A Little Southern Utah in Western Colorado: the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness
Pedestrian bridge over the Gunnison River at the entrance to Dominguez Canyon
Colorado is known for its mountains, and with an average elevation of 6,800 feet rightfully so, but tucked away in the far western part of the state are a number of spectacular red rock canyons and landscapes that look like they were lifted straight out of a Southern Utah travel guide by some sort of magical, three dimensional silly putty. Colorado National Monument is home to the perhaps the best known of these canyons but several equally impressive chasms can be found just to the south in the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness Area.
Wind-sculpted boulders in Dominguez Canyon
Dominguez Creek is a tributary of the Gunnison River just north of Delta, CO that flows year-round through a series of spectacular canyons cut into sedimentary rock of varying red, orange, and pink hues. About a mile upstream of its confluence with the Gunnison, the canyon splits; Big Dominguez Canyon to the west, and Little Dominguez Canyon to the south. Gentle trails undulate along the floors of both canyons for dozens of miles, all the way up into the headwaters of the drainage system on the Uncompahgre Plateau. I chose to hike up Big Dominguez Canyon, which I knew was home to some year-round waterfalls (ended up being nearly dry…) and impressive rock art. This turned out to be a really good decision as you’ll see shortly. Since most of my hiking recently has involved steep mountain trails at elevations often 11,000 feet, trekking along a relatively flat trail at 5,000 feet was a welcome respite that allowed me to cover quite a bit of ground.
Dominguez Canyon is located within a federally designated wilderness area, one of 43 such areas in Colorado. The Wilderness Act of 1964, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, defines wilderness as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
In many ways, these values were on display in Dominguez Canyon; despite the area’s proximity to Grand Junction, I hiked about 15 miles (told you it was flat) and didn’t see another human soul until I was almost back to the trailhead. Apart from some rumbles of thunder that echoed magnificently through the canyon in the early afternoon, the landscape was perfectly silent, despite its location only a half dozen miles from U.S. Highway 50. In other ways they were not, such as when I came across piles of metal equipment associated with an old mine (likely copper based on the abundance of azurite and malachite in the surrounding rocks), although being geologically inclined I’m never one to complain about this sort of thing since there are few things as fun and adrenaline-inducing as poking around old mine dumps for an hour!
One of the larger petroglyphs in Dominguez Canyon? A turtle? A chunky centipede? Other ideas?
Dominguez Canyon is also known for being prime Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep habitat, yet a quick glance at the trailhead register told me that seeing these creatures is by no means guaranteed. The BLM asks people to record the number of sheep they spot in the register on their way out, and I noticed that the handful of groups that had visited in the last few weeks had either A) seen more than 20 sheep or B) seen zero sheep. Hit or miss indeed. Despite my best attempts at making convincing sounding sheep noises, my visit was sadly a miss; I had the pleasure of recording a big fat zero in the register as I departed, despite frequently taking breaks to scan the red cliffs for any sign of movement and feeling insanely jealous of the groups just days before that had hit the bighorn sheep jackpot. Despite the lack of sheep, some smaller and less wooly residents of the canyon made themselves known and were even nice enough to pose for a few photos:
Western Collared Lizard, Dominguez Canyon Wilderness, CO
Canyon Treefrog, Dominguez Canyon Wilderness, CO
Despite the nearly continuous presence of distant thunder, which almost prompted me to turn back about an hour into the hike, I didn’t feel a single drop of rain the entire day. Yet when I returned to the junction between Little and Big Dominguez Canyons late in the afternoon, I discovered that the creek coming out of Little Dominguez Canyon, which had been nothing more than a pathetic looking transparent trickle at 10 A.M., had been transformed into a thick brown torrent of mud and debris accompanied by the extremely potent aroma of fresh cow pie. Yum.
This waterfall along Dominguez Creek had been nearly dry just a few hours earlier.
In hindsight I wish I had taken a “before” picture for comparison but that morning the creek was flowing with less gusto than your typical garden hose so my camera and I weren’t exactly drawn to it. Clearly the headwaters of Little Dominguez had gotten a lot of rain in a short amount of time and seeing this dramatic transformation was a good reminder that flash floods can strike areas far removed from any significant precipitation and validated my decision to hike Big Dominguez Canyon instead.
As spectacular as the canyon was, I can only imagine how enchanting it would be at sunrise or sunset when the low-angle of the Sun illuminates the fantastic geology or in the spring when snow melt swells the creek. Always good to have an excuse to go back!
