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(All photos © 2007 David Stubbs Photography)

The Bureau of Reclamation has scaled back the release of water from Jackson Lake Dam so that the Snake River is flowing at its normally low level for this time of year.

For more than six weeks, a magnificent stream was turned into a 90-mile-long irrigation ditch. An inquisitive person might ask, Where did all the water go?

Last month, photographer David Stubbs and I journeyed to the so-called “Magic Valley” of south-central Idaho, where through the wonder of industrial-scale irrigation hundreds of square miles of desert have been converted to cropland.

In a climate only suited to growing sagebrush we found fields of spuds, pinto beans, sugar beets, hay, alfalfa and corn.

The Snake River was being spit across the fields in a constant tit-tit-tit of sprinklers, some watering scrubby ground where no crops could be discerned.

I had to wonder whether the value of the crops being produced was worth destroying a natural treasure. We all need to eat, but most of the yield — hay, alfalfa and corn — goes to feed cattle.

The dairy business in nearby Jerome, Idaho, is booming, creating an even greater demand for water at a time when climate change threatens to diminish the limited supply. Population growth around Twin Falls also is increasing demand.

I struggled with this question throughout the trip, and it wasn’t until several weeks after I returned home that I found an answer. It came in an op-ed in The New York Times by two professors of atmospheric science from the University of Alabama.

Their solution: Return to growing crops in the East, where water is plentiful. Duh.
“Let the East Bloom Again” is the title of their piece, a must-read for river runners.

Much of the coverage of water management in Jackson Lake and the Snake this summer focused on the effect of the unnaturally high flows on fly fishing. It was hard to hold a boat in place, guides lamented.

But what of the fish themselves, and their habitat?

Teton County, admirably, has committed to working with the Army Corps of Engineers on a multimillion-dollar Snake River restoration project, trying to protect the islands vanishing between the levees. One county commissioner recently suggested expanding the project. But log barriers stand little chance of slowing erosion when banks elsewhere are pounded by six weeks of swollen flows so late in the season.

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Stubbs and I were in Idaho on assignment for Canoe & Kayak magazine, taking Red Canoe on the next leg of its journey to the Pacific Ocean. We were to paddle a mild stretch of water below the infamous Milner Dam, which robs the river of its wild character most of the year.

We arrived at the dam at sunrise and found all but a trickle of the Snake siphoned away by three large irrigation canals. The power station even had shut down, as the farmers were demanding every drop of water to which they have finagled the rights.

Above Milner, the river rolled at more than 8,000 cubic feet per second. Below the dam, the flow was only 230 cfs.

Where the river channel stretched some 200 yards from bank to bank, the Snake was reduced to five or six feet wide — so narrow you could almost jump across it.

Above the power station, we gazed at the twisted rock formations of the “Milner Mile,” a hell-roaring stretch of whitewater when water is allowed to pass through the canyon. At low flows it’s a series of rocky waterfalls. We had no interest in running such nasty drops that day.

The river was stagnant and murky, and we spotted some enormous fish, three feet long, slurping in the foam at the surface. They turned out to be carp — “garbage fish,” as our shuttle driver would later refer to them.

David and I scouted the canyon, hiking along the rim, and found breathtaking views of a deep basalt gorge. We looked at each other, thinking the same thing: How could we not explore this place?

Before making arrangements for the canoe trip, we visited with the workers at the power station to be sure the water level wasn’t going to rise rapidly — a common hazard when the river is managed for power generation. We discerned that the run probably would not be dangerous (it’s Class III at higher water), but we would need to portage around rocks.

Still, power plant operator Stan Bell looked at us as if we were nuts. “At this water level, boy, I wouldn’t suggest it,” he said. “Not at this level.”

Perhaps inspired by the spirit of Evel Knievel (who tried his most famous jump about 20 miles west of the put-in), we decided to go for it. “Once you’re in, you’re in,” Stan cautioned. The takeout at Caldron Linn was eight miles downstream (we were told six), and there would be few, if any, places to hike out before there because of the steep canyon walls.

One song had been popping up with unusual frequency on iPod shuffle in the car, an old song by The Clash from the album London Calling: “Death or Glory.” We adopted this as our theme song for the trip. The refrain, fittingly, is “Death or glory — becomes just another story.”

After wrangling a shuttle from Jenny, one of the owners of the Pizza Cache restaurant in Hazelton, David and I were ready to launch in the early afternoon sun. I had just sat down in the boat when the power plant alarm sounded. Immediately I hopped out.

It took some investigative phone calls to find out Stan and mates were “only testing” the alarm system. “Testing our nerves,” David muttered.

Into the river we went. The canyon quickly deepened as we paddled downstream. We hadn’t gone 50 yards when we encountered our first portage — the first of 13 we would make that afternoon and evening.

It was like being at the bottom of a fish tank after all the water has been drained. We clambered over rocks, lugging the canoe with us. At times we were doing twice as much portaging as paddling.

But we had absolute solitude. No one had paddled this stretch for weeks, and it’s unlikely anyone has been since.

