Sierra Mountain Times

 

Gathering momentum from the melting snow pack clinging to the slopes of Yosemite National Park’s highest peaks, Mt. Dana (13,061 ft.) and Mt. Lyell (13,114 ft.), the Lyell and Dana tributaries eventually meet at the eastern edge of Tuolumne Meadows to form the legendary Tuolumne River, one of the state’s most precious water resources. Flowing through Tuolumne Meadows, the largest sub-alpine meadow in the Sierra Nevada, the river descends thousands of feet and passes through a wide variety of terrain as it makes its 158-mile journey to the sea. One of the most beautiful and cherished sections is an 18-mile stretch of river that was protected by the Wild and Scenic River Act in 1984. To celebrate the Tuolumne River’s 25th anniversary as a Wild and Scenic River, the Tuolumne River Trust, an organization created to promote the stewardship of the Tuolumne River and ensure a healthy watershed, hosted its first ever Paddle to the Sea event from May 16th through June 6th. This three-week festival, designed to introduce people to the river and build support for better stewardship of the river for fish, wildlife and recreation, invited volunteers to raft, kayak, canoe, and boat sections of the river from the Sierra all the way to sea. Over 100 people paddled in the event, contributing a paddle stroke here and a paddle stroke there throughout the rivers meandering course, but only two completed this epic journey in its entirety and were able to witness all the ups and downs of this spectacular Sierra resource. Owen Segerstrom was one of these fortunate individuals.

 

“I caught wind of the event through my boss, Galen Weston, owner of Bald Mountain Farm in Sonora,” said Owen, who has been working at the farm for three years. “He has been involved with the Tuolumne River Trust for a few years, and one day during lunch I overheard his end of a phone conversation and I could tell that they were looking for a volunteer to go the whole distance, and I thought, ‘I’ll do it!’ So when he got off the phone I told him and he asked, ‘do you really want to?’”

Owen didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely, man!”

Spending much of his youth exploring the rivers and creeks of the Sierra, Owen, a 2001 graduate of Sonora High, knew that this trip was right up his alley.

“The reasons for doing this were pretty obvious,” he laughed. “I knew it was going to be an awesome experience and it would be fun.”

But beneath the surface of the excitement and the adventure, Owen’s primary reason for getting involved was due to his drive and dedication to support local issues.

“The Tuolumne River is one of the most important local issues I could think of and I am all for any opportunity to participate in positive local events,” he said. “After all, that is why I came back home. I wanted to focus on local solutions.”

After graduating from Oregon’s Lewis and Clark College in 2005 with a degree in Communications and Political Science, Owen continued his college career at the Monterey Institute of International Studies where had planned to earn his masters in International Environmental Policy.

“In the Lewis and Clark days I saw myself more on a political career path and then ending back here eventually in my mid-30s or so, but I didn’t expect to come back this young,” said Owen, 25. “I sped that process up by a long shot.”

It was while at Monterey Institute that Owen’s eyes were opened to the harsh reality of the way policymaking was conducted and he realized that he didn’t want to continue down that path.

“I just figured out from being in school for policymaking that I don’t really believe in it…I really don’t have a lot of faith in our system,” he explained. “I think it’s really corruptible and I think a lot of good people spend 30 to 40 years busting their butts to put the right policy on the books…but it doesn’t matter what’s on the books as long as there are still people that are above the law. I didn’t want to spend my whole life making laws that the really powerful people are just going to ignore anyway.”

One of Owen’s examples of this is the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“That was something that people worked on for many, many years, but when the rubber met the road, it was never signed,” he said. “There are people that come up with these frameworks that are really progressive and forward thinking…but when it comes down to it, not a lot happens. It’s hard to see that much effort go into something and not see anything change.”

Wanting to see and experience this change for himself, Owen decided not to finish his master’s degree and moved home to become part of the solution.

“I just decided that those things are truly out of our control, and I accepted the fact that there isn’t much that I can do about it,” he said. “So instead of trying to forge on and finish the master’s degree and pursue a career path in that direction, I wanted to come home where I could actually see things happening. I decided to focus my energy and time on a local area…and nothing makes more sense than to focus on where you’re from.”

Owen says that he has noticed this trend starting to take place with a lot of people his age.

“I just caught onto the wave,” he said. “Our generation is coming of age, and those of us in their 20s to early 30s can kind of see on the horizon that in the next decade or so we will be becoming the decision makers as opposed to being entangled in the web that came before us. We will actually have some control over it! I don’t think there is any more time to waste.”

And while he will not forget his experiences he has had away from home, Owen is happy to be back to contribute in anyway he can.

