Packrafting the LA River Is a Fowl Safari within the Metropolis

As the stilts first began dive-bombing us on the water, I couldn’t assist however surprise why ornithologists had named them “black-necked” when the nape was the chicken’s least telling function. 

I used to be taken by an up-close view of 1’s sizzling pink, pipe cleaner legs because it swooped at my companion and me. Sizzling pink stilts, I believed as I ducked and dodged the assault from the water. Now that’s a greater title.

We’d unintentionally come too near the flocks’ camouflaged nests throughout our paddle down the Los Angeles River, leading to a cacophony of high-pitched KEEKs and quite a few shut calls to our ball caps. The water birds flitted above aggressively as we paddled away from their tiny chicks. In all my years of observing stilts on the river, I’d by no means feared them. However there I used to be, dodging the elegant creatures with harmful legs. 

Since transferring to Los Angeles from Colorado in 2016, the river has been a lifeline for me. I’ve spent a lot of my free time on its concrete banks—strolling, birding, biking, and even fly fishing for carp and invasive Amazon sunfish. My first time paddling the river deepened my love for the 52-mile stretch of water even additional.

The LA river—known as Paayme Paxaayt, or “west river,” by the Tongva folks—is an accessible slice of wilderness for a lot of within the park-poor metropolis. A couple of “tender bottomed” sections of the river are fashionable for his or her pure magnificence and recreation alternatives. Candice Dickens-Russell, CEO of Buddies of the Los Angeles River, an REI Cooperative Motion Fund grantee, defined that there are three of those sections alongside the river they usually draw a wealth of nature—in addition to recreationalists who get pleasure from it.

One among these fashionable locales is named the Glendale Narrows. Its backside wasn’t paved due to the rising water desk, so cottonwood, alder and willow timber sprout from it, turning the sliver of wilderness inexperienced. Nineteen species of bats and over 200 species of birds have been discovered on the river, many in these pure channels.

“Los Angeles is a biodiversity sizzling spot,” Dickens-Russell says, explaining that whereas town is a closely constructed atmosphere, the area has a wealth of wildlife. Her group goals to construct connections between Angelinos and the river, introducing them to the vegetation and animals. “The river itself acts as a park and a inexperienced area for the entire households who don’t have entry to inexperienced areas,” she says.

In the course of the earlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the river grew to become an much more vital place for me. Not solely was it someplace I may go for walks, however I hung out attending to know communities who relied on the river for sustenance and shelter, as I reported about unhoused anglers who lived on or close to the river and fish for sustenance. I developed a better understanding of the river and its function not simply as a spot for recreation, however as a house for hundreds of Angelinos.

From the unhoused anglers, and others I met on my walks on the river, I heard of previous courageous paddlers who made selfmade rafts and rode the river when it flooded, carrying them downstream in a lethal torrent of water. These tales, and my years of whitewater kayaking and paddling out west, made me dream of floating the Los Angeles River’s curve sooner or later, from its northern supply within the Santa Susana Mountains within the western San Fernando Valley, to its mouth farther south in San Pedro Bay. Sadly, because of logistics, various water ranges and bureaucratic pink tape, that journey is now not doable.

Nevertheless, two sections of the LA River Recreation Zone are open for paddling yearly, from Memorial Day by late September. One had all the time been on my bucket record.

When Could of 2023 rolled round and the Elysian Valley zone opened, my companion, Aaron, and I shuttled vehicles within the Frogtown neighborhood between our put-in and drop-off factors. Quickly, we had been pumping air into our packrafts on a slab of concrete under the Fletcher Drive Bridge, photosynthesizing within the heat spring air to a frog refrain. 

Moreover teams hosted by the information corporations LA River Kayak Safari and LA River Expeditions, it’s pretty unusual to see paddlers on the river. Cyclists and curler skaters on the adjoining bike path gawked at us as we took on the primary ripple, a simple curler and splashy welcome to the 3-mile float.

We drifted under the bridge listening to a cacophonous buzz: a mixture of dragonflies, the close by Interstate 5 in rush-hour site visitors and towering electrical wires. I do know this buzz—one of many Buddies of the Los Angeles River founders, Lewis MacAdams, described it in a poem chronicling his early, fence-cutting exploits on the river and the way he and lots of others fought to make it accessible to Angelinos. Due to these and lots of different environmental stewards, the Glendale Narrows buzzed, and hummed and chirped on our float.

Being again on the water felt unbelievable. I grew up whitewater kayaking on desert rivers, sharpening my expertise in faculty by Colorado’s Royal Gorge and Utah’s Westwater Canyon. However, the pandemic had modified me from a thrill seeker to simply grateful to be right here after I grew to become disabled with lengthy COVID-19. 

