Tuolumne Ripple Blog

Paddle to the Sea in the San Francisco Chronicle

A banner year to raft mountain rivers
Tom Stienstra, Chronicle Outdoors Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2010

Spring’s biggest water show - a splash of summer - is about to let loose in California’s rivers. Warm sun is the trigger. Read more…

Comments Off Posted by Karyn on Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Paddle to the Sea on KPFA

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Why Paddle to the Sea? Listen to Tuolumne River Trust Executive Director Eric Wesselman discuss Paddle to the Sea 2010 by clicking here (scroll to 18:10)

Comments Off Posted by Karyn on Monday, May 10th, 2010

Tuolumne River Trust Wins Grant

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The Tuolumne River Trust is pleased to announce we won Patagonia’s 2nd Annual Voice Your Choice grant campaign. Thank you to all who voted for us! To read more visit our webpage about it by clicking on this link http://www.tuolumne.org/content/article.php/20090923130604530

Comments Off Posted by Karyn on Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Watch the start of the conservation movement and hisotry of Hetch Hetchy on PBS

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Watch Ken Burn’s The National Parks: America’s Best Idea on PBS. Episode two features the early history of the conservation movement in America, including the history of the creation of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park. Visit The National Parks website for details and to download full episodes at http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks

Comments (0) Posted by Karyn on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

NRP Radio Stream: Swimming Upstream

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Swimming Upstream: Can Our Rivers Be Saved?
National Radio Project
August 19, 2009
LISTEN to the radio broadcast, click here

Freshwater is our most vital natural resource. It’s a finite one too, although we don’t always treat it that way. Contamination, overconsumption, misuse and abuse have made freshwater increasingly scarce around the world. So how do we protect our water supply? Many say start at the source––take care of the rivers. On this edition, we talk to river stewards across the U.S. working to protect, cleanup and restore our valuable fresh waterways.

This program is made possible in part by the Park Foundation.

Featuring:
Patrick Koepele, Tuolumne River Trust Deputy Executive Director; Alex Matthiesson, Riverkeeper Inc. President; Sharon Ruggi, CEASE member; Bonnie Smith, Croton Point Park beach-goer; Art Parola, University of Louisville Civil Engineering Professor and The Stream Institute Director; Cindy Harnett, University of Louisville Professor;
Dr. Dorothy Merritts, Franklin and Marshall College Geomorphology Professor.

Comments (1) Posted by Karyn on Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Tuolumne River is focus of protection plan: Yosemite officials will take comments on the draft in the fall

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Source: Modesto Bee
Monday, August 3, 2009
By Mark Grossi
mgrossi@fresnobee.com

Out of the limelight, Yosemite National Park officials are drafting a plan to keep development and future crowds from making a mess of the pristine Tuolumne River, the park’s “other” major stream.

The Tuolumne has none of the legal problems or public controversy of the better-known Merced River in Yosemite Valley, where millions each year view the iconic panorama of Half Dome, El Capitan and Yosemite Falls.

Since the 1990s, the Merced has been at the center of activist lawsuits. Such legal action has changed National Park Service policy nationally and forced a complete rewrite of the Merced River protection plan.

In this tale of two rivers, the Tuolumne is all but invisible.

The Tuolumne River gets thousands, not millions, of people passing through Tuolumne Meadows, with its lodge, gas station, store, campground, stables, sewage treatment plant and parking problems.

Crowding problems are on a much smaller scale, and the challenge is to keep it that way. That’s the expected thrust of a draft Tuolumne protection plan, scheduled to be released this fall for public comment.

“Services are spread out at Tuolumne Meadows,” said Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman. “Is there a better way to combine facilities? How should we address the parking around the trailheads?”

Aside from the crowds, the big difference between Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite Valley is elevation. The valley is at 4,000 feet, low enough to keep roads open year-round.

Tuolumne Meadows, at 8,600 feet, is covered with snow and closed from November to May.

The Park Service does not plow the snow during the winter on Tioga Road, the route to Tuolumne Meadows.

In Yosemite Valley, visitors range from international tourists staying in motels to hard-core rock climbers who camp out and climb the sheer face of El Capitan.

Plenty of tourists just drive through Tuolumne Meadows to look at the sights, but it is considered the premier launching point for backpackers and hikers to get into the northern half of Yosemite’s alpine backcountry.

Some of the park’s largest glaciers at one time filled the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. The alpine landscape features glacially scarred granite domes and spires. Small glaciers remain near the crest at 13,000 feet, slowly melting into sparkling streams that run to the Lyell and Dana forks of the Tuolumne River.

“A lot of this area is above the tree line,” said longtime ranger Dick Ewart. “It’s known for the wide-open views and expansiveness. Every step, you have a different view.”

Park planning officials have been studying the Tuolumne region for the past few years to prepare the draft.

The process could have started more than 20 years ago, when the Tuolumne and the Merced were designated federally protected rivers under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The federal law requires that such rivers have a protection plan written. But Park Service policy at the time required that river protections be included as part of general park planning, not a separate plan.