From the San Juans to the San Juans
They are separated by more than 1600 kilometers. One barely rises above sea level while the other boasts six peaks exceeding 14,000 feet in elevation. One is most easily accessed by kayak or porpoise, while in the other it is difficult to escape the incessant drone of Jeeps, dirt bikes, and ATVs that trawl the vast network of old mining roads. One is beset by a deluge of by rain eight months out of the year, whereas the other is inaccessible except by ski, snowshoe, or helicopter for six. To the untrained eye, the San Juan Islands of NW Washington and the San Juan Mountains of SW Colorado couldn’t be more different. My current job situation has me living about an hour away from the mountains for 3 months out of the year, and an hour or less away from the islands for the other 9 months. And viewed through the lens of a camera, I have discovered that there are more similarities that you might expect. The first of which will probably be rather obvious:
They both posses stunning scenery:
View from Deception Pass State Park on Fidalgo Island looking southwest across the water towards the Olympic Peninsula.
Rosy Paintbrush in an alpine meadow near Red Mountain #1 (yes, nearby can be found Red Mountain’s #2 and #3. The old miners were a creative bunch.) in the San Juan Mountains.
Both offer opportunities for “extreme” sports:
A paraglider enjoys a serene aerial view of the San Juan Islands and several tankers headed for the oil refineries in Anacortes, WA.
Descending a scree-filled colouir after summiting 14.150′ Mt. Sneffels in the San Juan Mountains. While most of the climb is straightforward and requires only a hefty amount of scrambling, there is one tricky section near the summit during which a fall would likely mean the end of one’s mountain climbing days…or any other days for that matter.
Both were shaped and sculpted by vast quantities of ice:
Glacial striations in slate high above the Uncompahgre Gorge in the San Juan Mountains. The parallel grooves in the rock were carved by rocky debris trapped along the base of a long-gone glacier that was partially responsible for scouring out the gorge.
A Washington State Ferry passes a cliff of glacially scoured rock in the San Juan Islands. Glacial striations identical to those in the previous photo are ubiquitous throughout the San Juan Islands, evidence that the area was buried beneath more than a mile of ice during the peak of the last glaciation, about 15,000 years ago.
And finally, both are home to curious wildlife:
An American Pika investigates a bush at 11,000 feet in the San Juan Mountains.
A Blood Star investigates a California mussel below sea level in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
In case you didn’t know, that’s what starfish look like when they are curious.
New Life for the Elwah
Remnants of early morning fog along the Elwah River
In 1910, the Elwah River on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State underwent some changes. Big changes. Power was needed to support the burgeoning timber industry in and around Port Angeles, WA. A dam would be built. A 108 foot high dam that would transform the river upstream of it from from a wild, roaring river teeming with five different species of native salmon, into a flat and placid reservoir, filled not with salmon but with sediment. With no fish ladders, these salmon would be denied access to their spawning grounds upriver by a massive concrete block known as the Elwah Dam. Within a few decades, any fish that managed to miraculously jump over the 108 foot high dam would have a second nasty surprise waiting for them just a few miles further upstream, the 210 foot high Glines Canyon Dam, built in 1927.
Sunset over the Elwah Valley from Highway 101, just west of Port Angeles, WA
Fast forward nearly a century, and big changes are occurring yet again. In just a few short months, these two barriers will have been completely and permanently removed and the Elwah River will once again flow, uninterrupted, from the permanent snowfields and glacier of the Olympic Mountains all the down to sea level and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Even now (June 2013), only a small remaining stub of Glines Canyon Dam is preventing the salmon from moving back up into their traditional spawning grounds, and nearly 24 million cubic yards of sediment trapped behind the dams from moving down to the river’s mouth. To give you a sense of just how much material that is, 24 million cubic yards would be enough to bury an American football field under so much sediment that not even seven Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other would reach the top of the pile. While numerous dams have been decommissioned and removed around the world over the past several decades, none have been as large as Elwah and Glines Canyon. Nor have any been as controversial, as indicated by the fact that Congress passed legislation to remove the dams in 1992, yet demolition did not begin until 2011.
The former site of the Elwah Dam, now occupied again by the free-flowing channel of the Elwah River
Groundwater containing dissolved iron was trapped beneath the reservoir for decades. With the reservoir gone, this water can escape and the iron rapidly oxidizes as it is exposed to oxygen in the air.
Controversy aside, it is not often that one gets the opportunity to walk along the bottom of a reservoir without fear of drowning. As removal of the two dams enters its final stages, there exists a fantastic opportunity to watch an entire ecosystem attempt to return to its natural state. I visited the Elwah River valley on a cloudy, yet pleasant by Olympic Peninsula standards, weekend in May to see the effects of dam removal first hand. My first stop was the former site of Lake Aldwell, the narrow, yet shallow reservoir, 4 km long and 30 meters deep, that once existed behind the Elwah Dam. Lake Aldwell was the lower of two reservoirs on the Elwah (the other being Lake Mills behind Glines Canyon Dam), just five miles upstream from where the river ends its 45-mile long journey from the mountains to the sea. It was also the first to be drained, in 2011, and consequently has already had an entire growing season to begin recovering from over a century of submersion. Assisted by planting efforts, so far, “recovery” consists of some small alders, grasses, and a handful of wildflowers that have taken root in the layers of extremely fine grained sediment that accumulated on the bottom of the reservoir from 1910 to 2011.
