I would ask that you involve AWA or another access body in any action you take here or up in Routte county. Be smart. Because one fisherman was an idiot, we can't be. Consider that no boaters will be on the jury on any water access issue. Consider you may end up fighting unlimited resources. Make sure the party we chose to bring the fight through will appear favorable in court. Take a look at some of the access battles taking place on fly fishing streams in Montana. When your up against Ted Turner and Don Henly, they can hire the best. Consider that you won't be fighting the single land owner, but land owners from around the world who have bought a little chunk of Colorado and then been annoyed that someone floated past them on what they consider their property. If you want to take the access issue in this state and set precedent, make sure you surround yourself with the right resources. The down side of a loss will hurt us all.
Do you think that the type of group float we are proposing to do would be counter-productive?
The absolute last thing I would hope to achieve would be to make the situation worse locally or at the state level. If this is a serious risk we should re-consider the 'float'.
It is hard to predict what the reaction to an event like this would be (it could send a message that we are here, not going away and just want to share the resource peacefully, respectfully and without conflict so you landowners and fisherman should just accept it and be friendly-this is my hope-but it could also be detrimental and cause the local fisher-landowner-Bush lover's to join up and try to reduce paddler access on this river). I am definitley would love to see this event happen but it is more important not to make the situation worse for paddlers.
Any advice from locals in resource management or individuals w/ related experinec would be great.
Good advice, Ken C, to evaluate the situation and approach it more slowly and rationally.
Its great to see folks fired up and ready to act on this issue but I've been getting a bit uneasy as these float-in plans have developed.
I wholeheartedly agree with Ken C about getting AW or CWWA involved before doing anything that could even remotely be construed as civil disobedience. I've been around civil disobedience events and demonstrations before, and some worked but others failed miserably with all kinds of arrests, bad press and setbacks for the cause being promoted. There's a reason that peace movement activists usually have training for anyone expected to get arrested.
If the Taylor's running low and one person in the group ends up touching the bottom, that's trespass. Even if no one gets out of hand and yells at landowners or trespasses, and the sheriff and reporters could be waiting at the take-out ready to arrest folks with the landowner's story and charges to refute. "Innocent until proven guilty" sounds nice but that ain't how it usually works or how people will perceive it reading the story in the paper - and we've already seen how clueless newspapers are when it comes to boating. The arrests WILL make headlines and even if you're found not guilty, the verdicts will be buried on page 43 six months later, if even covered.
The experienced access people at AW should be consulted (and heeded) before doing a float-in. They've been improving Colorado access for years and have a big stake in the issue.
--Andy H.
PS - AW's already got a designated fund (in memory of kayaker Paul Zirkel) for Colorado. If they tell you to stay home, maybe you could figure out how much you'd have spent on gas, etc. doing the float-in and contribute that to the Zirkel Access Fund.
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Nothing in the world is more yielding and gentle than water. Yet it has no equal for conquering the resistant and tough. The flexible can overcome the unbending; the soft can overcome the hard. - Lao Tse
unless you're carrying signs & engaging people standing on the banks into discourse, i don't understand what's so different about a group of people paddling the taylor vs. say for example, on browns canyon on any given day. i mean, its a regularly run stretch of river right? just one with a buncha motherbastards standing on the banks.
2 questions (& a buncha crap added on):
1. what's to fear about kayaking as a larger than "normal" group?
2. what's it really gonna accomplish if all you're doing is kayaking as a group? i mean, how is it even gonna be perceived as an act of civil disobedience if 20 kayakers go kayaking on one day & without any kind of media outreach? it just turns into kayakers & fisherman looking at each other & wondering what the other is thinking for about ten minutes. if yer trying to replicate Critical Mass, even that has been happening *every* last friday of the month for years, in *every* major metro area on the planet, & it actually snarls traffic & causes people to engage in discourse. I guess if you set a date every week & floated the taylor en masse, & sang "we shall overcome" over & over as you floated peacefully by, that might draw some attention ... but i doubt both the efficacy & the perceived danger of a one-day group float.
