Echo Park on the Green River in Colorado. Number two on the 2012 Top 10 Most Endangered Rivers list. Photo: Justin Bailie courtesy of O.A.R.S

American Rivers, an organization working to protect and restore our nation’s rivers and streams, has just released their 2012 Top 10 list of most endangered rivers in the United States. This isn’t a list you want to see your local stream show up on. Unless, that is, you want to draw the attention it needs to keep it the river you love.

“These rivers are at a crossroads, at a turning point where their fate will be determined in the coming year,” says Amy Kober, Senior Communications Director at American Rivers. So the rivers on this list are not the worst. Not by far. But they are the waterways that are most at risk to be drastically affected in the next 12 months due to pending decisions (or non-decisions).

Threats like dredging, mining, drilling, and outdated flood management techniques jeopardize their integrity. As our need for fresh water increases, the apparent solution of water diversion and withdrawal to satisfy those needs also becomes an issue.

So does pollution.

Cutthroat Trout in Wyoming's Hoback River. Number five on the 2012 Most Endangered Rivers list. Photo courtesy fisheyeguyphotography.com

Often referred to as “our nation’s river,” running right through our capital, the Potomac is at the top of this year’s list.

“The number one river is the number one river. It’s always going to get the most attention. We put the Potomac number one on purpose,” says Kober. “President Johnson called the Potomac a ‘national disgrace’ because it was a like a cesspool and nobody would go near it.”

That was then, but in the years since the Clean Water Act (celebrating 40 years in 2012) was set in place the Potomac has made leaps and bounds in cleanliness. However, according to American Rivers, with Congress considering certain rollbacks on clean water protection, it is again in danger.

“It would be turning back the clock on water protection,” says Kober. “Not only on the Potomac, but nation wide.”

Back in 1986 when the first endangered rivers list was organized, it was new dams and new mining proposals that fueled American Rivers to act. Every fall since then the organization puts the call out for nominations to hundreds of local partners, groups consisting of riverside community members, stewards and conservationists.

A panel of in-house experts looks at them and creates the annual list based on certain criteria; the magnitude of a threat, importance of the river to lives of people, a real decision point or an action in the coming year that the public can help influence.

Fireworks over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.. Number one on the 2012 Top 10 Most Endangered Rivers list. Photo courtesy Chris Staley

Publishing a Top 10 list is a way to inform the wider public, not just of the problem but also with some viable solutions.

“We try to stress the opportunity part of it,” says Kober. “The whole purpose of this [list] is the spotlight to hold decision makers feet to the fire and give them an opportunity to do something positive.”

The list rarely carries the same river from year to year, unless drastic measures are still at hand. Wyoming’s Hoback River is on this year’s list for the second in a row. The threat is natural gas development near its headwaters. There is recent evidence about hydraulic fracturing (also called “fracking”) coming out to confirm the dangers of this action.

“It’s a year-round campaign for us,” says Kober. “These are the endangered rivers of 2012 and we don’t stop on May 16 after the report comes out. We’re working with our partners all year to try to make these actions happen.”

See the ten rivers on this year’s list below, find out about the river, the threat, what must be done, and how you can help. Sign up for taking action alerts on American Rivers website at Americanrivers.org.

AMERICA’S MOST ENDANGERED RIVERS FOR 2012

#1: Potomac River (MD, VA, PA, WV, DC)
Threat: Pollution
At stake: Clean water and public health

#2: Green River (WY, UT, CO)
Threat: Water withdrawals
At stake: Recreation opportunities and fish and wildlife habitat

#3: Chattahoochee River (GA)
Threat: New dams and reservoirs
At stake: Clean water and healthy fisheries

#4: Missouri River (IA, KS, MO, MT, NE, ND, SD, WY)
Threat: Outdated flood management
At stake: Public safety

#5: Hoback River (WY)
Threat: Natural gas development
At stake: Clean water and world-class fish and wildlife

#6: Grand River (OH)
Threat: Natural gas development
At stake: Clean water and public health

