Canoe and Kayak Outfitters
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BECAUSE, THANKS TO NEW BOATS LIKE THE AMP, ITS GONNA NEED IT FOR A FREE CATALOQ: 1-800-59-KAYAK OR WWW.KAYAKER.COM I Forum ......................................4 r Marc Reisner Remembered Features by Pete Skinner Letters .................................... 10 OirectorFs Cut .................................. 16 by Rich Bowers Conservation ...................... ... ...=.18 r chelan Gorge Unplugged Settlement Reached for Rock Creek-Cresta Hydro Project r Whitewater Releases for Nisqually [WA] r Cheoah a Hoot Access .................................. 34 r Snake River Fund Charting a New Course r Wilson Creek Declared Wild and Scenic r Lehigh River is Navigable Arkansas River Plan Revisions r Death Trap on Upper Sacremento r Volunteer Helps Open Access on Laurel Hill Creek [PA) Events .................................. 40 r Outdoorplay.com series and 2000 NOWR Point Series info and winners r Schedule of River Events 2001 r Race Results Briefs .................................... 78 r 2000 Gore Canyon Festival River Voices ................................... 84 Cover: Forrest Hubler running Entrance Exam on the first descent of the r Call Me River Babe Chelan Gorge in Washington.Photo by The Wenatchee World0 r Video Reviews Inset: The Gore Race. Photo by Todd Patrick Photography0 r Dog Paddle Publication Title: Amer~canWhitewater Issue Date: NovemberiDecember 2000 Statement of Frequency: Published bimonthly Whitewater Love Trouble .................... 88 Authorized Organization's Name and Address: American Whitewater P.O. Box 636 Printed@ on Recycled Paper I MarPretvdle. NY 12455 American Whitewater November December 2000 Marc Reisner Remembered By Pete Skinner Honorary Board Member American Whitewater Laurie, Ruthie, Margot, and Marc at Marc Reisner, one of the greatest friends whitewater has ever had, died of cancer at his Hoover Dam, spring of 1999. home in California in late July. A Aslong time Director, Pete Skinner, tells the story of his friendship with Marc and how rivers provided their common bond. esides his wonderful family - two girls imes were good - our salad days as my crazy people, and the ever more exotic equip- and wife, Lawrie, Marc leaves behind a T Mom used to call them. Life in the Big ment, much of which we built ourselves. B literary legacy few can boast. His major City of New York was incredible - great mu- Hardly a weekend, winter, or summer went oeuvre, Cadillac Desert, tells the tale of deter- sic, interesting women, scintillating friend- by that one or both of us didn't escape the mined engineers and conniving bureaucrats ships, extraordinary work, exquisite wines, tumult of the Big Apple to explore watery who conspired to plug up the West's major and whitewater - lots of it full of adventure destinations all across America. Most eve- river arteries, leaving behind pauperized riv- and exploration. My good buddy, Marc, was nings were spent patching fiberglass dings erine ecosystems, vast irrigated farms, and the editor of National Resource's Defense and scanning top0 sheets and road maps for profligate human colonies totally dependent Council's Amicus Journal which he nursed the next Big Adventure. We were part of a on gigantic water projects which transport from nothing into a highly respected envi- very small coterie of paddlers who were at the lifeblood hundreds of miles to deserts God ronmental publication and I was the Attor- heart of the earliest explosion of the never intended be inhabited or farmed. This ney General's engineer pursuing polluters whitewater sport in America. When a kayak- book and his many speeches (including one at with gusto. Approaching the top of our topped car zipped by in the other lane, we an AW Board Meeting several years ago) games in the late 1970s, man - the World was usually knew whom it was - that is how few spawned a highly acclaimed PBS TV special our oyster! whitewater freaks there were then. about these water projects and their progeny It was about that time that Marc Reisner Oddly enough, Marc loathed sprayskirts and the recent Time Magazine Environment and I shared a New Jersey apartment directly - fearful of being trapped in a fiberglass 2000 insert. Like Rachel Carson's work did across the Hudson River from Manhattan's straight jacket. As we kayakers tumbled for the environmental movement decades be- 47thStreet - a moat that let us safely park our down flooded flumes like Bulls Bridge on the fore, Marc's work has spawned a revolution in cars and boats and river pals but hummed Housatonic in our Mark IV fiberglass knock- American thinking about the importance of madly only a mile or so away through the offs, Marc would blithely slide by in his rub- free-flowing rivers. The emerging dam re- Lincoln Tunnel. Jim Muhlhahn lived up- ber