The Yampa River is known as the jewel of the Colorado River system, and it is one of the last remaining wild, untamed, free-flowing rivers in the American West.

This five day river trip is like floating through a living museum with wildlife, Native American cultural sites, dinosaur quarries, and a healthy habitat for endangered plants and animals.

The Living Peace Foundation is honored to provide funding support for Wild Rivers with Tillie supporting people and projects that creatively and courageously advance collaboration, compassion and living peace.

This series shares the passion that the Living Peace Foundation has for the health and connectedness of our planet and all who inhabit it.

I am veteran river guide and conservationist, Tillie Walton.

Join me as I lead different grou down the great rivers of the American West.

Wow!

Oh.

It█s like so narrow.

We█re driving a houseboat!

This is the mighty Yampa River.

She's wild and free.

If she was a superhero, she would be Wonder Woman.

This is a rare, rare gem because most rivers have big dams on them.

But she's relatively unaffected by any dams.

And so what we have here is a unique river ecosystem that we're not able to see anywhere else.

It's basically a living museum that we█ll be floating through for the next five days.

The Yampa River begins high in the Colorado mountains in the flat top wilderness close to the resort town of Steamboat Springs.

Its 250 mile journey travels through some of the most beautiful yet little known parts of Colorado, including Dinosaur National Monument.

Getting ready to launch.

This is the hardest part.

Once we push off then it's good.

but it's always getting here.

(I know) the hard part.

My favorite things is it█s one of the last places in the U.S. that you don't get any cell service.

So once you go into the canyon, you don't have a choice but to unplug.

Friends of the Yampa River has brought us all here together to learn about the magic of these free-flowing waters.

So we have this amazing group of people gathered here with us, folks from the superintendent of the park to the National Parks Foundation, to people who've dedicated their lives with some of the leading conservation organizations for rivers like American Rivers.

We have local groups, people who run the Chamber of Commerce, come from ranching and coal families, that really know this area intimately.

On Colorado's Western Slope, water is everything.

There are 40 million people in the American West who depend on the Colorado River basin.

Well, the rivers anywhere but certainly in Colorado, in the dry west are really the essential lifelines to being able to grow anything.

Although the Yampa is healthy and and wild if we don't protect something like the Yampa, what are we doing this for?

Like we have to save something.

We have to keep something natural and vibrant and.

So this river fluctuates wildly.

Sometimes it's barely a trickle.

A couple of years ago, they had to cancel the trip, and at other times they've been back and the river's been flooding and they've floated through those cottonwood trees behind us.

This river isn't clear.

It's all muddy.

That's why we have the foam, all the silt, There's more insects here.

The water goes up into the floodplains next to the beautiful cottonwoods, but also makes hatching grounds for mosquitoes and all those bugs.

The river goes up and down kind of unpredictably.

The banks will constantly be building up and falling in and it█s a river in motion.

Most rivers don't have foam when they're dammed.

But it does look like somebody took a muddy bubble bath.

Some of the rock we're going, about to float through is between 60 to 145 million years old.

This was a great ocean that surrounded the whole land and it deposited a lot of sand and limestone.

As we float through these layers, the canyon walls will start to rise up and will the river will go from this vast meandering into a more narrow channelized canyon.

Dinosaur National Monument was established in 1915, so it's over 100 years old.

It was established by President Woodrow Wilson, by presidential proclamation.

Originally, it was just 80 acres and it preserved one of the most fabulous dinosaur quarries in the United States.

And what a dinosaur quarry is, is a place where dinosaur bones collected in a massive riverbed 50 million years ago.

They're located in the Morrison Formation geologic formation.

And we get 300,000 visitors a year to Dinosaur National Monument, and 90% of them go to the quarry.

The rivers are the lesser known part of Dinosaur National Monument to the general public.

To the boating community, Dinosaur Is something of a mecca.

16,000 people apply for permits to ply on the Green and the Yampa Rivers, and we only give out 300 private permits per year.

And most of those permit applications are to travel on the Yampa River.

We see about 10 to 15000 visitors on the river each year.

Every morning on the river, we pack, pack, unpack.

All right.

So this is life on the river, which is actually super comfy.

And it's kind of like home away from home.

It's not like backpacking or anything.

