CANOEING THE LOWER COLORADO

Canoe Quest

DEFEATED BY THE UNEXPECTED WIND that threatens to blow us back up the Colorado River, we beach the canoe and shelter for the night behind a screen of salt cedars. Twelve miles is all we managed half the distance hoped for on Day One. Photographer Jim Marshall and I are on a four-day 69mile paddle that will take us from the Interstate 10 bridge at Ehrenberg downstream to Martinez Lake near Imperial Damthe last long navigable stretch of the Colorado River before it is siphoned off to Arizona and California farms and homes. We planned stops on both the Arizona and California sides at archaeological sites, pioneer cabins and old mines.

Early April is generally a good time to canoe the lower Colorado. We expected flat water and lazy eddies, and forgot to bring a good map. At the Ehrenberg put-in, we shifted carefully, searching for the canoe's balance. With a bag of soft drinks tied behind, we began like two guys on a picnic, the 13-foot canoe burdened deep in the water with its load.

A large man, Marshall supplied forward ballast. Between us lay gear bags. Ammo cans protected cameras and film. When the wind drove the canoe backward over the drink tow, we pulled in. It was April Fool's Day. The free map we carried was unreliable; we weren't sure where we were.

The morning of Day Two brought light winds scented with citrus blossoms from a California orchard. A 3.5-mileper-hour current pulls at the canoe's bottom, compelling us downstream. Fifteen-foot walls of rock rip-rap that armors the Arizona and California banks for most of the first 35 miles imprison not only the 125-yard-wide river but us.

Around a bend, we catch up to 11 Boy Scouts and leaders from San Diego, the first people we've encountered on the river, drifting in wood and canvas kayaks they'd built. Head Scoutmaster Michael T. Beauvais, a U.S. Navy noncom, paddling a canoe, invites us to join them on shore. The Scouts have made about 25 miles in two days. “We camp in places like this,” Beauvais says, taking in the thin beach fronting a thicket of arrowwood. “It doesn't matter which side of the river.” The previous night, they'd had a close encounter with the river. Water had lapped close to their camp after rising 4 feet after releases from the Parker hydroelectric dam 100 miles upstream. By chance alone, Marshall and I had ended up on high ground. We part and the Scouts fall behind. By midday the wind builds. We learn later that winds frequently blow on the river - big muscle winds that race easterly across California farmland and north from Mexico before heading full-bore upstream.

A FOUR-DAY PADDLE DOWN THE LOWER COLORADO RIVER SWELLS INTO A HIGH SEAS-STYLE ADVENTURE

Along the California bank, we find a meager lee to shelter us from the walloping winds now leaping like fury over the arrowwood and cane growing from the riprap. My left hand touches water with each dip of the paddle. We have 5 inches of stern freeboard, yet we're flying downstream at about 7 miles per hour and soon reach Mile 22 at the Oxbow Bridge crossing. A camper with a river map shows us we are 12 miles from our rendezvous at Walter's Landing, California, with outfitters Robert V. "Smokey" Knowlton and Judy Key of Martinez Lake. Walter's Landing, where the rip-rap finally ends, is a popular canoe putin. Knowlton, 62, and Key, 51, arrive in a powerboat, with a 21-foot canoe lashed to the stern, to guide us through the Cibola and Imperial national wildlife refuges.

Although we have already paddled 25 miles, Knowlton urges us back on the water, and - bucking a stiff wind - we cross to the Arizona side, tie to arrowwood cane and hike in the Cibola refuge to a heap of melted adobe overlooking Cibola Lake: the remains of 49er W.D. Rood's 1860s cattle spread.

Rood made a lot of money selling cattle but shunned banks. After he drowned on April 29, 1870, near where we crossed, treasure-hunters descended on his place, pocking it with digging. Legend claims that Rood's ghost still gallops about the area.

Near-gale-force wind tugs at us as we walk wild burro trails across cobblestone flats back to the river. By now, 3-foot curl waves are marching upstream through a riot of whitecaps that recall the day of Rood's death.

According to a historical account, "With a heavy gale blowing and the river rising rapidly, he [Rood] went under while the foreman barely made the shore by clinging to the boat." I figure one ghost is enough and refuse to get back into the canoe.

Day Three dawns on a flat river, but a cold front arriving overnight threatens rain. On the river, I shake in layers of summerweight clothing. The ducks and geese are gone, but herons and mergansers fly up before us. At Mile 41, a faint trail from the California bank takes us to the J.C. Draper Cabin, an 1890s homestead within the 25,125-acre Imperial refuge. Wild burro trails, dung mounds and the plant damage they cause abound. The burros are feral descendents of pack animals released by early miners. Two years ago, Knowlton and Key drove powerboats to haul out 200 burros caught in an emergency environmental-protection roundup by U.S. Bureau of Land Management cowboys in the hills beyond the Draper cabin. Protected by federal law, the burros were given for adoption.

Poking like a hound's tooth from the river silt at Mile 42, Lighthouse Rock provides an unmistakable landmark. The rock was named by the Ives Expedition, which steamed up the river in a 54-foot sternwheeler in 1857. The Arizona shore here is known as "Paradise Valley," and on a maze of burro trails through cane thickets, Knowlton leads us to derelict pump machinery and an early farmhouse site sprinkled with dish fragments.

