Adventure Journal Feature

Reports: Bone Dry Future for Southwest Adventurers

By Michael Frank, Guest Writer, 5-03-11

	Photo by Vinod Panicker, Wikimedia Commons

Black Canyon of the Gunnison climbers, you’ve been warned: Pack water. Yeah, you’re supposedly right above water (the Gunnison River!), but before too long it might just be a muddy wash. Hikers in Canyonlands, don’t trust that map — it’s going to be sand for you as well. Even Glen Canyon (i.e., home of ever-shrinking Lake Powell) and the Grand Canyon are due to dry up faster than you can spit into a Mojave wind, according to two grim reports recently released.

The first is a climate study by the Bureau of Reclamation (a.k.a., the biggest water resource manager in the U.S.). While the report covers the hydrology of all the of major rivers of the West, the most stressed zone now and in the future will be the upper and lower Colorado River basins, which encompass the spine of the Rockies from western Wyoming through western Colorado, eastern Utah, and nearly the entirety of Arizona. That’s a lot of territory, and within it, you’ll find many of the places hikers, climbers, mountain bikers, cavers, paddlers and fisher people cherish. And it’s all going to get much, much drier, thanks to climate change.

Now and into the future the Reclamation study says that the Colorado River Basin is being double-whammied by a rise in temperatures (two degrees during the 20th century) and a change in springtime temperatures. More rain and less snow in spring leads to faster runoff and quicker snow melt. And because the West — unlike much of the eastern United States — has depended on snowpack in lieu of vast networks of reservoirs, the way forward suggests that dams will hold back more water rather than letting it flow.

And that’s precisely the target of the second report, this one by the National Parks Conservation Association, which says that parks in the interior West are already threatened by poor water management. Their claim: Dammed water and sudden outflows alter seasonal flood patterns, the lifeblood of many plant and animal species, and make national park visits a little less charming when that rafting trip gets torpedoed by an empty drainage in lieu of rapids.

According to the NPCA study, 8.5 million Americans visit Glen Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, Dinosaur and the Black Canyon each year, generating $300 million in revenue. Among the recommendations of the study, NPCA says the Park Service should be given money to study the habitats of these parks and how water flow impacts wildlife and also that the archeological remnants now being revealed along the edges of drying up bodies of water, such as Lake Powell, be inventoried and studied. And ideally, protected from sudden drainage releases.

One silver lining in the Bureau of Reclamation report is that farther to the north, in Wyoming, northern Colorado and northern Utah, there may well be more precipitation. But it’s going to be for drinking, not skiing, since it will fall as rain.

This environmental coverage made possible in part by support from Patagonia. It originally appeared in Adventure Journal and is republished here with permission.

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