Tuolumne River enthusiasts canoe 236 miles as statement

More than 40 people and 20 canoes on Wednesday traveled down an eight-mile stretch of the Lower Tuolumne River. James Damschroder/Union Democrat

Wednesday’s canoe trip was one leg of the Tuolumne River Trust’s Paddle to the Sea — a 236-mile, three-week journey to bring awareness to the Tuolumne River’s plights by navigating the river and connecting waterways to the Pacific Ocean.

“This is the single biggest outing in Tuolumne River Trust’s history,” said Eric Wesselman, the trust’s executive director, of Wednesday’s excursion.

The journey has already taken adventure addicts down the Tuolumne River’s turbulent headwaters, crashing down the converging, undammed Clavey River and Don Pedro Reservoir.

“It (Clavey River) is one of those gems that everyone keeps their eyes on,” Sacramento kayaker Aaron Stabel said. “It’s one of the best runs in California.”
  

During the descent of the Clavey River, which can only be kayaked for about two weeks a year because water flows have to be surging with snowmelt, 12 kayakers from as far away as New Zealand and as close as Tuolumne County’s Noah Hughes descended the Class-5 rapids.

“It was the highest water flow that I had ever done it at,” Stabel said.

The descent down the upper Tuolumne River was also death defying, as the river was flowing with almost twice as much water as normal because of unseasonable spring warmth quickly melting the Sierra Nevada snowpack.

Over the next week and a half, the lower Tuolumne will lead boaters into the San Joaquin River, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta’s labyrinth, and, eventually, into the San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean.    

“We’re through the hold-on-to-your-butts sections,” Segerstrom said on Wednesday.

Though many are participating in the journey, only Segerstrom and Martinez are taking the time to get to know every bend in the river, every dam blocking its flows, the delta’s crumbling infrastructure, and finishing triumphantly in the Pacific Ocean.

Segerstrom, a sixth-generation Tuolumne County native and former Sonora High School athlete, decided to paddle the whole stretch to bring awareness to the river and its disappearing salmon.

Wednesday’s canoe trip was maybe the most important leg for Segerstrom’s cause because the wildlife-rich stretch is where fall-run Chinook salmon spawn.    

On Wednesday, trout, sucker fish and river otters were spotted swimming in the river’s shallow depths. Ospreys were feasting on fish. And hundreds of sparrows fluttered in and out of their nests built on bridges and the river canyon’s cliffs.

Salmon are considered an “indicator species” of river health, and by all indications the Tuolumne River is ailing, Wesselman said. In 2000, 18,000 salmon found their way to their birthplace in the lower Tuolumne River to spawn. This fall, only 541 were counted and last fall 211 were counted.

Tuolumne River Trust campaigners believe this is evidence something is broken in the complicated system of regulated flows from an assortment of dams operated by Central Valley and Bay Area water districts.

“It’s really crashing,” Wesselman said. “The Tuolumne is getting extremely hard hit.”

Martinez in many ways represents the opposite of Segerstrom — he’s an artist, doesn’t appear too athletic and has never been on the Tuolumne River beyond a mile stretch in Modesto before he decided to join the journey.

“I’m trying to educate myself on the environment,” Martinez said.

He is also looking for inspiration that would resonate in his artwork, which currently is mostly large murals. He’s already gotten plenty of inspiration, including going overboard into the chilly river water on Wednesday. 

Like Segerstrom and Martinez, the more than 40 people who joined Wednesday’s journey all had a different connection to the Tuolumne River.

Jessie Raeder, the trust’s Bay Area organizer, has long been a Sierra river advocate, but she’s only been working with the trust for a short time and had never touched the Tuolumne River before Wednesday.

“The only time I’ve had my feet in the Tuolumne is in my bathtub,” she said.

The Tuolumne is the main source of drinking — and bathing — water for San Francisco and some neighboring communities.

It’ll take people who depend on the Tuolumne River in very different ways — like Segerstrom, Martinez and Raeder — to keep the river’s health from succumbing to thirsty Californians, Wesselman said.

“We all have to work at it,” Wesselman said. “If we don’t take good care of it, it won’t be here for our kids.”