Take you on a little tour of my tent.

In here I have my bag, which has all my clothes and shoes and all that stuff in there.

And and it's been really cold.

So I've been really excited to have a tent.

Normally I just put my tarp out on the side of the river and put my sleeping bag on top of it.

But it's been freezing on this trip, so I wanted to be inside the tent.

We get coffee every morning, so there's a sleeping bag here.

I actually bring a pillow all the time.

And then under here I have a nice, cushy taco pad that I sleep on.

And then I just put my tent on my tarp.

And then when I'm done and I pack it all up and then it goes on the raft and we go down to the next home.

So yeah, it's actually pretty comfortable for living on the river.

It's home, away from home.

We're moving downriver, camping at different spots each night.

And these rafts that we have with us carry everything that we need.

Our entire kitchen, all of the tables.

The groover, which is the toilet, the water.

Our first aid.

All of our sleeping equipment.

All of the beer.

Everything comes on the river.

And we take everything off.

Because what's really amazing about most river trips that you do is that you come down and you feel like you're the only person who's ever been at your campsite Starting to get into the canyon.

And the walls are starting to rise.

And we're probably in about 200 million year old rock now, and it's got this red stain on it.

It's from the iron in the rock mixing with the water and the oxygen and it's oxidizing.

These trees that are starting to show up along the river called Box Elders.

And they're threatened because they also need a wild river that floods and it goes high and low.

In the Colorado River basin.

It█s been so dammed and diverted and pumped and piped.

There really aren't any rivers left that act like rivers and the Yampa does.

This is a this river so critically important for fish.

The cultural resources here are amazing.

How does this one operate differently than a dammed river?

I mean, there's a small dam here.

Yeah, there's a small dam way, way up in the headwaters, but it doesn't really capture much water.

Most of the tributary inflow comes in below that dam.

So in the river world, it's what we call a natural hydrograph.

So in the spring or early summer, like like where we are now, the flows are really high.

And then as runoff kind of dissipates, the flows drop pretty rapidly.

And so this river, while it's a big full river right now.

In two months, it'll just be kind of a small little thread.

We wouldn't be able to get this raft on it Without significant storage in the Yampa basin, it does present water supply challenges.

But I think this is a really great example of how a wild river not only works for the environment, but actually works for the people that depend on it too.

So there's vibrant agriculture in the Yampa Valley, power stations that use a lot of water.

There's municipal water that's used too in places like Steamboat and Craig.

A lot of it has to do with collaboration among the different users and the different people that take care about the Yampa.

So is this a model or an example you could take somewhere else?

Absolutely.

I mean, I think it proves that, you know, we don't need big dams.

We don't need big water infrastructure projects to to supply water to people, to farms, to power companies.

We can use a wild river.

And that wild river also provides for for the ecology, for the fish, for the wildlife, for the riparian zone.

As you can see, one of the most special things about the Yampa is it's you notice on the banks is not clogged with invasive species like tamarisk or Russian olive.

That's largely because it acts like a wild, natural river.

It every few years or so high water years it over bank floods significantly and that's beneficial to cottonwood and willow.

We're lucky to have this, this laboratory for the rest of the West, even for the rest of the world.

One of the best parts about a river trip are the rapids.

It's where the fun the excitement, the adrenaline, it's one of the best parts about being on.

the river.

And this rapid is a class three rapid, and class one is the easiest flat water.

Class five is extreme.

The neat thing about rapids on a river that fluctuates so much is that they look very different at different levels.

So what can be kind of an easier rapid at very low flows can be absolutely huge at high water.

It is a natural flowing river.

So being able to see the different flows each day is different, each trip is different.

You know, one week could be twice as much water.

The geology here, the human history here, I think is makes this place special.

But ultimately, you know, most rivers in the west, as we know, are all dammed.

And this one isn't.

So it's just really cool to see a river in its natural habitat.

It's a very short season.

Now, there's water flowing through this canyon pretty much all year round, but for river runners were only able to run this a short period of time, which is unique.

Really, only about two months is a good flow.

There's water going through, but river runners can't make it through because it's just too low the rest of the year.

This looks like a gnome.

