The River Runs Free
the largest dam removal project in the country nears completion, plus: more reservations in national parks, a brand new park for the Bay Area, weight training for trails, LA Times layoffs, and more
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Modern Hiking
Good stuff from the Modern Hiker site
Verdugo Hustle
In L.A., I always loved hiking in the Verdugo Mountains. This small and isolated range kind of has it all—an extensive trail network, steep but broad fire roads for a great workout, killer views of the L.A. basin, and very few crowds compared to lots of other similarly accessible routes. Well, OK, maybe it’s lacking shade, but this time of year you don’t really need to worry about that as much!
There are a number of terrific routes in the Verudgos already on the site, but this week Andrew Shults takes us on a leg-busting almost-seven-mile loop that’s good pretty much all year round. Wait for that rain to clear a bit, then head on up there in the morning and soak up those million dollar views for free.
The Big Story
Something to talk about
A River Restored
On the border of California and Oregon, the Klamath River drains some 16,000 square miles of territory, beginning in the high desert and descending to coastal rainforests. It is also currently the site of one of the largest dam removal projects in world history, which just reached a major milestone.
This month, the Iron Gate Dam became the second dam to be successfully decommissioned along the river, with its reservoir currently draining and revealing the river’s natural channel. The reservoir behind the third dam is already draining, and the fourth dam just had a drain blasted into it this week (video!). By June, officials expect the river to flow freely past these old dams through its own channel to the ocean—for the first time in over a century.
The Klamath, like many rivers on the Pacific coast, is home to spawning salmon, which have long been important for the many indigenous nations that live in the region—not to mention the entire forest ecosystem. Even with fish ladders (which these dams did not have), salmon have a tough time migrating upstream when they encounter a big wall of concrete. NPR predicts as much as an 80% increase in the number of Chinook salmon in the Klamath basin over the next three decades and a nearly 50% bump in ocean salmon harvests, too.
The opening of the dams is not the end of the project—in addition to the full dismantling of the now mostly obsolete infrastructure and efforts to keep sediment from clogging the river downstream, more than 2,200 acres of land are slated for revegetation with native plants with more than 17 billion seeds, trees flown into place via helicopter, and extensive maintenance to prevent invasive weeds from taking hold. Project leaders expect the revegetation efforts to continue at least through the end of the decade.
via San Francisco Chronicle and Smithsonian Magazine
Your Parks
Your Places
Reservations, Please
I’ve been keeping tabs on the growing number of outdoor destinations that are requiring reservations during peak seasons, and it seems like now we can add Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park to the list—at least for a pilot program.
Last year, the Park Service announced the results of visitor use planning effort focused on congestion and traffic snarls during the park’s busy summer months. In April, they announced a focus on reservation systems as the likely ideal way to manage these problems, and the park will launch a pilot version of reservations this summer.
Like most parks that try out a version of this plan, the reservation system is focused on the high-use areas (in this case, the Paradise and Sunrise Corridors) and is limited to private automobiles entering those areas between late May and early September between 7AM and 3PM. Reservations can be made at Recreation.gov beginning February 21 for the Paradise Corridor and April 1 for Sunrise, and the park will reserve a number of spots for next-day reservations for all you late-planners out there, too. Anyone with campground or lodging reservations will not need one of these additional reservations.
Between 2013 and 2022, visitation in Rainier jumped from 1.1 million to 1.6 million people per year. While that’s not as dramatic an increase as parks like Joshua Tree (1.3 million to 3 million in the same time frame!), visitors in Rainier are heavily focused on that peak period from July through September and in a small number of destinations, including Paradise.
Read more on the new pilot reservation system for Rainier here. And, uh … mark those calendars, folks.
A New Bay Area Park
It’s not often you hear about a new, big park coming into reality, which is why it’s so exciting that Santa Clara County looks like it’s about to get a 3,654-acre ranch added to its public land portfolio. The Richmond Ranch property outside San Jose was just purchased for $16 million by the nonprofit Conservation Fund with the goal of turning the property into a nature preserve with an extensive trail network that will link to the 500+ mile Bay Area Ridge Trail system.
The land now has to be transferred to Santa Clara County—a process that could take up to a year—and then be developed as a nature preserve before it’s opened to the public. There is no timeline yet for when hikers will be able to explore this landscape, but Bay Area conservationists have been trying to protect this property for many years, and now have a well-earned reason to celebrate.
Tech Talk
Gadgets, Technology, and Hype
Workouts for Hiking
Even if you’re in a relatively dry part of the west, odds are this is the time of year when your hiking mileage might dip a bit. Here in the Northwest, trails are super muddy and river crossings (of which there are many) can be pretty sketchy. So you may want to bolster your hiking with a bit of extra strength training at the gym!
Now, when people ask me what the best exercise to train for hiking is, the answer is always the same: just hike more. Those are the muscles you need to get used to being activated and really the best way to get ‘em fired up is to actually use them for hiking. But strength training does have some benefits, like increasing balance, keeping your joints happy, and helping to keep you injury free.
When I was training for Mount Whitney I would sometimes take my backpack into the gym, throw some weights in it, and start stepping up on benches. Did this get me weird looks? Oh yes. Did it help me get up Whitney? Well, I like to think so.
Here’s a great gym primer for hikers courtesy of Muscle and Fitness, though if you’re VERY new to weight training you may still need to look up and consult with a trainer or gym buddy for some of these movements. Maybe trade someone a few days of training in the gym for a trip with you on your favorite trail?
Wildlife Crossing
Wildlife and the Outdoors
Extra Caution in Saguaro
I was lucky enough to visit Saguaro National Park right during the blooming season, and let me tell you—seeing those towering cacti show off their bright white flowers was such a treat, even though all our hiking had to be done by 10AM because of the soaring May temperatures. If you’re heading to the national park outside Tucson anytime soon, rangers are currently urging extra caution due to the suspicion of rabies in the park’s wildlife.
No tests have been confirmed, but in the past week, the park has had a number of incidents of unusual animal behavior, including a bobcat attacking a 66-year-old hiker. Stay away from wild animals, report any strange behavior to rangers, and if you are bitten by an animal, be sure to seek medical attention immediately.
One More Thing
Oh yeah, before I go …
Last week, the Los Angeles Times union staged a walkout to protest a “substantial” round of layoffs that was rumored to be incoming. Unfortunately, a few days later the newspaper laid off about a fifth of its newsroom and nearly a full quarter of the total union members at the organization.
Full disclosure: I have many friends who work at the LAT, and I have been a freelancing contributing writer and newsletter editor there over the past few years. I don’t know exactly what’s going on in the largest newsroom in the Western U.S.—both the paper’s owner and union representatives seem to lay fault with the organization’s editorial staff for not having a clear direction and I can’t speak directly to that—but I do know that having strong local and regional journalism is important, both for keeping its readers informed and for keeping organizations on their best behavior.
While the predominant narrative of the decline of journalism across the country always seems to be “oh the internet killed newspapers because they couldn’t keep up,” this week’s episode of the WNYC podcast On the Media highlights a different reason: private investment funds. In this episode, you can learn not only how vulture capitalists have been buying up newspapers solely with an eye on selling their parts for scrap and not an actual interest in running a media outlet (something we also see with Silicon Valley money buying entertainment companies), but also some potential future options for saving local media.
At the end of the day, I do think long-term we’re going to have to see more non-profits moving into this space and perhaps with some nonpartisan public funding, but for now I’ll say it one more time: if you value the work that a local journalist, writer, or blogger is doing, support them.
That’s all for now. Until next time,
Happy Trails.
