Sea Kayaking the Lower Colorado

Kayak Cruising Colorado

Our boat, a fold-up sea kayak, is beached at Sandy Cove. Bedrolls laid out, campfire crackling, we're ready for a night under the stars. Standing alone on the beach, I watch the dusky Colorado slide past and recall my last time on the river. It was summer. The river teemed with candy-colored, chromeplated powerboats towing water-skiers or simply hurtling along under full throttle. I remember thinking that to be on the river then in a self-propelled boat would be risky.

Now, in mid-December, darkness descends at 5:30 P.M., and the air quickly grows cold. A great blue heron, huge wings flapping in slow motion, gives me a sidelong glance and utters a surprised "quark" as it glides downriver. Except for birds, a few camp mice, beavers that come after dark to nibble on cattail roots, and coyotes that chorus through the night, the beaches of Sandy Cove belong to us alone.

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Early this morning, we put in at the Riviera Marina beneath the Interstate 10 bridge at Blythe, California. Freeway noises quickly disappeared. Soon only muffled sounds of big trucks gearing down for the river crossing floated toward us.

A fisherman in a small boat waves across the channel as he putt-putts slowly upstream against the current. We smile and wave back.

We're headed for Martinez Lake, four days and 70 miles of paddling from our launch site. The whole way, my boat mate, Smokey Knowlton, and I will see only four other boats. Photographer Jack Dykinga, paddling a solo canoe, accompanies us. Our destination is Smokey's boat dock.

In winter the lower Colorado is a lazy river, perfect for canoes and kayaks. The agricultural fields that lie behind levees on both sides of the river from Blythe down to Walter's Camp, roughly half our run, don't need much irrigation this time of year, so dams upstream release little water. The river becomes shallow, and the current slows to about three miles an hour. During periods of peak release in the growing season, the channel deepens, and the current quickens. Then jet skis and speedboats swarm to the launch ramps.

In December, however, boats drawing more than a few inches of water would soon run aground. Fully loaded, our kayak fairly skims the water's surface, yet twice we run up on sandbars and have to wade icy water to tow ourselves free.

We move languidly, at the river's pace, drifting with the current, steering with foot stirrups attached to rudder cables. From time to time, we lift a paddle to steer round a sandbar or to cross the channel to find the current again. Birds, accustomed to seeing things adrift, are not easily spooked by our kayak. Paddles stowed, we drift close to pelicans, cormorants, herons, egrets, Canada geese, kingfishers, ducks, and coots without alarming them.

But not eagles. With field glasses, we make out the shapes of bald eagles feeding or resting on sandbars far downstream. They've seen us first, however, with vision even stronger than our binoculars, and flee before we come close. Suddenly Smokey spots something swimming across the wide channel far ahead. Racing to intercept it, we make out a coyote dog-paddling furiously toward the near shore. I'm amazed. Only beavers should swim in water this frigid, I think. We try to turn the coyote long enough for Jack to catch up and capture him on film, but he easily dodges around our boat and scrambles ashore.

Jack and I are tough guys, we think. We do marathon backpacks in rough terrain, sleep outdoors in winter, try to get ourselves lost in Arizona's outbacks. Smokey is tougher. For this trip, he shows up in a light

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denim jacket worn over a thin cotton shirt. His sleeping bag, stuffed in a plastic garbage bag, is a no-name thrift-store brand. For ground insulation and weather protection, he's packed a couple of vinyl tarps. "Got any warm clothes?" I ask. "Huh?" Smokey responds. "Oh, yeah, I think I've got a wool cap here somewhere."

It's cold the first night at Sandy Cove. Around midnight I wake to stare up at icy stars. Layered in expensive cold-weather garb"If it doesn't fail in the backcountry, it's worth the price," I'm fond of saying I'm warmly cocooned inside my goosedown sleeping bag. I hear an odd rustling that I can't at first pinpoint. It's Smokey, tossing and turning in his vinyl wrappers. He's cold.

In the morning, I find a lump of ice in my water bottle. Layers of frost cover our gear. "Were you cold last night?" I ask. "A little," Smokey answers nonchalantly. "But I got up at five and ran around some. That helped."

Jack calls from fireside where he's drying a sock. "Well, Smokey, as my friend Bill always says, 'If it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger.'" Smokey laughs.

Later Smokey and I are towing our kayak off a sandbar. I'm wearing waterproof socks and river sandals; Smokey's splashing along barefoot. "What was that saying again?" he shouts. "If it doesn't hurt, it won't make you tougher? Or something like that.' "Something like that," I answer.