An activist lawsuit in the late 1990s over the Merced River changed the Park Service policy nationwide. A federal judge ordered a separate Merced plan under Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Now any national park with a river designated for protection under the act must provide a separate plan.

In a different lawsuit, a federal judge rejected the Park Service’s first attempt at making a Merced River plan. The judge decided Yosemite needed a specific limit for the number of people who could visit the river.

As a result, Yosemite must produce a new Merced plan by September 2012. But the Tuolumne was not part of the lawsuit, so there is no deadline for its plan.

Sierra Club official George Whitmore said the Park Serv-ice should take advantage of the opportunity to delay the Tuolumne plan until the Merced plan is settled. “My advice always has been to do the Merced first. If they can do that, then the Tuolumne would be pretty straightforward,”he said.

Comments (1) Posted by Karyn on Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Paddle To The Sea Clavey Kayak Videos

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We’ve just posted three new Clavey River kayaking videos from Paddle To The Sea 2009. Enjoy!

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Comments (0) Posted by Karyn on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Paddle To The Sea - Paddler's on the news June 4

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Stockton to Oakland
June 4, 2009

Sacramento News Channel 10 piece on Paddle To The Sea as our paddler’s passed through Stockton and on into the Bay-Delta.

Comments (0) Posted by Karyn on Friday, June 5th, 2009

Paddle To The Sea Paddler's Blog - June 1

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Big Bend to The San Joaquin Confluence
June 1, 2009

The River transformed herself into a mermaid today, stretched out on clay embankments under sumi-ink skies, her lush green hair filled with migrating arctic birds, endangered species, and mysterious swallows, listening . . . listening to the babblings of her myriad rainbow children.

And like children, we acted our age (geologically speaking).

We bickered about how to steer canoes and kayaks before the sagacity of mountains, paddled furiously and precariously into the swells and crests of the wind, and gazed at the backs of farms mutely as they returned to their fold, eventually forgetting ourselves and remembering the wisdom of a River that never bores because it is never the same: I cannot speak enough about the sublime ability of the Tuolumne River and its multidimensional environs to constantly present ever-new, ever-pleasing variations on a theme - creation - which only the combined powers of all the great creative geniuses of music and painting and sculpture (all equally silent when it comes to meaning) might serve to humbly model in the human realm.

Eventually, as in the greatest of these experiences of high art, one is reduced to spiritual contemplation of the wonder of it all. That is all one can do before the Tuolumne’s majesty: close the eyes of the critic and open the eyes of the soul.

washington eli movie daybreakers movie

It is late and there is always more to say but I doubt even a novel a thousand pages long would do the experience justice, so I shall yet again thank the people that are the life blood of the “voice” of the Tuolumne - the TRT and Friends of the River - and hope that anyone who reads these words will find their way to a kayak, raft, canoe, or innertube and just do it: touch the Tuolumne by swimming its veins.

Blessings and Peace.

-written by Emilio Martinez (Modesto, CA)

—

Legion Park to Fox Grove
May 31, 2009

If the Tuolumne may be considered an Emerald Queen in its Sierra manifestations, Imprisoned and Ghostly Nobility during its Don Pedro phase, and a Country Beauty during its descent from La Grange to Waterford, then perhaps the best description of our Majesty in Her Legion Park - to - Big Bend garb is that of Cinderella. I’m not trying to be trite or unimaginative here, what I mean is that after the Tuolumne’s creep through the homeless camps, fishing holes, arson-burned river banks, defunct Dennet Dam, past sunken fishing boats (five at least), felled flood-plain almond trees, topped with a good dousing of cow muffin-perfumed swamp gases, even a Queen emerges covered in the cinders and muck of real life as we know it in these troubled regions.

Nonetheless, the “Paddling to the Sea” company was fine and filled with story, song, and revelation; their faces fair and wise; their hearts still courageous enough to brave possible death by choosing life; and their eyes and ears eager to identify the symphony of wildlife that still calls the Tuolumne its home (today’s additions: dogs, crows, palm trees).

Our crew of Tuolumne River Trust personnel and their Grateful Rowers have been at it at least five-days-straight on the River (this is not counting at least three months of advance preparation on the part of TRT) and we are battered and bruised but still strong and excited by the new face that the River presents every day with each new bend.

So, perhaps fittingly, we began today’s ten-mile row on the nascent topology of the future “Gateway Park” beneath the 7th St. “Lions’ Bridge,” a place where ornate four-foot-high crucifixes memorialized the tragic death of 14-year-old Jeremy Wilson, a drowning victim of the ancient, defunct, and evil Dennett Dam, and ended it at the current “Big Bend” renovation site, where thousands of newly planted trees no higher than year-old-babies dotted the landscape in their blue and red ribbons - all a product of the indefatigable efforts of the TRT’s committed humanity.

I leave you with one image that marks the end of today’s trip in memory: the pale blue gauze of the Coastal Range Mountains slowly emerging from the horizon to steadfastly gaze back at us from beyond Westley, the small migrant town of my childhood days, the place where the River first entered my consciousness as something to be feared and revered: to many a theologian these are the two faces of the sacred.