Prior to the construction of the dams, the Elwah River valley contained spectacular old growth forests, the proof of which can once again be seen today. It is is the stumps of these gargantuan trees that are perhaps the most impressive sight at Lake Aldwell. Giant cedar stumps, the result of early 20th century loggers who were understandably eager to harvest the enormous trees on land slated for inundation, have been exposed as the river rapidly washes away the layer-cake of sediment that piled up at the bottom of Lake Aldwell. The size of the stumps are humbling and they are shockingly well preserved; many of them still contain the deep, horizontal notches cut for logger’s springboards, some so fresh in their appearance that it’s hard to believe that they weren’t felled just a few years ago, a testament to the preservation power of the meters of silt and dozens of meters of water that covered them for a century.
Giant Cedar stumps on the floor of Lake Aldwell. The former level of the reservoir can be clearly seen on the far bank.
Century old stumps are joined by new vegetation just beginning to take root in the lakebed sediments.
A stump that has been only partially exhumed from the sediment, with the six-foot tall photographer for scale.
The most powerful location from which to contemplate the restoration of the river is undoubtedly the site of the former Lake Mills. Unlike Lake Aldwell which is located right along US Hwy 101, Lake Mills requires a little bit of effort to get to. Located within the confines of Olympic National Park, the head of the now drained reservoir is reached only by driving up a narrow, one lane dirt road that winds through the rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula several hundred feet above the course of the Elwah. Near the end of this road, a narrow footpath leads down to what was once the lake’s edge.
Being the uppermost of the two reservoirs, Lake Mills was where nearly a centuries worth of sediment accrued, scoured out of the Olympic Mountains just as it had been for thousands of years, by storm after storm after storm blowing in off the Pacific, dousing the mountains in rain, and sweeping the sediment into rivulets, tributary creeks and streams, and eventually the cold, swift, and turbulent Elwah. Once Glines Canyon Dam was built in 1927, the whole system just shut off. Vast quantities of silt, sand, and gravel sediment that would normally create a delta at the mouth of the river began creating a delta in Lake Mills instead.
Immediately upon breaking out of the trees, one is taken aback by the sense that something drastic has happened here. Over a thousand vertical feet of dense, dark green, damp forest immediately transitions to a landscape that looks like it belongs on Mercury or the Moon rather than the lush Olympic Peninsula. One is greeted by a staircase of spectacular gravel terraces leading down to the river’s edge, terraces cut by a river eager to make up for 100 years of lost time. The river’s path is changing on a near daily basis as it cuts down through the canyons of sediment. The only sound that accompanies the roar of the river is the constant and somewhat unsettling sound of miniature rockfalls breaking loose and sending pebbles, cobbles, and sometimes boulders scurrying down slope, the sounds of a landscape still changing by the minute as the river tries to re-establish its old course through the valley.
Terraces carved out of delta sediments by the resurrected Elwah River as it runs through the valley formerly occupied by Lake Mills.
The erosive power of the Elwah can be seen just by observing its color as it runs through its former delta. When the river first exits the confining gorge of Rica Canyon and explodes out into the wide valley once occupied by Lake Mills, it shines with a brilliant aquamarine color, almost tropical in its hue, due to the presence of extremely fine grained sediment suspended in the river. The river does not retain this color for long though. For decades, any coarse sediment brought here by the river would be abruptly dropped at the entrance to Lake Mills, as the energy level of the river dropped precipitously entering the tranquil reservoir. Now, with the reservoir gone, all that sediment is there for the taking and the river quickly takes full advantage. Just a few hundred yards later, the river has turned the color of a late-afternoon summer thunderstorm, a deep and foreboding dark gray, as the Elwah picks up coarse sediment and begins moving it downstream where it naturally belongs.
While the dams may be gone, and the fish have already shown signs of returning, the story of the Elwah is, in reality, just beginning. All the effects, both positive and negative, of such a large scale experiment won’t be known for many decades. I encourage you to go see it for yourself; as I mentioned earlier, opportunities to experience a landscape changing at such a rapid rate are rare, much less one in as spectacular of a setting as the Elwah River.
More information about the Elwah River Restoration project can be found here. To get a better idea of the changes that have occurred so far, I strongly recommend checking out slideshows and time-lapse videos made from a series of webcams that have been monitoring the progress here.
Zach Schierl Photography 