smiley rocks, Tuolumne River, rock climbing... you know.

This has nothing to do with rivers, but these rocks are cool.

Ok back to the tuolumne river:

This is the subject of a book that I am co-authoring (along with about 10 other people).  My topic falls in the Aquatic Ecology and Fishes section.  I am fishes.

I'm not exactly sure how I became the fishes person.  Plenty of people in the class know a lot more about fishes than I do, particularly CA fish assemblages.  Maybe default, since I know even less about the other topics (geological history, human impact, terrestrial ecosystems of the Tuolumne River).  At any rate, it's kind of a cool thing to be a part of.  I'm developing an interest in Central Valley aquatic ecosystems, partially because they are unique (it's been isolated from other aquatic ecosystems for some time, CA is a young landscape), and partly because of the challenges stemming from human demand for water in a water-poor environment.  In fact, I just heard on the news that Sacramento is in a Stage 1 drought.  In JANUARY!!  Wow.  Apparently a lot of the forecasting for human water needs was based on a period that had higher than normal rainfall and snowmelt.  So "they" developed land thinking that there would be more water than there actually is.

Anyway, I guess my point is that water and aquatic ecosystems in CA are pretty interesting.  When you think of writing about a river, there are a lot of things that you end up writing about that you may not have originally thought of.  For example, did you know that the San Joaquin and all of its tributaries (the Tuolumne River, Stanislaus River and the Merced (I think). all used to have millions of spring-run chinook and fall-run chinook salmon?  The spring-run fish come up in the spring, spend the summer in cold deep pools at high elevation while they mature, and then spawn in the fall so that the fry can go downstream with the winter pulses:

  

The fall-run fish stay in the lower elevations (mainstem Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers), spawn an die.  The fall-run chinook are doing okay, but mostly because of subsidies from hatcheries.

The San Joaquin spring-run chinook effectively went extinct when Friant Dam was built in the 1940s.  Water diversion downstream in the 1948 (for potatoes and other crops) prevented the fish from going upstream, so they were trucked to below Friant dam where they managed to survive the summer and spawn in the Fall.  The water coming from dams is usually cold, so they were able to hang out at a lower elevation.  Unfortunately, the young that emerged were stranded in a dry stretch of the river on their way to the ocean.  San Joaquin spring-run chinook were extinct by 1950.  Millions of fish.  An entire life history.  A HUGE fishery.  Gone.

Historically, the spring-run chinook were far more abundant in the San Joaquin watershed than the Sacramento watershed, because there is a lot more snowpack in the mid and southern Sierra Nevada than the northern Sierra Nevada.  This was crucial to allow the fish to reach elevations high enough where they could survive for the summer - locations with cold temps and permanent pools in clean, fast-flowing water.  Currently there are still some spring-run chinook in the Sacramento watershed.  I think that these fish will be used as stock for restoring the San Joaquin spring-run chinook.

On the brighter side (depending on what side you are on), there are attempts to restore spring-run chinook in the San Joaquin river.  What's cool is that our lab got the contract to do the genetics work for the restoration.  It would be awesome to be a part of this project.  Post-doc maybe?  Who knows.

Lots of other things are going on in the Tuolumne River.  Native Americans managed the landscape far before Europeans arrived, but the majority of the change has happened since the 1800s, with hydraulic mining for gold destroying the rocky river bottom, followed by logging, grazing, and the final insult: dams.  Not to mention destruction of riparian vegetation and introduced species - inadvertently and on purpose.  All bad for salmon.

A lot of times I am surprised by the sources of information I find when I am looking up particular topics.  For example, when I was studying methods in historical ecology for my qualifying exam, I would google carbon dating, or dendrochronology.  I shit you not, 9 times out of ten I got a creationist/intelligent design website that was attempting to hijack the science in order to prove that humans rode dinosaurs less than 6,000 years ago.  Going back to the Tuolumne River, most of the information I'm finding about trout and fishes in the river comes from flyfishing outfitters.  Those dudes KNOW their trout.  It's impressive.  Too bad a lot of those companies depend on planted trout...but that's pages of more blathering about fish that no one who reads this blog is interested in.

Okay!  So rock climbing...um...we're all interested in that right?  I did the comp Friday, climbed a bunch of routes in the gym today...going to Gold Wall Friday, biking a bunch.  Yep that's about it for climbing.  Oh wait! I know what I was going to ask you guys!  I did the comp Friday night, biked 20 miles yesterday, and climbed in the gym today.  Today I felt GREAT!  Do you think doing cardio helps recovery between climbing days?