Treating Rivers as Parks
Plus, more permit fees, find the best hiking hat, the beauty of analog, a poop problem at a major trailhead, Elon Musk hates birds, and more
howdy
Portland’s got a brand-new beach! And I know you’re probably asking yourself: wait, how can a city just create a beach? Surely there was a beach there already, right?
Well … sort of.
This new beach is primarily the result of the advocacy and work of the nonprofit group Human Access Project, which was founded in 2010 by Boise-transplant Willie Levenson. Boise’s namesake river is home to a 25-mile linear park, full of greenspace and bike paths, lots of places to swim and float, and even a whitewater park. But when he arrived in Portland, the city’s antiquated sewage system made the river unsafe for swimming with just a tiny amount of rain.
Human Access Project envisioned a city that treated the river not as a sewer, but as a park that was accessible to everyone. Fourteen years later, the group celebrated the opening of a brand-new beach in the St. Johns neighborhood, at a former industrial site that was cleared of concrete debris over the past few years. A sandy beach now slopes beneath the city’s arguably most picturesque bridge, and a new floating dock offers swimmers, floaters, and boaters easy access in and out of the water.
I went to the grand opening party on a muggy summer day, and it was great to see a huge crowd on the beach and dock and in the water. Kayakers floated in to see what was going on. A fire department ship sprayed celebratory streams in the air. Long-distance swimmers arrived from another swimming dock closer to downtown. And—because this is Portland—there was a synchronized swimming performance to Enya’s Orinoco Flow and a few mermaids, too.
After spending so many years in Los Angeles, which is still in the early stages of re-centering its own river, it’s nice to be somewhere that’s a little further along in the process. There is still work to be done in Portland—a privately-owned island has a habit of launching massive algal blooms into the river during very hot weather (HAP is working on that one, too), and at the beach opening I met representatives from a group working on building a bike and pedestrian esplanade all the way to the Columbia River. But it’s undeniable that the Willamette’s restoration as a public park has changed the way the city interacts with its landscape.
A day after the beach opening, I biked down to another public access point closer to downtown. A few bikes were already locked up, people were sunbathing on the docks, and after I soaked up enough solar heat (and courage), I jumped into the chilly, choppy water and had a great time floating around. This was right before a minor heat wave, where all kinds of people were out on the river, enjoying the free green space, shade, and quick cooling. It was a scene of community, and a great example of people coming back to reclaim their public spaces. I’m excited to see more cities follow suit with projects like these.
RELATED
Are you a fellow Portlander? Find the urban river beach that best for your current vibes! (Portland Monthly)
Why ‘Wild Swimming’ is good for your well-being (The Atlantic)
Water may be the most beneficial of all outdoor scenes / environments (Axios)
Paris is working hard to make the Seine swimmable for the Olympics (National Geographic)
Modern Hiking
Good stuff from the Modern Hiker site
We’ve added a new trail in the Santa Susana Mountains from Andrew Shults this week. I’ve always loved the Santa Susanas—they’re an oft-overlooked mountain range in Southern California, overshadowed by the taller mountains in the San Gabriels and the more picturesque (and cooler) peaks in the Santa Monicas. But the Santa Susanas have a lot of really fascinating geology and history, and in this guide, Shults takes us to a very unique mine site just west of Rocky Peak.
The Big Story
Something to talk about
An Update on the Big Pines Adventure Pass
Jacyln Cosgrove, who is next up in the ongoing writer rotation for the Los Angeles Times’s WILD newsletter, dug into the quiet controversy of the seemingly private company carve-outs for the outdoor Adventure Pass prevalent in Southern California’s National Forests (you can head back here for a quick recap if needed).
Cosgrove took to Reddit and wrote an extensive and extremely informative post in the socalhiking subreddit, detailing her findings from digging into what was going on. Long story short, it looks like there is a very specific “notwithstanding clause” in the law around these sorts of admission passes that allows the Forest Service to OK a third-party vendor to charge a fee “for providing a good or service to a visitor of a unit or area of the Federal land management agencies in accordance with any other applicable law or regulation.”
So, as long as the Forest Service signs off on this sort of thing, it’s OK.
Cosgrove talked with San Gabriel Mountains National Monument district ranger Matthew Bokach about the changes, and he noted that Mountain High has improved the area under its purview, adding campground hosts, concession stands, and paddleboard and kayak rentals. More improvements are planned in the future.
