Just Got Home From the Current
Paddled the Jack’s from Bay Creek to Emminence 2 weeks ago. Water was 4’ and 800cfs and it was PERFECT. IMHO, I wouldn’t take a loaded boat below 200cfs and a little over 2’ on the Alley gauge:
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/mo/nwis/uv/?site_no=07065495&PARAmeter_cd=00065,00060
On the Jack’ from Alley on down this time of the year it’s busy even during the week. We saw several canoes at accesses on the Current today, but probably only a half dozen on the river with 3 rest/lunch/swimming stops.
Eleven Point is definitely less crowded. Beware of leaving your vehicle at accesses though, better to let an outfitter shuttle you. Lots of “Wildlife” of the human variety in that area.
Jacks Fork…
is one of my favorite rivers. I “float” the upper river in mid to late summer when flows are less than 50 cfs at the Buck Hollow gauge, but I’m doing it for the solitude and the fishing then; there’s no denying it’s work, and I’ll be scraping bottom at best and dragging the canoe at worst in nearly every riffle then. Personally, with a loaded canoe, I think you can do it at 100 cfs, but you’ll still be scraping bottom in some riffles.
From the Prongs to Rymers, the riffles are mostly cobble; rocks just big enough to make dodging them a challenge in lower water levels, but riffles are mostly fairly narrow. From Rymers to Bay Creek the riffles widen and become more gravelly, and this gets even worse from Bay Creek to Alley. In low water conditions you have to drag a canoe a LOT.
Alley to Eminence is a rather short stretch that seems even shorter to me because you run out of the scenic riverways and into a lot of tacky development more than a mile above Eminence. The development continues downstream for a couple miles below Eminence, but then the river’s surroundings become quite nice again. Yes, water quality suffers, but I will say that the average person floating it would never guess it, because the water is still clear and seemingly clean. That’s part of the problem…the locals find it easy to convince themselves the river is fine, because it looks okay to them, so they scoff at those who say the horse crap and other stuff is polluting it.
What al_a said…
I concur 100%.
BOB
Easy to say…
How many times have you paddled the section in question?
How many times will you paddle it in the future?
Easy to say, “It’s ok; no problem”.
People polluting the river (any river) to garner tourist bucks is not ok in my book.
BOB
But what is the actual risk level?
Our local river has coliform, various levels, all the time, but my polls of paddlers and fishermen indicate that people are not experiencing sickness. Of course, sources of pollution should be controlled or stopped, but whether to stop using a section because of pollution is a subjective decision, not a scientific one.
Well, It’s Sad For Me…
…as it used to be my favorite stretch. Not because it’s the most scenic, but it was the closest and I always hammered the smallies there.
When the “Trailride” was an annual thing, that was o.k. A few horses riding there was ok. Heck, many of my friends own horses and I used to ride frequently years ago. But seeing it change so rapidly all over the allmighty dollar… Also, the fact that only the thoughts of those with the most money to bribe “Officials” have been listened to rubs us paddlers in the area the wrong way.
Do I paddle this stretch now? Rarely, I DO, but only during the winter when the only horses out there are the wild herd. Have I ever been ill? No, but I aint swimming in February. People bathe and swim in pollution without getting ill in 3rd world countries too. Seeing a few profit over damaging our area river is something that turns many of our stomachs, EZ.
now wait a minute
"If you pollute it they will come?" I think that’s a bit overboard.
The likely reason why the situation has n’t been improved is because of
- lack of public outcry
- difficulty of correcting the situation
- cost of correcting the situation
is there a documented relationship
– Last Updated: Jun-10-15 11:49 AM EST –
between the horse operation and the state? Forgive me, but if not, there are good reasons to doubt your speculation.
In general
In my experience, the businesses and landowners there (defined as “rural”) seem to have a general disdain for the tourists (mostly defined as “urban”). Though they WILL readily take our dollars. The recent NPS hearings seem to have exacerbated that.