“I saw a lot of cool stuff during those seven years after I graduated high school, but as years go by the more grateful I’ve become of where I live,” he said. “We are at the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains! What an amazing place!”

One of the arteries that keep this area of the Sierra alive with natural beauty and wildlife is the rugged and wild Tuolumne River. 

“I think this local mindset ties in well with the river, because it involves some pretty critical issues,” said Owen. “I wanted to participate in any kind of awareness about the health of the river and the demands being placed on it.”

Currently, one of the most urgent topics is the salmon.

“Traditionally there were hundreds of thousands of salmon on the Tuolumne,” said Owen. “In 2000 there were 18,000 and last year only 455 were counted. These are staggering statistics! Ninety percent of the salmon are gone! With those numbers there aren’t even a right number of breeding pairs to turn over the population, creating a really strong possibility of extinction.”

Because salmon are considered an indicator species, Owen hopes that those who visit the river will see the necessity to change water management and protection.

“I think that it is really scary for all of us,” he said. “The salmon tie together so many things. There is a lot of important interplay that comes from them, and when you just think about how many food chains the salmon affect, if they are gone it will create a domino affect of a system collapsing. It’s sad because you hear stories from fishermen that are still alive today that talk about the streams of salmon spawning so thick that you could walk across their backs. But it’s great to get people aware of that history and then get them out there to see the tiny scattered amounts of salmon…hopefully they will realize how drastic and urgent the situation is.”

Another ongoing threat to the river is water diversion. 

“San Francisco is only getting thirstier,” said Owen. “There was a bill proposal in 2007 to extract an extra 11 million gallons a day from Hetch Hetchy, and organizations, primarily the Tuolumne River Trust, worked together to stop that. Now there is an agreement that they won’t propose extra water withdrawal for ten years, which means that the conversation is on hold until 2018. At that time there will of course be another big battle, but at least there is breathing room until then.”

Today about 33 percent of the river’s flow is diverted from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir through pipes and tunnels to the San Francisco Bay Area where it provides water for nearly 2.5 million people. The water that is released from behind O’Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite National Park drains out of the park and into the wild and rugged canyons of the Stanislaus National Forest, home to 27 miles of world-class whitewater for rafters and kayakers from the confluence of Cherry Creek to Don Pedro Reservoir. Although protected by the Wild and Scenic River Act in 1984, the class V, lV, and lll rapids offered in this section of the river has created a Mecca for rafters and kayakers since the 1960s. Known by these river junkies simply as “the T”, it is in this whitewater paradise where Owen’s adventure to the sea began.

THE WHITEWATER

Dressed in wetsuits and lifejackets for the freezing May runoff of the swollen Tuolumne River, on Saturday, May 16th, Owen, his brother Carl, his cousins Sam Segerstrom and Tom McDonnell, and the guide from Sierra Mac Rafting Trips, loaded into the raft at Meral’s Pool outside of Buck Meadows and let the current carry them on their first leg of the journey to the sea. 

“We had a new guide from West Virginia who was there to get in some practice runs,” said Owen. “It was only his second or third time doing it, and he was on oars and the four of us were on paddles.”

Owen, who had rafted the Tuolumne a couple of times when he was younger, had never seen the river in such a fury.

“It was huge!” he exclaimed. “Average commercial flows for the summer season are around 3,000 cubic feet per second and it was at 7,000! It was more than double…it was wild!”

After leaving the put in point at Meral’s Pool, the rafters soon experienced the intense boulder strewn rapids that would make up the course of their 18-mile journey down to Ward’s Ferry Bridge. After successfully maneuvering through such rapids as Rock Garden, Nemesis, Hackamack Hole, Ram’s Head, and Evangelist, the river eventually got the best of them as they passed through a rapid known as Frame Crusher about five miles into their journey.

“We took a bad swim at that rapid,” said Owen. “It’s rated as a class four rapid but at that water level it was more of a four plus to a five. When we hit the wave we went hard left and I ended up falling on top of my brother and knocked him out of the raft, and Sam fell out the left side and the guide fell out the back. But the crazy part of that story is that my cousin Tom, who is 6’7” and whose dad is Marty McDonnell, founder of Sierra Mac – the first to commercially raft the Tuolumne, was able to keep the raft from flipping. The combination of his Tuolumne River genes and the fact that he is so tall, he was able to do like a one-man high side. He just stood where we’d been sitting and had his arms wrapped around the other side of the boat and then pulled the guide back in and the rest of us one by one…it was pretty heroic.”

