A buddy of mine claims that it’s toxic, but the Salton Sea Visitor Center has been hosting kayak tours along the eastern shore. They’re closed atm, but I was thinking about driving there this weekend and checking it out.
edit: I guess I’ll skip it. Thanks everyone!
Don’t know that I would want to kayak the Salton Sea. Visited it and camped there for a couple of nights back in 2013 – it is toxic because it is so horribly salty and because nothing can live in it except the tiny snails whose shells now completely cover the shoreline. I think there were some fish in it who survive through cannibalizing their own species. Any metal parts on a kayak would be corroded by the salt so unless facilities were open for rinsing yourself and your gear thoroughly with fresh water, launching a boat would be a problem. It’s kind of a creepy place and overall a man-made environmental disaster.
I’m glad I visited it, and the campground was quite nice, but with all facilities closed I don’t think it would be a great place to visit. One thing people forget to take into account when planning road trips is that most public rest rooms are locked up and porta potties and rest rooms in gas stations and convenience stores would be dangerous sources of infection. I love road trips but I don’t think I will plan any until I get the small self -contained camper I have been considering. I think traveling with one’s own bathroom, kitchen and sleeping compartment is going to be the only safe means of doing so for a while.
You can you tube a lot of information. Apparently it is something Mazda drivers who are SUP people do. And when they go they don’t take boats, but find them standing there awaiting them. That and they paddle without a PFD in sight.
I don’t SUP or drive a Mazda so I won’t be there.
PS…guess I’m a sarcastic elitist.
Kind of like paddling Mono Lake.
I thought it might be fun to paddle the Salton Sea; I grew up paddling duck hunting boats on the Great Salt Lake in Utah and sailing on the Great Salt Lake, which used to be pretty polluted, so I wasn’t too worried by the Salton Sea’s bad reputation. My grandfather’s farm bordered on the salt marshes of the great salt lake, so I am pretty used to the odors and corrosive water. I checked out paddling on the Salton Sea, and decided it was not worth it; the water has a salt marsh odor as expected but it also reeks of some other chemistry going on. I’m a chemist and get exposed to a lot of chemicals and my immediate reaction was there is something in the air above the water that isn’t healthy. I do know the water has very high concentrations of agricultural chemicals from far run-off. There is also a kind of brownish particulate matter in the air above the water on windy days. So, no I would not bother paddling there. I live a few miles from the Pacific Ocean and in normal times I get out about four times a week, and if I lived inland there are lots of fairly nice spots to paddle on the Colorado River, you can check them out here on Pnet, I think I filed a couple of trip reports about 10 or 15 years ago.
SUP, ? I think you mean rec boats don’t you. Did you notice the grayish brown haze above the water in the distance, you don’t want to breath that crap.
Seadart…observation kicked in too late. Look at the driver and passenger name and titles in the beginning of the video. I’m sure “SUP” is something else, but?..
Several years ago when my son and one of his old girlfriends were in town we took a trip out to the lake to paddle around and see the bird life. His girl friend was a biologist who does environmental studies in Canada, she was a bit overwhelmed by the environmental disaster the lake has become. That being said lots of birds seem to thrive in the area. We at lunch at the picnic structure in the video, and at some nearby parking areas saw some huge owls, which I did not expect.
I’ve paddled Mono. Really interesting lake, ospreys were nesting at the time.
The other turnoff is the sheer volume and ubiquitous presence of litter, including broken glass, even along the roadsides. The place seems to have been treated as a dump and as a “permanent campground” for extremely sketchy people. That might have changed; I saw it in 1987 and was shocked at the trashed nature.
With the pandemic, the bad stuff is probably getting worse, not better.
OS ,You are hardly the only one.
String…that place is Southern California. The company I used to work for wanted to send me there and pay me more $$$$$. I turned 'em down. I won’t be paddling there. Besides it’s desert…I need locations with more green.