Rogue River Rafts

Bonnie Tsui of The New York Times writes about the growing trend among whitewater rafting companies in offering culinary cooking camps in addition to their standard river experience. ROW Adventures’ Culinary Whitewater Series (rafting the Snake and Salmon Rivers in Idaho, or northeast Oregon’s Grande Ronde) and O.A.R.S. adventure rafting company’s Wilderness Gourmet trip series (Oregon’s Rogue River) are just two such examples.

“Peter Grubb, president and founder of ROW Adventures, said the company started the Culinary Whitewater Series last year in response to the growing interest in culinary travel… ‘we thought it would be fun to do with some guides on our staff who are experienced cooks and natural teachers. We wanted it to be experiential, so that people could learn how to do gourmet camp cooking at home or on their own camping trips.’”

photo credit: nwrafting

Dan Frosch of The New York Times weighs in on the rafting vs. private land development wars brewing this summer in Colorado’s Gunnison Valley

“Now, the dispute over the Taylor is reviving an old battle in Colorado, long a mecca for white-water rafting. At issue are the state’s water and property laws, which say that while the water in local rivers and streams is public, the beds and banks belong to whoever owns the adjacent land.”

Stephanie Simon in The Wall Street Journal explores the recent angst between Colorado rafters and fisherman: fisher folk hoping to bar passage of local rafting companies through private stretches of river; rafting companies, on the other hand, feeling it’s their right to float public waterways (through private property) without being sued for civil trespass.

“This may sound like an obscure dispute. But it has been a thorny issue in Colorado for a century—in keeping with an aphorism, often attributed to Mark Twain, that out West, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.”

Unable to find common ground between rafting companies and private landowners, Colorado handed its new river access bill to water rights development managers–apparently the only “impartial” witnesses in the argument.

“Some senators questioned the wisdom of sending the issue to the Colorado Water Congress, but Sen. Bruce Whitehead, D-Hesperus, said it would get a fair hearing there. ‘There are problems with the bill … in regards to water-rights development in the future,’ said Whitehead, who opposed the bill.” Charles Ashby in the Grand Junction Sentinel.

Susan Carpenter of The Los Angeles Times writes about her Panamanian excursion to the Valle Escondido Resort & Spa, where hiking, beach time, and whitewater rafting are daily eco-tourism attractions.

“The driver, who also turned out to be the rafting guide, was exactly on time the next morning, at the brutal-for-vacation hour of 7. Scooping up two other couples on the way, we raced northwest on the Pan-American Highway, then took secondary roads and, finally, a treacherous deep-in-the-jungle dirt road. Twenty minutes from the river we would be rafting, the driver slowed to pick up another man who seemed to appear out of nowhere. He was the driver who would move the van from the head of the river to its tail and pick us up a few hours later.”

West Virginia’s rafting industry has endured a decade-long downturn for whitewater destination travel, with 2009 being a particularly down year: “The number of whitewater visits last year on the New, Gauley and other state rivers fell nearly 9 percent to 164,871 compared with the year before, according to state Division of Natural Resources figures,” reports John Raby of BusinessWeek.

Not surprisingly, national trending for whitewater destination travel also is down: “David Brown, executive director of the America Outdoors Association, which tracks whitewater rafting data for about 40 rivers nationally, said most rivers were hit hard by the recession. Colorado, the most popular whitewater destination, saw a 10 percent drop in whitewater visitors between 2007 and 2009.”

In an effort to clarify Colorado’s river access laws, Colorado’s House Judiciary Committee heard testimony Monday from commercial rafting companies (attempting to defend their livelihoods) and private land advocates (attempting to close sections of public rivers to recreational floating).

The committee voted seven to three in favor of Rep. Kathleen Curry’s bill (House Bill 10-1188), which “seeks to clarify that commercial rafting companies in Colorado have the right to float freely through private lands, and if necessary, to portage on private land around obstacles in a river,” writes Brent Gardner-Smith in the Aspen Daily News.

“Mark Hurlburt, a district attorney in Summit County representing  the Colorado District Attorney’s Council, testified in favor of clarifying Colorado’s river access laws, saying that ‘when the rules are clear, that tends to short-circuit a lot of bad feelings that can turn into violent feelings.’”

The bill will now head to the House floor.

Read more about the issue.

photo credit: Katie@!

Northwestern Montana’s Flathead River is one of the handful of pristine watersheds–undammed and without industry–left in the lower 48.

Writer Judy Skatssoon of Stuff.co.nz spends the day with rafting guide Mark Dean, learning about the original custodians of the river, technical rowing strokes, and the area’s natural history:

“In between rapids we drift on glassy still water with the Rocky Mountain ranges rising majestically on either side, and Dean regales us with a history of the area: its complex geology and how floods, fires and climate change have left their marks on the environment.”

photo credit: nwrafting

A Texas real estate development company (Jackson-Shaw), who has built an exclusive fishing club (Wilder On the Taylor) on the banks of Colorado’s Taylor River, is hoping to bar passage of two local rafting companies through a two-mile stretch of river. The rafting companies, on the other hand, feel it’s their right to float public water through private property without being sued for civil trespass–and have been doing so for decades.

Lawmakers have now entered the debate to help clarify years of ambiguous legislation:

“House Bill 1188 would allow commercial rafting companies licensed before 2010 to incidentally touch banks or bottoms without fear of a civil trespassing lawsuit. They could also briefly climb onto riverbanks to bypass obstacles that would otherwise pose a danger to their crews,” writes Jessica Fender of The Denver Post.

“Lawyer John Hill represents Jackson-Shaw and said if the state legislates in favor of the rafters, they’ll have to pay landowners’ compensation for lost land value and business.”