A little further down river they came to the confluence of the Clavey where they met up with 12 kayakers who were also participating in the event and who had kayaked down the lower section of the Clavey, one of three entirely free-flowing rivers left in the Western Sierra. The river posse continued through Clavey Falls, the biggest rapid on the run, and then parted ways a few miles down the river.

“The kayakers continued on as a day trip, but we camped over night on the river,” said Owen.

The group set up camp 7.5 miles down river at a place called the powerhouse, due to the remains of an old rock powerhouse structure once used to feed water to the numerous gold mines scattered throughout the canyon. However, due to the high flows, the river had flooded the beach in front of the powerhouse where rafters usually camp in the summer, and they were forced to find a sandbar on higher ground.

“For those that know the T, just as kind of a way to explain how high the river was flowing, we were able to jump off the powerhouse!” said Owen. “It was like 8 feet deep at the powerhouse!”

That night, as they were playing guitar around the campfire they came up with a song for the mighty river.

“There is a country song called ‘Song of the South’ by Alabama and we changed it to ‘Song of the T’”, said Owen. “Part of the lyrics is, ‘We want everybody to bring your paddle to the sea.’ During that time we decided that I should bring the paddle that I used that day for the rest of the journey and from that point it became the mascot. I paddled with it most days on the way down…there were a couple I didn’t use it because we were kayaking or in a boat…but even on the days I wasn’t using it, it was always the mascot on the boat.”

This mascot had a voice as well and Owen made sure it was present whenever the media was around.

“We put a bumper sticker of Save the Clavey on it and anytime there were cameras rolling we made sure it was front and center,” he said. “It even made it onto News 10!”

The next morning, after doing gainers and jumps off of the powerhouse, the five battled through the rapids of Gray’s Grindstone, Thread the Needle and Hell’s Kitchen as they continued the remaining 11.5 miles to Ward’s Ferry Bridge. Upon completing of the first section of the Paddle to the Seas quest, Owen had a few days to rest before meeting at Jacksonville Marina on Thursday, May 21st to cross Don Pedro Reservoir.

THE RESERVOIR

During this 20-plus mile stretch, Owen had a break from paddling as he soaked in the scenery (or lack there of) from the comfort of a boat.

“We rented a fishing boat and drove it up to Ward’s Ferry Bridge to kind of tie together where we had left off and make sure it was continuous,” said Owen. “The boat then drove us to the Don Pedro Dam. For awhile there was talk of trying to paddle the reservoir, but it was going to take way too long, so the decision was to take a powerboat for that section.”

Owen, who is not a big fan of dams, shared his concerns with what he saw throughout this section.

“At the end of the white water, right before we got to Wards Ferry we saw a bald eagle…but when we crossed Don Pedro…there was nothing,” he said. ”There is such a drastic difference between a river canyon and a reservoir. While the river canyon is home to bears and cougars and a whole functioning ecosystem, the reservoir is mostly home to hatchery stocked fish, maybe a couple of deer on the banks, and some buzzards. When you take a river and flood it by building a dam, you ruin the wildlife and the surrounding vegetation. When you have a river canyon where riparian habitat forests exist, there are millions of tons of carbon being held by those living thing, but when you flood it, all that stuff dies and ends up on the bottom. So it goes from being aerobic matter to anaerobic and it evaporates from the water as methane. Although methane is less common than carbon dioxide, it’s 25 times as potent as greenhouse gas! So the difference between a river system and a dam is huge for carbon emissions.”

And while water will always be a concern, Owen doesn’t believe that more dams are the answer.

“We are going to go through some crazy water issues in California this century and it’s going to be madness,” he explained. “As the snow pack decreases and the demand for water increases there is going to be more pressure to build more dams…which I think it’s a terrible idea. One of the main reasons I am against more dams is because most of the existing reservoirs aren’t full! The issue is the snow pack itself, its not that we need more dams. Building more dams isn’t going to make the existing reservoirs any fuller! It has taken awhile, but over the past 20 years or so as climate has become more of an issue, more research has gone into it and science has been able to disprove a lot of dam developers logic.”

But the logic of the past still stands strong today on most rivers in the form of concrete walls, and Owen’s first major hurdle of the journey was at the Don Pedro Dam.

“When we got to the dam our goal was to hike from the dam to La Grange…but you can’t,” he said. “It’s all federally restricted property and private property, so to maintain the continuity we had to walk seven miles on J59 to La Grange.”

After reaching the quaint community of La Grange, Owen found himself with another break before returning to the town on Wednesday, May 27th to continue where he left off.

THE LOWER TUOLUMNE

Those who participated during this section of river had an experience much different than the wild whitewater canyon and the lake-like setting of Don Pedro…and instead of rafts and boats, the mode of transportation changed to good old-fashioned canoes. 