#7: South Fork Skykomish River (WA)
Threat: New dam
At stake: Habitat and recreation

#8: Crystal River (CO)
Threat: Dams and water diversions
At stake: Fish, wildlife, and recreation

#9: Coal River (WV)
Threat: Mountaintop removal coal mining
At stake: Clean water and public health

#10: Kansas River (KS)
Threat: Sand and gravel dredging
At stake: Public health and wildlife habitat

Allen Satcher had traveled the world following his passion for water and the outdoors, working as an ambassador for NRS as well as a river guide and instructor in paddlesports sales in Portland, Ore., and Tahoe, Calif. Then last year, Satcher lost his life on California’s Class V Upper Cherry Creek. He was recirculated in an aerated pothole near the third drop of a section known as “Waterfall Alley,” eventually exiting his kayak. Rescuers were unable to revive him after getting him to shore. He was 28.

Last weekend, on May 5, around 50 friends, family and acquaintances of Satcher gathered for the first annual “Allen De Mayo” event, which took place at Carter bridge on the Clackamas River in Oregon, and included live music, beer, and a raging bonfire, along with shorts and shirts that were spray painted with a stencil of Satcher’s face. People drove all the way from Washington, Idaho and California, just for the one evening celebration, which also happened to be held during the largest full moon of the year—a “super moon”—and many stayed the weekend to boat the local rivers and enjoy the amazing weather that they say Allen sent for the party. The culmination of the evening was the burning of letters everyone had written to Satcher and sharing stories about his life around the campfire. (Click HERE to see the video)

Allen will be greatly missed, but the party will continue for years to come. His smile and passion for life has obviously stuck with all that where fortunate enough to know him.

The 2011 Adirondack Paddlefest, hosted by Mountain Man Outdoor Supply Company. Photo: Bill Reynolds

By MATTHEW STURDEVANT

The man behind the nation’s largest on-water canoe and kayak demo got into the outdoor retail business less than 20 years ago as a former Florida teacher who moved to New York’s Adirondack mountains and opened a store in a closed down pizza-and-mini-golf joint.

“Started in 1993 in an abandoned pizza shop in the town of Inlet, N.Y., population 350,” said John Nemjo, 53, owner of Mountainman Outdoor Supply Company.

The Inlet location closed and Nemjo’s business is now a sprawling six-acre campus of paddlesports, boat rentals and outdoor equipment with 1,200 feet along the Moose River in the tourist town of Old Forge, N.Y. Mountainman’s 14th annual trademark event, the Adirondack Paddlefest, is set for Friday, May 18, through Sunday, May 20.

The first Paddlefest in 1999 attracted hundreds of people when it was held on a Little League baseball field in Inlet. Before that, competing boat representatives would have demonstrations on different weekends and Nemjo decided to pull it all together into one festival.

“Now the event is, from end to end, the event is probably a third of a mile long or longer,” Nemjo said. “The setting there is just ideal: right in the center of town, right on the waterfront with substantial beach for test paddling.”

Old Forge more than doubles each year when about 3,000 boaters from as far away as Maryland, Delaware, Ottawa and New England flock to the event where they can test ride kayaks, canoes and paddleboards. Paddlefest includes boats and accessories from more than 75 manufacturers, along with clinics by famous paddlers and a showing of Rapid Media’s 7th annual Reel Paddling Film Festival’s contest winning films.

The 2011 Adirondack Paddlefest on water demo. Photo: Bill Reynolds

“This year, we made a real effort to expand Paddlefest,” Nemjo said. “The number of free clinics and demos has increased dramatically.”

New this year is the Adirondack Paddlers Photo Contest. The best in show award will be a Werner Carbon Skagi Kayak paddle from Mountainman, a free one-year membership to Old Forge’s arts center, a three-year subscription to Adirondack Explorer magazine and publication of the photograph in Adirondack Explorer. Winners will be announced Saturday, May 19, at the Old Forge arts center on state Route 28, which is the main drag in town.

