture far removed from politics and Twitter. “The generosity and kindness,” McGrath writes, “the sense of community, amid a nation that seemed otherwise to be pulling apart at the seams—were a large part of what had so struck me when visiting with Conant beneath the Hudson Palisades.”

If you’d like to join our șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Book Club conversation about Riverman, head over to our , where we’ll be posting discussion prompts throughout the month and also soliciting questions for an upcoming interview with McGrath. (This interview will be available exclusively for șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű+ members, but our Facebook group is free for anyone to join.) If you’re not on Facebook, you can always send us a note at letters@outsideim.com—we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

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