I was reminded of another song, the theme from a popular 1970s television show by Sid and Marty Kroft. “Marshall, Will and Holly, on a weekend expedition …”

About an hour into the adventure, it dawned on us what exactly we had gotten into, and we realized we were going to have to hurry to make it out before dark. Spending the day climbing over rocks, carrying a boat, was the last thing we wanted to do, only three days removed from scaling Teewinot Peak in Grand Teton National Park.

It was my turn to get burned. Back in March, when a friend and I paddled Red Canoe on a familiar, placid stretch of the Snake, I had chuckled thinking about the mishaps of the Doane expedition of 1876, a trip synonymous with disaster. Now I was the one exploring the unknown, and finding out how hard it can be.

The Teewinot climb earlier in the week had left me so drained that I came down with a head cold. The night before, I had sipped from a bottle of NyQuil as David and I set out for Idaho over Teton Pass.

Trapped in the bottom of Milner Canyon, baking in the afternoon heat, too frustrated and tired to eat, I started to feel delirious. Small depressions in the rock, filled with water and colored red by algae, leered at me like rattlesnake eyes, and I expected to find a rattle and hiss around each nook as I scrambled over the rocks in my bathing suit and Tevas.

The river offered little relief, sadly. Polluted by agricultural runoff, the water was thick with suspended particles of algae. I am quick to plunge into just about any body of water, but I never swam in this sordid stream.

As the sun prepared to set, we squeezed through the rocks and found one of the longest navigable stretches of the day. The light in the canyon was quite beautiful, and Red glided through the water as we paddled with renewed vigor, optimistic.

Darkness began to set in, and our hopes were dashed when we encountered yet another impassable rapid. The portage appeared to be a long one, and we were exhausted. The canyon had widened, and as we approached we thought we had reached Caldron Linn, where David’s car, our tent and supplies were waiting. Denied.

It looked like my streak of never having to spend the night out, no matter how heinous the adventure, was about to be broken. In my dry bag I had brought long underwear, shells, a hat and headlamp — just about everything I needed to sleep by the river. Except fire, which would have been handy.

We were low on water, though, and David, burdened with camera equipment, didn’t have as much warm gear. We spied an opening in the cliffs where a small draw emptied into the river, and decided to hike out. We left the canoe beached on rocks.

I was sure one or both of us would be bitten by a rattlesnake before reaching the canyon rim, but we made it, enveloped in total darkness. We walked along an irrigation ditch — what else? — toward the lights of a farmhouse, dry bags slung over our shoulders like hobos.

At this point our situation was so pathetic we had to laugh. We ate some of the Wild Flour zucchini bread I had brought and drank the last of our water. I felt better, knowing we would survive.

We reached the farmhouse, worried that our approach would be greeted by a shotgun. We looked pretty rough, and the folks who live in these parts aren’t used to being visited by strangers at 10 o’clock at night.

The owners were an ancient couple who eyed us suspiciously. They pointed us in the right direction toward the takeout, which was about a mile away, and gave us water, but did not offer a ride.

By 11 o’clock we staggered down the dirt road that descends to the river at Caldron Linn. David made soup that would go a long way toward curing my cold. I guzzled ice-cold Paul Newman lemonade to rehydrate. We were too tired to pitch a tent and opted to sleep in the car, with the hatch open. Only a late-night visit by a large raccoon disturbed our blissful slumber.

In the morning we realized we weren’t far from the canoe, judging by a house atop the bluff. We decided to travel light and hike back up the river, then finish the journey.

Turns out the portage wasn’t that bad, and it would be our last. We considered running the rapid and naming it “Death or Glory,” but one hard hit on the rocks likely would have demolished the wobbly canoe and gotten us in trouble with C&K editor Frederick Reimers. Instead we went around and then paddled flat water all the way to the takeout.

About a half-mile above Caldron Linn, we came across a gushing spring on the side of the canyon, one of thousands that pour out of cracks in the volcanic rock and help restore the abused river. Again, one look at each other was all it took for us to turn the canoe around and paddle over to the bank.

As I stood beneath the waterfall, letting the cold, fresh water run over my head and body, the pains and tribulations of the previous day washed away into the river.

We took out at Caldron Linn, where the river narrows and drops over the 40-foot Star Falls. A linn is a Scottish term for a pool below a waterfall, and this spot was named by Wilson Price Hunt’s band of Astorians on their journey from St. Louis to the Pacific in 1811. One member of the party, which earlier camped at Astoria Hot Springs near Hoback Junction, drowned in the turbulence here.

Below Caldron Linn, the river gains steam and — when there is water — barrels through the fearsome rapids of the Murtaugh Canyon.

It was troubling to have seen what should be a paradise turned into a wasteland, and I was thankful upon crossing the Wilson Bridge to look down at the sparkling green Snake of Jackson Hole. At least I took solace that there was some water flowing through the Milner Canyon, an improvement over past years, from what I had read.

A few weeks ago, I checked the USGS Web page that gauges Idaho stream flows. All of the water reserved for fish, power and recreation below Milner had been used up.

The flow was cut to zero.

Posted under conservation, environment, fishing, idaho, snake river