The local politicians represent their constituents, not the floaters.
I float the section(s) in question and enjoy it.
Bob, you aren’t listening.
It’s not…
It’s not a “pollute it & they will come” scenario.
That is ridiculous; you know that’s not what I’m saying.
It’s already polluted. They have studied the pollution problem for decades. Nothing is done to enforce the anti pollution regulations that are already in place. The powers that be don’t want any new anti pollution regulations.
If they enforce the regulations already in place, or make more stringent regulations; that will slow down
the tourist trade.
The “money” from the tourist trade is the real issue. Maintain the status quo. No new regulations, and very little enforcement of current regulations keeps the money flowing into the money men’s pockets. The money is more important than clean water. This is most certainly not an isolated incident at one location.
They wouldn’t allow 3,000 horses roaming around Yellowstone National Park on a weekend. How about the Boundary Waters? Not gonna happen. But on a National Scenic Riverway? OK! Somewhere, somehow, something is wrong with that; nobody will ever change convince me otherwise.
BOB
covering a lot of material in this
thread, A couple of things of interest to me- folks are able to boat on less than 200 cfs in the ozarks- not like wv creeks and rivers, where almost everything is rocky- its pretty safe to say just about any stream in my neck of the woods needs a couple of hundred cfs to even consider boating- so the geology is different.
Water quality is a personal choice. I’ve paddled a few s**t creeks because they had other redeeming qualities 9like quality ww or a remote gorge)- but never high on my list to do.
As far as politics and the park service- the NRG inherited your (Ozark wild rivers) NPS superintendent. See much more law enforcement emphasis in the last few years than before. We all get along pretty good for a lot of years now- hope feds don’t screw it up.
Paddlers need to keep using the section
below Eminence, and writing to those who control it, if they want to maintain standing and get some controls on horse hockey waste.
The worst thing that can happen is that paddlers will turn up their noses and abandon the section to the horsey folks. Paddle, and complain.
I just “flew” over that section using the location map function of the USGS gauge page, and it is still a mostly forested section with little development. And, with a watershed of about 400 square miles, it is runnable much more often than the favored sections up closer to the headwaters.
coliform baceria
is everywhere. It’s in almost all water. That in and of itself will not make one sick. I think what Bob is trying to point out is the possibility of e-coli which can be from horse manure and can make one sick. The presence of high amounts of coliform bacteria is an indicator of possible contamination which can cause illness.
The Park Service…
has tried repeatedly to do something about the horse operations, but the locals oppose any attempts to limit the numbers of horseback riders, led by the businesses who take their money and the campground owners who cater to them, and supported by a lot of people who will do everything they can to oppose anything the “gov’mint” wants to do. The local politicans, up to and including the U.S. Representative for that area, support them all the way. Bribes? Maybe, maybe not, but certainly lots of campaign donations, which in effect is the same thing.
On a related note…
– Last Updated: Jun-10-15 10:58 PM EST –
there was just an article in the Salem newspaper describing all the problems with vandalism, poaching, and other lawless activities on lands owned by the L.A.D. Foundation in the area. The L.A.D. Foundation was Leo A. Drey and his wife Kay, who bought up hundreds of thousands of acres across the Missouri Ozarks, land that had spectacular natural features, and kept it open to the public. Leo, who died just recently, was without a doubt the Aldo Leopold of the Ozarks. The land he owned includes quite a bit of river frontage on the Jacks Fork, including one of my two or three favorite spots in the Missouri Ozarks, Chalk Bluff. It's a towering, curving dolomite cliff, light colored and "painted" with mineral stains and lichens, on the river below Rymers, with a beautiful little rapid just above it and a deep rocky pool beneath it, with a high, clean gravel bar opposite the bluff. The bluff faces southwest, and the trees in back of the gravel bar shade it in the late summer afternoons while the setting sun lights up the bluff in gorgeous colors, making it one of the choicest river camping spots in the Ozarks. Unfortunately, one of the ATV trails, that the Park Service has repeatedly tried to close and the local pinheads scream bloody murder that their granddaddies used that "road" and it should remain open so "families" can enjoy the river, comes down to the river just upstream from the bluff. Well, for every so-called family that uses that road, there are a bunch of criminals and idiots who use it. Last summer, some idiots with a lot of stupid ambitions somehow dragged a huge heavy equipment tire down the trail, across the river, and onto that gravel bar, probably planning on burning it while they spent the night getting wasted. But they couldn't get it to start burning, so they left it sitting in the middle of the gravel bar. But in the article, it described and showed a picture of an even worse abuse that just recently happened--it seems some despicable excuses for human beings decided it would be a great idea to spray paint graffiti all over the face of the bluff.