A short distance away, beneath a bluff, we find chiseled into boulders glazed brown with a patina of "desert varnish," a gallery of ancient petroglyphs, evidence the place once had mystical value for the predecessors of modern Mohaves and Quechans. The petroglyphs have endured for centuries. However, federal officials say that burros, rolling to dust themselves, destroy old Indian sleeping circles, and their hooves erase ancient Indian footpaths along the river.

With the wind at our backs now, we race to Mile 48, where a California fisherman brags of a 7-pound striped bass. In the deep holes along the lower Colorado lurk real tackle-busters: stripers topping 50 pounds, 60-pound flathead catfish prized for their white flesh, 30-pound channel cats. The river record for largemouth bass is 16 pounds, 14 ounces.

Easter weekend is just a few days off, yet most campgrounds are empty in California's Picacho State Recreation Area, which fronts the river for 9 miles. At a campsite opposite Houg Rock, a granite monolith on the Arizona bank where cables were once anchored to ferry horse-drawn wagons across, we appraise the weather and it doesn't look good for four people with only one three-person tent.

We decide to continue to Norton's Landing, 5 miles farther, a mound near Mile 52 where silver ore from nearby mines was crushed and loaded onto steamboats. We eat wind all the way, arriving at shelter just ahead of an all-night rainstorm.

At 5:30 A.M. on Day Four, the rain and wind halt abruptly, and a honking chorus of wild burros welcomes the return of spring. It's time to go back on the river.

Civilization appears off starboard at Mile 56. At his concession at the end of a boat slip, 27 miles east of Winterhaven, California, Dave Jensen sells everything except alcoholic drinks and gas. April and May are his busiest months, he says, with 50 to 75 canoeists stopping by on a weekend.

"In June it starts to get warm," he says. "We also get some in July - people who are tough and can take the hot weather." Temperatures often top 110 degrees.

"Ice cream is the big seller," Jensen says.

Under a hot sun, off come some layers of clothes. At Mile 59, a narrow channel leads to Cabin Lake, a backwater along the Ari-zona shore in the Imperial refuge. We stop to explore Watchman's Cabin, a one-room shack with a reed-thatched roof near the old Riverview gold mine.

The others go off searching while I commandeer a chair on the cabin's porch. I'm startled when two uniformed men step into the clearing. I take a quick inventory: Fish-ing license? Required safety equipment?

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officers James E. Ferrier, assigned to the Imperial refuge headquarters at Martinez Lake, and Kyle J. Todd of Mission Valley, Montana, on a four-month detail to Arizona, aren't interested in us. They are after "no wash" violators in the backwaters where, Ferrier explained, "A wave can topple nests."

They warn we've arrived in the "power zone." On the holiday weekends of Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day, Ferrier says, 5,000 powerboats towing skiers may jam the 20-mile stretch of the Colorado between Dave Jensen's store and Imperial Dam. Back on the mainstream, fast-moving powerboats growl by, rocking our boats with their wakes. One zips 50 feet past Knowlton and Key's canoe. "That really spooked me," Key says later.

But our paddle is almost over. At Mile 68, we leave the mainstream heading north across a mile of Martinez Lake, a broad, deep backwater in Arizona where water-front lots sell for astonishing prices. Once again, we face off with the wind.

Although we're 30 pounds of food and drink lighter, and riding higher in the water now, a formidable 2-foot chop threatens to founder us. When we finally grind against the shore, we're relieved to still be dry. We'd expected an easy paddle. We ended up arm-wrestling a river with unpredictable moods.

Additional Reading: With Arizona High-ways' guidebook Travel Arizona II in hand, one can enjoy many recreational surprises in the state's outback - from canoeing on the Colorado River to backpacking through alpine meadows - or explore urban sights. Travel Arizona II is available for $15.95, plus shipping and handling, by calling toll-free (800) 543-5432. In Phoenix or from out-side the United States, call (602) 712-2000.

WHEN YOU GO

Locations, fees: For longer paddles, put in at no charge at Mayflower County Park, California, or for $8 per canoe at the Riviera Resort ramp, (760) 922-5350. For shorter paddles, put in at Palo Verde Slough for about $3. You can also enter the river at no charge at Jensen's store east of Winterhaven, California. Transportation for portaging canoes can be hired at Martinez Lake for about $120 to $145 per canoe; ask at either marina.

Getting There: Mayflower County Park is just below the Interstate 40 bridge. To reach Palo Verde Slough, take California Highway 78 to Walter's Landing, about 35 miles downstream. Jensen's store is east of Winterhaven, California. Martinez Lake is 35 miles north of Yuma off U.S. Route 95.

Weather: Be prepared for sudden spring and fall weather changes.

Travel Advisory: Camping is not permitted in the refuges, except in emergencies. Always camp on high ground above the levels of releases from Parker Dam.

Phone Numbers: All are area code 520 unless noted; 800 numbers are toll-free.

Additional Information: Riviera Resort, (760) 922-5350; Martinez Lake Resort, (800) 876-7004; Lake Havasu City Visitors and Convention Bureau, (800) 242-8278; Parker Chamber of Commerce, 669-6333; Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, 783-3371; Arizona Game and Fish Department, Yuma, 342-0091; Bureau of Land Management, Yuma 317-3200; Yuma County Chamber of Commerce, 782-2567.