This driftwood in the river.

shows us that the water is starting to come up because So when we look in the channel and we see lots of wood you can see along the sides all the pieces of wood in the water, we know that that the river is rising.

and as the water rises, the wood floats off into the river.

So when we look in the channel and we see lots of wood in the water, we know that that the river is rising.

This is one of the highlights.

It's an overhang.

It's called Signature Cave because of all the signatures that have been placed on the wall behind me.

Today, we don't want to write on the walls, but back in the day we didn't quite understand it.

So people wrote on the wrote on the walls and you see the "P" "L"?

Pat Pat Lynch, he was a hermit that lived in Yampa Canyon with a rich history of decades living here by himself.

Supposedly had pet mountain lions.

Bus Hatch is the pioneer of recreational river rafting in the country.

He started floating here on the Yampa.

He lived in Vernal, and he was one of the first permittees to have a recreational permit to float the river.

He was a great river conservationist and he was part of the David Brower movement and the Sierra Club movement in the sixties to help protect this river.

Native Americans inhabited this whole area for, for thousands of years.

The Fremont culture left a big imprint with the petroglyphs and pictographs.

And we haven't found any petroglyphs or pictographs here like we do find down downstream.

All these walls have this beautiful manganese oxide.

It's coming down on the rocks and making that dark color.

This is called tiger wall.

Because of the stripes.

It looks like a tiger.

Different rivers have different traditions that river runners follow.

So we kiss the wall here to ensure a safe passage and a good run through the rapids.

But it's the most humbling thing that I've ever been a part of, to be honest.

Us guys that have been doing this for a long time have days where we think we're really good, and the next day we get spanked.

So we're all in between swims.

But what do they say?

They say there's those who have flipped and those who will and those who will again.

These guys are just entering they're entering into what's called the tongue of the rapid.

And it's where all the water's going.

And it takes them down a smooth path and oops there goes his hat.

That's considered a river offering to the river gods.

This is actually trickier than it looks.

So.

Oop, there she goes.

This whole country, has a great history from the pioneers who settled this land to the tribal connections before then and then the presence of the national parks.

And so it's it's had this long and sometimes sordid history, but it seemed to accommodate all these different snapshots in time.

This is one of those rivers that people went to fight for, to keep it from being dammed.

And, of course, that led us to other situations where rivers were dammed down the way.

But people saw that this is one of the iconic river systems, one of the iconic landscapes, and that's worth protecting.

It's kind of unique because it's national monument, but then there's private land in between.

So how does that work?

So this is in what they call a classic inholding park.

So when they established the boundary, there were private parcels.

And over time, these generational ranchers and families that are on the land are no longer staying with it.

And so it's passing on through generations.

And what we want to make sure happens is that we have the chance to preserve and protect those inholdings on behalf of the resource and for the National Park Service.

Those families are great stewards, they do great work, but eventually that land will change hands.

Commercial exploitation could not be a compatible use, so maybe we can help acquire that and preserve it and protect it.

In addition to the ranchers, the ancient touch of humans can be felt along the river.

Commonly call them the Fremont.

They were contemporary with the ancestral Puebloans.

What we call the Fremont as a group may include some cultural components like the Fremont have rock art, a trapezoidal style rock art.

They have a specific type of corn that they developed called 14 row dent.

And from my understanding is that they used over 140 some plants and animals in this region to meet their their food needs.

And so they're extraordinarily well adapted to this area.

They emerged around distinctly around zero C.E.

And then by about the mid 1300s, evidence of mostly what we would call Fremont had had dissipated.

What happened to them?

So we often attribute things to cause like a single cause, and I'm not sure it's that easy to do.

Yes.

Were there significant ecological constraints at the time?

Yeah, there was significant drought during that time.

That probably had an impact.

Not only does the river give us a glimpse into the lives of the people who once lived here, it is also home to some of the last remaining ancient fish species of its kind on earth.

This is the center of the universe for one of our endangered fish species, and that's the Colorado Pike Minnow.

There is lot riding on a successful recovery program.

I think from everybody's perspective that, we want to preserve these these rivers in a healthy state, get these fish off the list for the right reasons.

The big top line predator in the system, Colorado Pike Minnow.

He used to be found all the way down to the Gulf.

That's where they found the fossil records of these fish getting up to be six, six feet long and 80 pounds.

long and 25 pounds.