ducky and wave wistfully. He envied our moval movement and a growing army of de- stairs and helped us print parts of the AWA joyful descents into horrifying hydraulics termined dam busters across the nation will Journal while Rob Lesser camped out on the and delicate moves in the rock gardens but echo his work and credo for decades to come. street in his trademark VW bus. Boats, still found his own ways to join us in these paddles, sprayskirts, fiberglass, and resin moments in the eddies and around the camp- filled the little garage out back. fire. He gloried in our feats of daring even A W will be joining other organizations and We were submerged in the river experi- more than we did. A simple river trip for us individuals in an effort to leverage Marc's ence - we talked rivers, thought rivers, translated into an epic voyage in his mind. great work for river restoration through the dreamt rivers, paddled rivers - indulging His fertile imagination turned us into Jason creation of a national Reisner River Fund. ourselves with the pictures, the tall tales, the and the Argonauts. American Whitewater v November December 2000 "Cadillac Desert details the powerful and worked incredibly hard, he always did his trolled cars, and drive to their climate-con- sometimes baleful influence the Bureau of homework.. .. But he had a self-destructive trolled, windowless new offices, never once Reclamation has had on the West -pushing impulse, a violent temper, anda compulsion encountering the real world." (Page 246) it inexorably toward an edge from which, to tempt fate. He could, for example, make The accomplished adulterer, Dominy sooner or later, it is boundto falloff... Cadillac a lifelong enemy of a very powerful politi- made indiscretions one of his trademarks. Desert is not going to be bedside reading for cian over lunch." (Page 240) "Whenever and wherever he traveled, he the millions; but millions ought to read it, Angry over Utah Governor Clyde's com- wanted a woman for the night. He had no because in its pages is visible the shape of a ment about the questionable economics of a shame about propositioning anyone. He future that we have stubbornly refused to proposed Reclamation dam in Utah, Dominy would tell a Bureau employee with a bad foresee. " Wallace Stegner immediately struck back at Clyde at a 1962 marriage that his was a hell ofa good lay.. .. Marc liked best Alice Dominy must to tell stories of the have known. .. And desecration of na- there came a day ture, bringing to when she hadto find each subject a keen out for sure. She sense of amused drove into town to amazement and gut thehotelwhere.. he felt outrage. His d liked to conduct his extensive vignettes described vividly emotional dialoaue and revealed the sturm and drang of great fortunes and band, was in the grand designs being - a : back of the room. lost or won. He al- 'He just told her to -3 go home and mind ways sought out *-% vivid people whose her own business,' drive andvision pro- says one of vided the bright Dominy's color for the inkv in confidant's. " (Page his pen. 259) "The vanishing Marc observes groundwater in that Dominy may Texas, Kansas, have done Reclama- Colorado, Okla- tion "more harm homa, New Mexico than good" in spite and Nebraska is all Marc girded for battle on the Rogue in 1 of all his successes. part ofthe Ogallala The pyramid scheme aquifer which holds two distinctions: one of national convention in front of three thou- began to teeter too much for even politicians being the largest discrete aquiferin the world, sand dam supporters. to invest more in. The end finally came most the other of being the fastest-disappearing "'Which is the greater counterfeit?' uncharacteristically. aquifer in the world.. .. 'What are you going Dominy asked. 'The Bums Creek Project or "The man assigned to tell Floyd Dominy to do with all that water?'asks Felix Sparks, the governor ofUtah?' At the end, he thun- that he was fired was a.. born again Chris- the former head ofthe Colorado Water Con- dered, 'Among all the many crosses Recla- tian from Wyoming named James G. Watt servation Board. 'Are you just going to leave mation has to bear, Iwouldsay there is none [perhaps the most controversial anti-envi- it in theground?' Not necessarily, one could greater than the hypocritical attitudes of ronmentalist Interior Secretaries ever]. At reply... 'Wel1,'says Sparks, 'when we use it people like my friend George Dewey Clyde!'" [President] Nixon's behest, the FBI had run up, we'll just have to get more water from (Page 241) its customary investigation of top federal somewhere else."' (Page 11) When he tired in the early 1960s of the officials to look for improprieties, and had The antagonists in Marc's book really came relatively squalid headquarters Reclamation come back with a file on Dominy that was alive in page after page.