“The Tuolumne offers really great canoeing!” said Owen. “People should know that from La Grange to Turlock State Park and down to Waterford, there is really nice water. We saw osprey, and in the fall it’s a great place to go to see the salmon runs (what’s left of them). It’s just a great place to go for good scenery and recreation. It may only be class one, but its fun, technical, and challenging.”

After crashing through 18 miles of whitewater, Owen was surprised at how challenging it can be to maneuver a canoe in considerably calm water.

“The first day was interesting – especially after the whitewater,” he said. “Even though it’s not big water, its super technical. There are a lot of ‘S’ turns and you really have to set yourself up or you’ll get carried into the bushes or hit a snag or a rock. It was amazing how many people overturned. There were ‘yard sales’ all day long and my job was to go through the S turns first and then wade in waist deep and hang out and collect the floating gear: sunscreen, sunglasses, hat, paddle, person…it seemed like I was always pulling people and things out of the water.”

Owen spent seven days canoeing the Tuolumne River averaging about eight to ten miles a day. Each night he would stay in a volunteer’s home and was then shuttled back to the river. Overall, his roughly 75 miles of paddling took him from La Grange to Turlock State Park, to Waterford, to Fox Grove Park, and to the Tuolumne Regional Park in Modesto. Although the first twenty miles or so of this river stretch still had a natural feel to it, Owen said that once the river reached Modesto, the river quality changed drastically.

“Once you get to Modesto it’s pretty urban and the river quality deteriorates…especially once the Tuolumne hits the San Joaquin,” he said. “That is just trashed. There is so much agricultural run off and waste and erosion.”

It was while in Modesto that the Paddle to the Sea group hosted one of its biggest events.

“Other than the final event in San Francisco, the biggest event along the way was at Tuolumne Regional Park,” said Owen. “There were probably 300 people there plus almost 70 paddlers. There was a concert and a bunch of booths set up by groups like Save the Clavey and the Tuolumne River Trust. It was basically a park event to bring a little more river and green awareness to that part of Modesto.”

The next segment of the journey allowed Owen a rest from paddling as he boarded a boat in Stockton on Thursday, June 4th.

THE SAN JOAQUIN AND THE SEA 

“We took the boat from Stockton, through the delta to the Bay to Emeryville,” said Owen. “It was about an 80 mile boat trip. Again, just like the reservoir, it would’ve been nice and romantic to do it the whole way but you would just be getting murdered. At one point we were talking about it and just to make it remotely feasible you would have to be paddling for 24 hours a day and doing relays with people taking over night and day shifts…so that idea didn’t last long. We also realized that it would be hard to hold media attention, which was the main purpose of the event.”

The next day Owen was once again handed a paddle as he kayaked along the Bay Bridge from Oakland to pier 52, and then on to Aquatic Park between Pier 39 and Golden Gate Park, completing the Paddle to the Sea quest on Saturday, June 6th. The event ended with a celebration consisting of booths about fresh water and salmon issues as well as speeches by Owen and members of the Tuolumne River Trust. Overall, Paddle to the Sea was a success.

“The goal was to have a total of 500 people participating in the events that we had along the way and to have a total of 100 people participating in the paddle,” said Owen. “Both of those goals were exceeded by a long shot and the final numbers were something like 700 participants and 200 paddlers. It was good. We got into the Democrat, the Modesto Bee, the Stockton Record, the San Francisco Chronicle, and about a 5 minute spot on News 10.”

However, despite the successful outcome, Owen could not ignore the reality of the situation.

“I thought it was a really startling thing to witness,” he said. “I think it’s amazing that a huge effort like that has to happen just to get five minutes or 600 to 800 words here and there when the issue is WATER! That blows me away. Personally, that was the part that I thought was the craziest. I mean, the organizers were busting their butts 15 to 16 hours a day just to get five minutes and some coverage through a few papers. If people have to go through that much hard work just to get fresh water onto the agenda…what are we thinking? Where are our priorities? Can you explain something more fundamental on God’s green earth to our existence than water! Instead, we are turning the news into infotainment…a big episode of Cops. Meanwhile there are issues that really do warrant headline attention.”

But Owen is not one to give up and plans on helping these issues gain more attention next year.

“This is going to be an ongoing thing and my goal is to do it every year,” he said. “We are hoping to double it next year with four people going the entire stretch and 200 people involved in the paddle. That would be awesome! We just want it to keep growing and get stronger and stronger each year so that water starts to get the attention that it should get…which is the number one priority!” 

For more information about Paddle to the Sea, The Tuolumne River and the Tuolumne River Trust visit: www.tuolumne.org.