the first, that nobody really cares about, practically the whole run from the dam down to lotus creek is never run, apparantly its sorta boring, but i have never run it because (also apparantly) there are barbed wire fences over the river in a few spots. the landowner up there posted so many no tresspassing signs along the side of the road that its apparant he means BUSINESS.. this guy has some real money and owns a huge chunk of the canyon. i wish hed lay off.
the next is on the frequently rafted upper taylor, a resort called Whitewater Resort' owns a few acres on the river right below initiation(III) and when they have guests they know when your on the bank, i havent heard of them prosecuting anyone for falling out of the boat yet.
the third is on the middle taylor, where a resort called Harmel's has built a set of fishing enclosures in the river that are a little bit of fun to run, especially after the upper section starts to feel too short. these guys have signs everywhere, and because its a resort oriented towards fisherman, these paying costumers feel ripped off when kayakers float through.
personally, i dont think the middle taylor is worth running, i definately wouldnt waste the gas money to just go run that part. i say let the fisherman have theyre peace. too bad they can be such jerks, but id be a jerk if i were to stage a 'peaceful float' through there just to aggravate them, especially when they don't even live around here and the drops wouldnt be there without them.
lets put this float on the upper upper taylor and see what its like. i bet there are lots of logs.
furthermore: this asshole fisherman was on public land so im a little wary about pissing off harmels over some peasant fisherman who wasnt one of their customers.
on the other hand: getting paddlers from all over the state could get that asshole fisherman a little local press, which he certainly deserves. IMHO that float should be on the upper section, newgen/initiation to south bank that is
CW has been involved with float-ins before, the most notable recent one on the Lake Fork of the Gunnison several years ago when a landowner was attempting to restrict access. In some ways, it is really one of the few ways we have to draw attention to the problems with the state of the law on river access. The access issue is always a frustrating one, because addressing access by means of legislative efforts hasn't been productive at all. CW's and AW's previous efforts to get a stream safety and access act enacted to clarify the right to float issue have been unsuccessful in the legislature. Similarly, trying to resolve the "right to float" issue in the courts has its own set of obstacles. Namely, until the Colorado Supreme Court addresses the issue (again), which would takes months if not years, the law is what it is, however murky it might be.
So, float-ins are great to draw public attention to the access issue and symbolically are important. From CW's perspective, float-ins should raise public awareness and support for the right to float and not having to worry about being harassed by anyone. The comments from others about doing the float-in well are spot on. Being rude to landowners or anglers and trespassing would be really counter-productive. That said, a well-organized float-in is at worst a fun day on the river and at best a fun day on the river and a good opportunity to raise public awareness and garner support for boaters. Boat and float well!
Cheers
Patrick Tooley
CW President and Access Director
the first, that nobody really cares about, practically the whole run from the dam down to lotus creek is never run, apparantly its sorta boring, but i have never run it because (also apparantly) there are barbed wire fences over the river in a few spots. the landowner up there posted so many no tresspassing signs along the side of the road that its apparant he means BUSINESS.. this guy has some real money and owns a huge chunk of the canyon. i wish hed lay off.
the next is on the frequently rafted upper taylor, a resort called Whitewater Resort' owns a few acres on the river right below initiation(III) and when they have guests they know when your on the bank, i havent heard of them prosecuting anyone for falling out of the boat yet.
the third is on the middle taylor, where a resort called Harmel's has built a set of fishing enclosures in the river that are a little bit of fun to run, especially after the upper section starts to feel too short. these guys have signs everywhere, and because its a resort oriented towards fisherman, these paying costumers feel ripped off when kayakers float through.
personally, i dont think the middle taylor is worth running, i definately wouldnt waste the gas money to just go run that part. i say let the fisherman have theyre peace. too bad they can be such jerks, but id be a jerk if i were to stage a 'peaceful float' through there just to aggravate them, especially when they don't even live around here and the drops wouldnt be there without them.
lets put this float on the upper upper taylor and see what its like. i bet there are lots of logs.
furthermore: this asshole fisherman was on public land so im a little wary about pissing off harmels over some peasant fisherman who wasnt one of their customers.
