Packrafting the LA River Is a Chook Safari within the Metropolis

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

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

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. Just a few “gentle bottomed” sections of the river are standard 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 in all these standard locales is named the Glendale Narrows. Its backside wasn’t paved due to the rising water desk, so cottonwood, alder and willow bushes 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 surroundings, the area has a wealth of wildlife. Her group goals to construct connections between Angelinos and the river, introducing them to the crops and animals. “The river itself acts as a park and a inexperienced house for all the households who don’t have entry to inexperienced areas,” she says.

Through the earlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the river grew to become an much more necessary 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 position 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, as a consequence of logistics, various water ranges and bureaucratic pink tape, that journey is not potential.

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

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

Apart from 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 beneath the bridge listening to a cacophonous buzz: a mixture of dragonflies, the close by Interstate 5 in rush-hour 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 means of 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 out to be a extra accessible pastime for me as my different loves of mountaineering, working and mountaineering have been not potential 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 power or elevating my coronary heart fee.

The river’s gradual 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 facility of the river earlier than it was squeezed in its concrete straightjacket, starting within the late 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 like 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 along 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 seen a break up within the river’s channel. Once we arrived on the juncture, we took the deeper channel and heard the dashing sound of whitewater. 

The small channel took us by means of the leafy bushes and sequence of small ripples resulting in a major drop. The falls have 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 needed 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 robust paddle stroke to get momentum to clear the drop and land safely on the water beneath. 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 certain I might flip. 

3, 2, 1, boof!

I launched into the air and plunged into the water beneath me, letting out a giant yeehaw! I took a big sweep stroke to show my packraft so I may watch Aaron sort out the impediment. Regardless of by no means going over a drop that large 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 therefore many animals. Different digital camera 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 means of the cattails lining the river overtook the stilts’ KEEKs. We handed beneath the intense 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 could possibly 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. After all, substitute Costa Rica’s toucans with black-crowned evening herons and pink whiskered bulbuls. 

Quickly, the Narrows’ gentle backside gave technique 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 automobile. On the prime, we may see the river flowing slowly towards downtown Los Angeles beneath a spiderweb of interstates.

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

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

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