Amen.

-written by Emilio Martinez (Modesto, CA)

—

Fox Grove to the San Joaquin Confluence
May 30 to June 1, 2009

Cognitive dissonance has been a recurring theme along the T. While our state, our country, and the global economy continue to fret about a contrived crisis, a legitimately terrifying phenomenon languishes in the backwaters of public consciousness.

Today our group of roughly thirty paddlers took a break at the Dos Rios Ranch. A 1600 acre stretch of riverfront restoration, this section of the T provides habitat for migratory birds traveling from origins as farflung as Argentina. A member of the Lyons family, local ranchers in the area, spoke of efforts that he made in his youth to nurture fledgling hawks from fallen nests back to health. Many local’s commitment to ecological awareness, inspiring as it is, has thus far failed to be contagious along the Tuolumne River corridor.

As Saturday’s group of more than sixty paddlers made its triumphant entrance into Tuolumne River Regional Park in Modesto, we witnessed a startling spectacle of thoughtless water use. For some unfathomable reason, a homeowner on the riverbank chose the hottest hours of the day for overhead lawn irrigation. Within feet of the beautiful meandering river, stunning ambivalence about the precious nature of freshwater was flagrantly displayed. Somehow, modern economics have failed to exact the consequences of such behavior on this particular water consumer’s pocket book.

In this time of economic distress, the public purse is subject to extensive trimming. Currently, bond-based funding of the Tuolumne River Trust is one such line item. In other words, protection of freshwater systems has been placed in the non-essential category. Let me repeat that, as it seems somehow important. We have contrived a financial reality in which protection of the lifeblood of human existence, water, is set aside to address a “crisis.” If this way of thinking occurs to you as insane, we are on the same page.

Many political struggles, indeed wars, of the past few decades have been predicated on energy issues, particularly those involving crude oil. Admittedly, when energy is not cheap and readily available, economies suffer. But when water is not consciously protected, people die. As long as the Tuolumne River Trust and similar organizations are on the budgetary chopping block when the economy contracts, the economy is based on suicidal principles. Let us all participate in the end of such insanity.

-written by Owen Segerstrom (Sonora, CA)

—

Comments (0) Posted by Karyn on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Paddle To The Sea Paddler's Blog - May 30

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Fox Grove to Tuolumne River Regional Park
May 30, 2009

The surprise for the day was that my old stomps - Legion Park and TRRP - look completely different from the vantage point of a kayak on the River’s surface. Some visuals betokened our peculiar Central Valley “look”: there were the sudden appearance of palm trees behind the oaks and willows; the five bright yellow shopping carts submerged or waiting on the banks for their shiftless owners; and the three homeless sleeping bag spots.

All told, I can genuinely say for the first time in my life: the exposed flanks of the Tuolumne were a joy to behold.

A few more things of note, some nice, some just off-putting: the clarity of the water disappeared as we progressed from Fox Grove (Hughson) towards Modesto, going from a fairly deep green of decent transparency to the opaque silt-colored pale oil-green that we Modestans are quite used to, not only that, the counter breezes and slowing current acted like a turgid brake on our once swift progression on the water; and of course we started smelling the redolent fumes of either fermenting processed vegetable matter (from where?) or they might have been the fertilizer smells wafting over the River from the nearby farmers’ fields. I don’t know. Besides the obvious enjoyment of seeing your familiar haunts appear new, fresh, and full of the variety and appeal that Nature’s fecund imagination can contrive, was just sublime. And the River yielded some surreal grace notes, too, specifically in the form of an exquisitely colored horse - sporting every imaginable shade of black and white - lounging serenely underneath the Mitchell Bridge, a place I usually associate with graffiti, industrial consumer detritus, and shiftless “recreational” types: this image shall always remain in my conscious as almost mystical, an ancient ancestral avatar.

I want to end on the positive note here. I want to give credit where credit (and kudos) must be given: every one of the human representatives involved in this venture have displayed nothing but stellar and solid professionalism, humanity, and good cheer: from the Hispanic Leadership Youth Council teens to the TRT people, especially the latter, who’ve had the huge task of dealing with boats, people, hunger, and rallies.

I cannot imagine an undertaking of this scope being carried out in a better manner by better people under more challenging conditions for a greater cause.

- by Emilio Martinez (Modesto, CA)

—

Comments (0) Posted by Karyn on Monday, June 1st, 2009

Tuolumne Ripple Blog

Tuolumne River Trust’s blog

Paddle to the Sea in the San Francisco Chronicle

Paddle to the Sea on KPFA

Tuolumne River Trust Wins Grant

Watch the start of the conservation movement and hisotry of Hetch Hetchy on PBS

NRP Radio Stream: Swimming Upstream

Tuolumne River is focus of protection plan: Yosemite officials will take comments on the draft in the fall

Paddle To The Sea Clavey Kayak Videos

Paddle To The Sea - Paddler's on the news June 4

Paddle To The Sea Paddler's Blog - June 1

Paddle To The Sea Paddler's Blog - May 30

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