When asked—in several different ways—if this was going to be a new policy moving forward in public lands in Southern California, Bokach said that there were no plans to institute another concessionaire in other parts of the San Gabriel Mountains, but also said there were areas that could be better managed by a private entity.
I’m a little torn on this one—there are definitely instances of private concessionaires being great stewards and even becoming iconic fixtures of these public lands. But I worry this also sets a precedent of handing over more and more public land to private companies, especially if each company has its own area-specific fee pass to keep on top of.
Is it too much to ask that our public agencies actually deliver on their missions? Is it too much to ask that voters both fund them and hold them accountable?
Your Parks
Your Places
Big Santa Anita Bathroom Problem
Big Santa Anita Canyon is one of my favorite and most picturesque and magical parts of the San Gabriel Mountains outside of Los Angeles. It’s also one of the most popular (some might say overused) areas of the mountain range and it’s a spot that’s really taken a beating from wildfires and flash floods over the past few years. The canyon has been closed since the 2020 Bobcat Fire but is due to re-open this fall … albeit with significantly fewer outhouses.
The toilet reduction is for a variety of reasons—some were in violation of EPA clean water standards and were due to be removed anyway, other have had access roads washed out or were lost to fire or just were past their expected lifespans. Officials do plan on installing another pair of portable toilets before the re-opening, but locals and canyon residents are worried the lack of facilities will mean that hikers will resort to squatting in their cabin yards or—perhaps worse—in the watershed that supplies them with drinking water (via Los Angeles Times).
Tech Talk
Gadgets, Technology, and Hype
Put a Lid On It
It’s summer, and that means the great human tradition of both worshipping and living in fear of the sun. Even if it’s cloudy outside, sun protection should always be on the top of your mind—and on the top of your head, too. Which is why this fun guide to choosing a hiking hat that fits your personality on Outside magazine is a nice thing to consider. Anything that keeps you in the shade will do, so it really is just a matter of personal choice—and something is always better than nothing here.
Personally, I like to switch between a very beat up baseball cap I picked up from the Anza-Borrego Foundation and a wide-brimmed desert sun hat from Henschel Hats I snagged at the visitor center at Indian Canyon in the Agua Caliente Reservation, which kind of lets me pretend to be Indiana Jones while I’m hiking.
Keeping It Old School
Given the (constant) collapse of online and digital media, as well as the shuttering of legacy magazines and newspapers all across the country, it was really refreshing to see the New York Times do a lush profile on what they called “high-end outdoor magazines” that are thriving in physical form: places like Adventure Journal, Mountain Gazette and others saw the way the industry was going and swerved hard in the opposite direction, and a few have found great success after finding an audience. It seems like the outdoor audience is really hungry for good writing and photos that they don’t need to scroll on their phones for …
Wildlife Crossing
Wildlife and the Outdoors
Elon Musk Hates Birds
Elon Musk’s private space travel company SpaceX has been building a launch center at Boca Chica, Texas. The issue is that Musk built a complex far larger than he had initially said he was going to build, and is launching rockets far larger than he said he would launch. This in-depth New York Times investigative piece (unlocked) shows how Musk’s teams pitted federal agencies against each other, and how both Texas State Parks, the Department of the Interior, and migratory birds all paid the price for the whims of one of our worst and dumbest oligarchs. Maybe if we told him the planet was renamed to EarthX he’d start to care about it?
One More Thing
Oh yeah, before I go …
I know I rag a lot on Artificial Intelligence in here … and sometimes, I’m sure some of you may be thinking, “what does this have to do with the outdoors?” Well, sometimes it doesn’t, but sometimes it does—like this report from Bloomberg that Google’s CO2 emissions jumped 48% in the past year, which it ties directly to the additional electricity and water required to power the AI-search summaries that tell you eating rocks is good for you.
Totally worth it, tech bros!
Until next time,
Happy Trails.
🤘🤘 Go human access project!
Latest word on the Vincent Gap TH is that they’ve installed an “iron ranger” with fee envelopes, and you place a stub on your dashboard. Like the Forest Service couldn’t do that? I encountered something similar on a recent trip out of Horseshoe Meadows. The campgrounds there are now operated by a concessionaire. I noted new signs and cleaner vault toilets, but there’s no host, the water doesn’t work, and they put signs on the trash bins noting limited trash service. The price changed from $9 per person to $22 per site. So I share your mixed feelings.