Paddlefest also has a number of clinics – some free and some that require a fee – with paddlers and company reps such as Danny Mongno, Cindy and Steve Sherrer, Matt Yablonowski, Woody Callaway, Dale Fox, Matt Young, Greg Weber, Skip Taylor, Charlie Wilson, Terry Kent, Bill Swift, Laura and Jeff Liebel and others.

Admission to Paddlefest is $5 per day or $20 for the weekend, and the fee can be applied to the purchase of a SUP board, kayak or canoe. Children 12 and younger get free admission.

Tickets for the Reel Paddling Film Festival showing are $15 on the day of the event, or $12 in advance. Click HERE for more information.

Click HERE for more information on Paddlefest. Click HERE for more information on Old Forge, N.Y., and lodging options.

Galen Licht on the Lower Yuba. Photo: Darin McQuoid

ASC founder, Greg Treinish, matched the duo with Deas, a fresh water ecologist at Watercourse Engineering, Inc., who has been studying the flow, temperature, and water quality of many of the rivers they plan to paddle, and he thinks studying the presence of different species of algae can help determine effects of climate change on rivers. So that’s exactly what Katz and Dye are going to do: collect algae samples throughout the entire length of 12 rivers in California. And Deas is happy for the paddler’s help. “Ideally, we will learn through this effort [with ASC] and refine and broaden our approach for long term monitoring of rivers and streams,” he says.

The team began their journey in January with the Lower Yuba, and on May 9 they put in on the Sacramento River. From there, they plan to travel the lengths of the Salinas, Los Angeles, American, Tuolumne, Merced, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Mokelumne, Klamath, and Feather rivers.

This weekend, on Sunday, May 13, Katz and Dye are also inviting members of the community to join them in Redding, Calif., for a Community Conservation Paddle. They also plan to host several more Community Conservation Paddles along to way to spread the word about the importance of conservation and climate research.

To find out more about the project, go to RiversForChange.org, or check out the blog post at Adventureandscience.org/blog or the ASC website at Adventureandscience.org.

Packing for the sixth annual Cal-Salmon Race this last weekend—a grassroots event held the first weekend in May on California’s Class IV-V Nordheimer stretch—was not so easy.

The gear packing was simple enough. There’s no options in bringing the necessary drysuit, rescue vest, booties, full-face helmet, and throwbag for my all-time favorite stretch of big, fluffy, steep, and fun stacked rapids, water that’s gin-clear, gorged-in by high granite walls that you need to force yourself to enjoy. But I’m not thinking about the booming Class V finish of Freight Train as I pack; I’m focused on what’s going to happen after the race.

The real question is: Do I bring the chuggler? Is it too much? How about a sexy policeman outfit with tequila-filled Super Soaker? The race theme after all, is “Occupy vs. The Man.” The event’s post-race festivities have rightfully gained a rowdy reputation. But I settle on the ole standby—cowboy hat plus PBR—and hit the road with my girlfriend to the very northern tip of California.

This race is as organic as they come. Paul Gamache, originator and current organizer, decided to create it in 2006 because there were always a bunch of boaters at the Nordheimer Campground the first weekend in May. Over the past six years, the race has remained intentionally very much in the grassroots vein of the Occupy half of the party theme. “There isn’t a registration table or anything,” Gamache says. “I just put the forms on the roof of my car.”

Thanks in part to the low organizational overhead, and the donated beer, the race has also remained incredibly cheap—$5 for the entire festival, which includes camping, beer, and event insurance through the American Canoe Association. While the event had a long list of generous sponsors—Kokatat, Sperry Topsiders, Arcata Scoop, Adventures’ Edge, Salmon River Outpost, CaliProduct, Ben York Photography, Pleasure Center, Stuff N’ Things, Ninkasi Brewery, and Lost Coast Brewery—it remains and looks to remain beautifully banner-free. “I don’t see it becoming Teva Mountain Games-style, even though it would be a prime spot for a multi-sport event,” Gamache adds.