Smokey's our guide. He lives on Martinez Lake right next to the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge. He's a river rat. All his life he's worked around boats and rivers. As a boy in the 1950s, he spent Huck Finn summer vacations on the lower Colorado. He swam and fished in its waters, explored abandoned mine shafts and tumbledown miner's cabins, tried to catch burros gone feral, and charted the river's side channels and backwaters. Later, as a teenager, he worked as a dockhand at Fisher's Landing.

Today Smokey and his wife, Sheila, operate a tour-boat business, Yuma River Tours, from their home on Martinez Lake. If there's anyone who knows more about the lower Colorado River than Smokey, I'd like to meet him. He knows the river's channel so well he can navigate it in the dark. He knows which backwater bays provide the best shelter for waterfowl. "Turn in down past that paloverde on the left bank,' he'd say, and we'd squeeze through a narrow opening in the tules and find ourselves in a hidden cove.

He knows all that and more. Time and again, as we paddled along, Smokey discoursed in his offhand manner about the river's history. "That's Lighthouse Rock over there," he'd say. "Stern-wheelers used it as a navigational landmark to tell when they had to cross the river to hunt deeper water." Or, "The reason this old cabin survived is that it was built of stone by Italian miners. All the adobe ones weathered away."

Squeezed into the cockpit of a sea kayak, there are boaters who can paddle all day. I'm not one of them. Daily we launched in the morning, paddled and drifted for two or three hours, then beached our boats to stretch our stiffened limbs, rest, or snack. We ate a lot. River running is hungry work. Our rest stops, picked by Smokey, were often sheltered coves out of the wind. Sometimes they offered a ruined cabin to investigate or steep hills to climb where we were treated to bird's-eye views of the river. One morning we climbed Draper Rock to see where the river, a distant thin ribbon, bent to At some point on a long river run . . . you fall into a rhythm, and, if the weather holds and the company is good, you feel you could go forever. an oxbow, doubling back on itself. Scalloped sandbars sparkled in the early sunlight. A flight of nine white pelicans, seeming close enough to touch, winged past just below us.

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There was a time when the lower Colorado was commonly referred to as Arizona's Nile. Travelers in the mid-19th century commented on the large cottonwoods, varieties of willows, and mesquite bosques that lined the riparian corridor. Mining changed that. Timbers were needed to shore up mine shafts, and mills required fuel wood. Mining communities sprouted along the river. Steamboats, which ran 590 miles upriver to the mouth of the Virgin River, supplied the towns, transporting supplies from ocean-going vessels at Puerta Isabel on the Sea of Cortes. Steamboat boilers devoured firewood by the cord. Soon the banks of the lower Colorado were stripped of native species. Now tamarisk, an exotic introduced to control bank erosion, dominates the river's edge. Like most major river systems in the West, the Colorado is domesticated. Harnessed by dams and levees, dredged, channeled, and rechanneled, its waters siphoned off for agriculture or to be delivered by aqueduct to cities as far away as Tucson, it's a wild river no more. Except periodically. Maybe every 20 years or so, when the river gods raise their voices in anger, a tamed river runs wild again. The last time on the lower Colorado was in 1983. Flooding broke levees, filled sloughs with sand or gravel, gouged new channels, erased beaches, and ripped homes from their foundations.

American white pelicans allow our kayakers to drift close enough for a good look. These birds don't dive into the water but feed by dipping their beaks while swimming.

It always happens. At some point on a long river run or a strenuous backpack, you fall into a rhythm, and, if the weather holds and the company is good, you feel you could go forever. Call it bliss. Our last day on the river, especially, is like that. The strong wind of the day before has quit, and the wide river is placid. Although our paddling is unhurried, we break a sweat in the warm sun.

Even so, Smokey's dock at Martinez Lake is a welcome sight. After four days of freeze-dried food and chocolate bars, the promise of a hot lunch lures us in.

WHEN YOU GO

The months between November and May when there is less boat traffic are best for canoeing or kayaking on the lower Colorado River. During winter the river is shallow and the current slows down. For further information, contact Yuma River Tours, (602) 783-4400, or Arizona Game and Fish Department (Yuma), (602) 342-0091.Travel Guide: For detailed information about the great variety of places to travel in Arizona, we recommend the guidebook Travel Arizona and Arizona: Land of Contrasts, a video by Bill Leverton that offers a storyteller's perspective of the state. Both will direct you to exciting destinations and outof-the-way attractions. Our Arizona Road Atlas, featuring maps of 27 cities, mileage charts, and points of interest, also is a necessity for travelers. To order, telephone toll-free 1 (800) 543-5432. In the Phoenix area or outside the U.S., call (602) 258-1000.