Watersports, it turned out, had turn into a extra accessible passion for me as my different loves of mountaineering, working and mountaineering had been now not doable with my autonomic dysfunction and post-exertional malaise (PEM) from my illness. On the river, I can let gravity take me with out expending a lot vitality or elevating my coronary heart fee.

The river’s sluggish was mesmerizing—it took our inexperienced and electric-blue rafts down its course as we heard a curler skater’s speaker blasting Unhealthy Bunny down river. We stared up in awe on the spectacular cottonwoods. We may see the river’s swell and violence from the winter’s rains; garments and pure particles wrapped round their trunks, 15 ft excessive.

It was a reminder of the ability of the river earlier than it was squeezed in its concrete straightjacket, starting within the late Nineteen Thirties. The river would trigger deadly floods and alter its course throughout extensive floodplains. I imagined these plains as we paddled farther down the river. What did the silver shimmer of spawning steelhead trout appear to be within the Southern California solar? What did grizzly bear paws sound like splashing on the shore? Or a cub’s snore, handed out with a full stomach on a financial institution of California poppies?

A close-by nice blue heron’s velociraptorlike squawk took me out of my daydream. Aaron pointed to the chicken together with his paddle’s tip, water dripping off of it like diamonds within the late day gentle. At first, the heron waded on its lengthy legs, ready for its prey; however as we handed, the chicken erupted into flight. We traced its flightpath till we observed a cut up within the river’s channel. After we arrived on the juncture, we took the deeper channel and heard the speeding sound of whitewater. 

The small channel took us by the leafy timber and sequence of small ripples resulting in a big drop. The falls had been a lot steeper than I anticipated—they tumbled down a number of ft of rocks with the satisfying whoosh of whitewater. The impediment may actually flip a ship and toss a paddler into the river’s depths. We actually wished to keep away from going for a swim. 

I knew to soundly navigate it might require a “boof”, a way the place you are taking a powerful paddle stroke to get momentum to clear the drop and land safely on the water under. I angled my boat towards the steepest a part of the drop and rode the ripples like a bucking bronco. I may scent the river’s earthy coolness as I approached the drop; the cascading water misted into the air. I used to be nervous and thought for positive I might flip. 

3, 2, 1, boof!

I launched into the air and plunged into the water under me, letting out an enormous yeehaw! I took a big sweep stroke to show my packraft so I may watch Aaron deal with the impediment. Regardless of by no means going over a drop that huge in a ship, he cleared it like an skilled. 

“We simply boofed on the LA River!” I yelled. 

Our victory was short-lived. After paddling for a half-mile, we hit a shallow part and needed to drag our rafts as rocks prevented us from transferring ahead. Then, we noticed the stilts. 

They dove, screeched, swooped, rattled and flapped above us as we paddled away, one other reminder that the river is a much-needed dwelling for thus many animals. Different digicam traps have caught coyotes, raccoons, foxes, even cougars crossing its waters. With the river deepening forward of us, we cruised down its course because the sound of the present and wind threading by the cattails lining the river overtook the stilts’ KEEKs. We handed beneath the brilliant orange Taylor Yard Bridge as swifts boomeranged for bugs, and we rode small ripples till we reached my favourite a part of the Recreation Zone.

The channel narrowed and large cattails and grasses rocketed into the sky on both facet. Right here, you may barely even hear the freeway or the close by excessive wires’ buzz. It was like paddling on Costa Rica’s Pacuare River, if just for a number of hundred yards. In fact, change Costa Rica’s toucans with black-crowned night time herons and pink whiskered bulbuls. 

Quickly, the Narrows’ tender backside gave strategy to the concrete and the river widened throughout the pavement. We stepped out of our rafts and carried them up the steep slope to our automotive. On the high, we may see the river flowing slowly towards downtown Los Angeles beneath a spiderweb of interstates.

The river’s sound and present had been now not audible, drowned out by the whoosh of vehicles. Like all river journey, by the point we drove again to our start line to get our different automotive, we had been able to do it over again. The pull of the river is fierce. 

1. Jao, Carren. “The Los Angeles River, a Stunning Oasis for Birds.” PBS SoCal, 29 Mar. 2024, www.pbssocal.org/exhibits/earth-focus/the-los-angeles-river-a-surprising-oasis-for-birds. ︎

The put up Packrafting the LA River Is a Fowl Safari within the Metropolis appeared first on Unusual Path – An REI Co-op Publication.