Culture aside, the Nordheimer campground couldn’t hold an event like the Teva Mountain Games because it is remote. I mean seriously remote. I heard the nearest town, Forks of Salmon—where Rush Sturges grew up at his folks’ kayak school Otter Bar—has the most remote post office in California, 60 miles and separated by a 6,000-foot pass from the next nearest one. “That depends on how you define remote,” responded Jessie Allen, who was working at said post office when I called to try and confirm the claim.

This year’s seven-mile race had the most participants to date, boasting nearly 80 boaters from California, Washington, and Oregon. “It was so good to see the variety of rafters, catarafters, and kayakers in the water,” says Paul Gillingham, who helped organize the event in years past. And despite the difficult whitewater and high number of participants, the race had another injury-free year with safety was set at all of the major rapids. “Nordheimer has a high perceived difficulty,” Gamache says. “This causes boaters who wouldn’t be comfortable on it to respect it, watch the race, and go paddle the other Class III-IV in the area.”

Saturday, race day, was glorious. At 70 degrees, with the river flowing medium-high (perfect in my opinion), I started my run 15 minutes in front of the racers. The top five racers passed me after the third rapid, and I helped set up safety at Last Chance—a tricky rapid separated by about five feet of slack-water from the blood-pumping, aptly named final rapid, Freight Train.

No one swam at Last Chance and a majority of the lines at Freight Train were beautiful. The event was a success, and it raised nearly $600 in raffle funds for Matt Thomas, a well known Nordheimer kayaker paralyzed from the chest down in 2009 mountain bike accident. Back at the campsite, word was spreading about the largest full moon of the year, and tequila was in abundance, thanks to our celebration of Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín’s unlikely 1862 victory over French troops in the town of Puebla. It looked to be an amazingly wild party after an amazing day.

So as the giant moon rose over the Marble Mountains and my girlfriend and I approached the party epicenter, I recounted stories of the “art cuts” that people gave each other last year with a beard trimmer. I painted the scene of the morning-after carnage of last years’ party—unattended kayaks roped into trees and attached to the kegs with bike locks, or thrown atop port-a-potties. My excitement reached a crescendo as I entered the party.

And then we were greeted by a nice, downright mellow, gathering of 50 or so polite paddlers and friends. We didn’t stay up too late. There were no art cuts. The music, coming from an SUV with its doors open, was not obnoxiously loud. It was a group of like-minded people filling up any re-usable bottle or cup they could find with delicious keg beer and chatting about rivers. It was wonderful.

I wondered what caused the toned-down evening. Was it how many people had kayaked and were tired? Was it the fire dancers spinning us into a trance? Was it that the event is now maturing along with its participants? None of these answers seemed to suffice. But really, who cares?

Men’s Longboat
1. Kyle Hull
2. Rush Sturges
3. Dan Menten

Men’s Shortboat
1. Jared Sandeen
2. Russell Kramer
3. Wes Schrecongost

Women’s Overall
1. Victoria Anweiler

Raft
1. Oregon Rafting Team
2. Dr. Thunder
3. F*&# Walmart

Creature Craft
1. Ben York & Owen Cheevers

Open Canoe
1. Matt Titre

CANOE & KAYAK: What was your first experience with the NFCT?
MIKE LYNCH: I’ve been paddling all my life, but much of my early experience paddling was when I went fishing in the family Grumman—a slow, heavy aluminum canoe. I didn’t start paddling to explore until I moved to the Adirondacks about six years ago. My first experience with the NFCT that stands out was about two years ago when I interviewed Maine resident Don Mullen. He’s believed to be the first modern-day person to complete the trip from New York to Maine on the NFCT, although he followed a slightly different route that the current one. He did it in 2000. That interview was part of a series of events that inspired me to paddle the entire trail.