I can't tell you how much this saddens and angers me. The upper Jacks Fork is the closest thing to a cathedral I'll ever have, and this hurts in the same way of somebody going into your local church and setting fire to the pews and spray painting the walls with obscenities.
“Floatable” in the Ozarks…
Yep, the Ozark streams are far different from generally wide, ledgy, rocky rivers of the east. They are narrow, winding, and mostly gravel and cobble bottomed. My rule of thumb for floatability is that if it’s a smaller stream, 75 cfs will be enough to float a lightly and carefully loaded canoe if you don’t mind scraping bottom occasionally. 100 cfs will get you through nearly all the riffles without touching bottom except for a few split channels. Of course, if you’re wanting a really lazy paddling trip on one of the slower streams, or a bit more excitement on one of the faster streams like the upper Jacks Fork, 200-400 cfs is better. On streams like the upper Jacks Fork which DO get too low to float easily, once the flows get up around 800-1000 cfs they start getting dangerous. The larger streams which are generally floatable year-round, if they get extremely low, need well over 100 cfs to float, because the riffles will be wider, and can be easy floating at 1000 cfs without much danger.
Thank you Al
That is a shame and I wonder what the state DNR thinks about it.
MO DNR
They agree there’s a problem, but their hands are tied as well. DNR gets nearly all their funding from half of a 1/10th cent sales tax, but they have responsibility for all the state parks as well as environmental quality, so they are chronically underfunded and suffer from a lack of manpower for inspectors. Plus, they are more controlled by the legislature than the MO Department of Conservation, and the state legislature is openly hostile to environmental regulations, having a very strong majority of rural tea party type legislators. I hate to get political outside the bicker and banter board, but the MO legislature right now is about as whacko right wing as any in the country. They introduced 16 different bills this last session trying to attack the Conservation Department, cut off their funding, require them to pay $500 to anybody who hit a deer with their automobile, prohibit them from working with non-profit organizations (the MO Conservation Federation works closely with MDC and is the strongest voice for conservation in the state, and they were the main target of that particular bill), change the definition of navigable streams in ways that would make floating a number of rivers illegal…The only reason most of these bills didn’t target DNR is because they already have DNR somewhat under their thumb. None of the bills passed, thanks to a tremendous outpouring of protest letters and emails, but they’ll keep trying.
Below Eminence
I’m from central Iowa. I drive about 500 miles each way to canoe The Ozark National Scenic Riverway (Current and Jacks Fork rivers) at least twice a year in the spring and fall.
I have only canoed the section below Eminence twice. Once almost 15 years ago before the trail rider invasion and horse corral expansion at Eminence, and once after. They were two completely different experiences.
Before the invasion and expansion it was a great experience. Clear clean water and the beautiful smell of the Ozark forests. After the invasion and expansion it was not an enjoyable experience. You could even smell the horseshit as you canoed the river.
Now I have nothing against horses. We currently have two at home in rural Iowa. But if I wanted to canoe in shit I could stay home with the pig shit in Iowa rivers instead of driving almost 1,000 miles round trip to canoe in horseshit on the Jacks Fork.