We still see fish and there's probably some right around the corner here that may be four feet long and 25 pounds.

Echo Park is where this river was preserved for future generations.

This place is called Echo Park, and this was the epicenter And this is the only reason we are able to be here today.

This place is called Echo Park, and this was the epicenter bend in the next canyon down called Whirlpool Canyon, of the birth of the modern river conservation movement.

So back in the 1950s, a dam was proposed around this bend in the next canyon down called Whirlpool Canyon, but it was referred to as the Echo Park Dam.

If it had been built, it would have flooded the entire canyon on the Green River Gates of Lodor, and it would have would have flooded the entire Yampa Canyon.

if that dam had been built, that would have threatened national monuments all around the country.

And national parks, too.

And national parks too.

So the Grand Canyon could have been underwater?

Yeah, absolutely.

Even though the Yampa River is kind of a smaller stretch, It█s got such huge impact.

It provides ten percent of all the water of the upper basin states water delivery to Lake Powell.

It█s like the heartbeat of the ecosystem here That keeps all the other systems Because you have this natural flowing stretch it█s sort of life support for everything else.

The Yampa is big and wide and brown.

You'll see on the green side, it's clear or green and the sediment that's in this water is pushed all the way downstream, all the way to Lake Powell.

And that provides habitat for endangered fish, improves the health of the riparian corridor.

It's critically, critically important.

In addition to the water supply benefits.

As we're looking downstream here, we can see a big, beautiful beach and a bunch of cottonwood.

This is actually an extremely rare site on any part of the Colorado watershed past here.

Because the Yampa River brings down the sediment and deposits it.

It also carries down the cottonwood seeds and it plants all these trees alongside.

And so downriver they spend, for example, in the Grand Canyon, millions of dollars to recreate flows that can stir up some of the sediment on the bottom, to recreate the beaches.

And so these cottonwood provide incredible habitat for a variety of bird species, including a lot of endangered ones.

The Yampa contributes a large portion of water to the Colorado River Basin and is considered the last wild, free-flowing river in the entire American Southwest.

So it's a pretty important resource for us.

Our earth is made up of tectonic plates that are constantly moving and shifting now is the result of tectonic plates colliding.

underneath the geology that we get to see on the surface and in a lot of what we're seeing right now is the result of tectonic plates colliding.

And this behind us is Mitten Park fault.

This is where two tectonic plates collided and sent one portion of the plate up.

We can see this steep ramping that the rock does.

It's amazing to see how how malleable the rock is.

It just hit something a little bit harder and in just the right timing.

And it it shot this feature upright.

This is a great view of this spine.

We've got the rock that we've been traveling through.

Many, many years ago, a trip very similar to ours.

David Brower started bringing folks down here so that they could experience this place and feel it and and feel how special it is and the connection to it.

And so just like we're going down the river today, other concerned folks came down the river.

And because they saw how unique this was, they had the foresight to preserve it for our generations to come.

Being on the river is everything to me.

It's really formative in my life.

It's my work, it's my joy, it's my play.

You can do that in so many ways that's not hard whitewater And it's amazing.

I mean, women bring such a wonderful approach to whitewater.

I mean, not just like it's not just a strength thing.

It's just like a, I think a respect of the power and how you use that power.

People talk about the flow state and like being in this space where everything else falls away.

It's really a meditation.

Like being on the river for me is all about moments.

Like it's each moment by moment and it's yeah, it's, it's.

It's like a moving meditation.

Yeah, It makes you come alive.

I feel most like myself.

in every sense, yeah.

It's like you come home to a place and you come home to yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's really beautiful.

So this wild and free Yampa River that we've been able to spend five days on this eventually will end up in a series of dams.

And the folks, if you live in Los Angeles or Phoenix, you can know when you turn on your tap water that part of what's coming through your tap is part of the Wild Yampa River.

Yampa!

The Living Peace Foundation is honored to provide funding support for Wild Rivers with Tillie supporting people and projects that creatively and courageously advance collaboration, compassion and living peace.

This series shares the passion that the Living Peace Foundation has for the health and connectedness of our planet and all who inhabit it.

I invite you to visit us at Wild Rivers with Tillie dot org or Wild Rivers with Tllie dot com.