Jacob Resneck joined through-paddler Mike Lynch for more than 300 miles of the NFCT, at a difficult carry on the Saranac River near Plattsburgh

How about your most memorable experience on the trail?
It was Churchill Lake on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in northern Maine. After an intense three-hour thunder and lightning storm, Ariel and I were paddling toward Churchill Dam when we encountered two loons, an eagle, a family of river otters, a dozen Canada geese and a moose with its calf all in one area. It was as if they all came out after the storm.

Why is the trail a unique asset?
What I like most about the trail is that I now know I can put my canoe in the Saranac River, where I live in Saranac Lake, and travel for hundreds of miles. I can make my way to Fort Kent, a small town in northern Maine on the U.S./Canadian border, or any of the places in between. Being able to travel that way brings a sense of independence that’s hard to achieve otherwise.

A moose raises its head out of the water on Churchill Lake in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway

Why make a film?
When I started planning the trip, I didn’t have any intention of making a film. That idea came from Jason Smith of Adirondack Lakes and Trails outfitters in Saranac Lake. Jason organizes the NFCT’s film festival in Lake Placid every year, and he wanted to have a movie from the trail to show at the festival. My idea for the film was to recreate the experience of being a through-paddler. The goal of the film is to encourage people to explore and spend time outdoors.

Did it go as planned?
First, the heavy Pelican case with all my camera equipment added an extra burden on a trip that is best done with a minimal amount of gear. Another challenge was trying to get steady footage  in my canoe. I remember sometimes if I saw a moose or an eagle that I wanted to get on film, I would stick my tripod and camera in the lake or river and beginning shooting, very careful not to knock the setup into the water. In the end, I’m just happy I didn’t dump my equipment in Lake Champlain or any of the other ponds, lakes or rivers along the way. Also, I had no editing experience prior to this endeavor. I had to learn that skill on the fly.

3. Paddlers make their way across scenic Middle Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks

Future plans?
After the trip, I had a greater appreciation for the generosity of people living in rural America. I met so many people along the trip that went out of their way to help me. In the near future, I plan on pursuing another documentary film set in the Adirondacks and I’m looking forward to it because of all I’ve learned in the past year.

14. Dew clings to a spiderweb on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in Maine

The North Shore of Lake Superior brings a lot of things to mind—ice, moose, flannel…a big, flat lake—but one of its most redeeming aspects is actually whitewater. Chris Gallaway, an Asheville, N.C., based paddler and professional videographer, spent the spring of 2010 exploring the area, meeting the locals, and seeing what compels people to boat in the sub-freezing temperatures of the North Woods. The result was The North Shore: A Guide To Getting Lost, a documentary about the lesser-known whitewater mecca of Northern Minnesota, which you can see above for a limited time—48 hours, from today, Tuesday, May 8, to Wednesday, May 9, to be precise. If you miss it, you can check out the teaser HERE, or just click the convenient “Buy Now” button below to get yourself a copy.

The movie is one in a series of four short films called Coming Home produced by Rapid Transit Video and Horizonline Pictures. You can see the trailer for all four films, which cover the North Shore, The Grand Canyon, Morocco, South America, and North Carolina, HERE.

Price: $14.99

Last Friday, C&K contributing photographer Darin McQuoid captured this image of Will Pruett on Dogtown Creek. More easily drawn to high-water runs on the South Yuba, McQuoid, Pruett and Justin Patt committed to an exploratory mission on the low-water creek tributary of the Upper Middle Cosumnes River outside of Placerville, Calif., after seeing a picture of a waterfall online.

“Starting in true, classic California style with a 2 p.m. start, and a smooth, pothole boof to waterfall, the team was ecstatic,” McQuoid said. “Unfortunately, after only a quarter-mile of good whitewater, the creek turned character.” After hours of log-dodging and rock-bashing, the group reached the takeout vowing only to return to the falls on Dogtown Creek as a hike-and-huck.

It was McQuoid’s second Northern California hike-and-huck mission on a rarely run stretch in as many weeks, also scoring a first descent on Deadwood Creek followed by a second descent on Slate Creek (stayed tuned to Canoe & Kayak to read the story, and see McQuoid’s shot).