on the other hand: getting paddlers from all over the state could get that asshole fisherman a little local press, which he certainly deserves. IMHO that float should be on the upper section, newgen/initiation to south bank that is
the stretch from the dam to lottis creek isnt really worth the trouble. theres only two or three rapids, and the rest of it is just manky, log filled, fence crossed shallows. there is a nice runnable section of IV just beween Lottis Creek and Lodgepole C.G.'s, which is all on public property and is pretty consistent III+/IV all the way through. The stretch we should be looking at is the Crystal Creek subdivision. This section of priv prop starts just below Lodgepole C.G. and extends until just before the New Gen put in on the Upper. Someone has given these assholes permission to alter the river bed, and the result of is a whole series of fish dams for almost a mile. Theres a few good sized ones (maybe 5-6') and a bunch of smaller ones. Im not sure about fences, although my guess is theres only one at the beginning of the property and at the end of the property. Its gets shallow in there in a few spots, so a little higher water might be nice.
the folks at the Whitewater Resort (on the river left bank of Initiation) are good folks and dont mind kayakers too much. i took a swim one time right there and had to climb out to empty my boat and shit, right there on the left bank, while two folks from the resort were standing there talking to me. they were real cool about it, understood the situation, and i told them i was going to be off in a minute or two and they said "no sweat". we had a serious injury one time on a commercial upper trip that needed and evac right after initiation, and the folks at Whitewater were more than willing to accomodate. They are private landowners, but they have the willingness to work with boaters that harmels does not.
i think the middle section is key here. the riverway is public property, and these landowners need to realize that. They and Harmels always seem to think that they magically own the water too, which is bullshit. the harrassment is top notch, and often completely undeserved. a mass float through this section i think would show them that we mean business, but in a completely legal way. Hell, lets call the gunnison county sherriff and explain beforehand what were doing, maybe they'll send out the sherriff here in town (cant think of his name...) that kayaks.
i take a lot of personal offense to these landowners. I was born and raised in gunnison, and im also a 5th generation colorado native, and when these assholes come up from texas, ok, georgia, wherever, to their million dollar trophy home that they use maybe a month or two out of the year, and think that they can just order us around on OUR river, it gets my blood boiling. its the same situation up at Pittsburgh (takeout for Daisy C...) These assholes come up and just because they have millions of bucks, think they can shut US out of OUR rivers, when theyre in OUR area, and away from theirs. especially when all we're doing is floating by! i mean come on, even if you eddy out, how long are you honestly going to be there? a minute? if that? but nooooo, it inhibits with their "views".
the situation here kind of sucks, because we cant even explain it to them. it would be like us going to wherever their full time home is, and going and putting up "private property" signs all over their favorite golf course and taunting them as they play. these landowners just dont understand the concept of an open riverway, and a mass float, with the backing of AW, CWWA, the local sherriffs office, or whatever, would do just that. we dont need to do it all the time, and we certainly dont need to do it in a way that will get us percieved as assholes, but it still NEEDS to happen civilly, and peacefully, and at least once. harmels itself isnt quite the problem either. Its the homeowners association that lines the river after harmels that is the problem. Harmels just goes along with them. And it doesnt matter if it's designed to be a "fishermen friendly" stretch, its still a public waterway that should be used by the PUBLIC!
i think this needs to happen, but i dont think we can pull it together this year. what we need to do is spend the winter planning and pulling strings, so that next spring we can come back organized, ready to go, and hopefully with the backing of some of the aforementioned orginizations. this has the potential to be big people, and i think we need to take action. colorado has been waiting for a situation like this that will help determine once and for all the true boundaries of these homeowners and hopefully expose their over zealousness towards it all.
Meng is right. All that's going to happen if you have a huge get together to show your numbers is you're going to make people realize the Taylor should be permitted.
Don't draw attention to us. Leave things as they are. Ignore the rude fishermen and be courteous to the rest.
Not sure why anyone here thinks that MORE legislation on the rivers is a good idea. When is the last time ANY legislation helped private boaters?
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