KLAMATH, Calif. — In a thick forest along the remote northern California coast earlier this month, a group of mostly young Indigenous kayakers pushed off into the clear-emerald waters of the recently undammed Klamath River.
The 13- to 20-year-olds from more than six tribes in the Klamath Basin, along with several instructors, had been paddling for a month, covering over 300 miles.
In just a few hours, they would reach the Pacific Ocean, making the group among the first in over a century to descend the river from its headwaters in southern Oregon to its mouth in northern California. The expedition began in early June after the largest dam-removal project in history was completed last fall to restore salmon populations, improve water quality and support tribe-managed lands.
In the group was 15-year-old Hoopa Valley tribe member Carmen Ferris, who comes from a long line of fishing people along California’s Trinity River.
“The Trinity is the biggest tributary to the Klamath,” she said. “So I feel like I have a deep connection and ancestry with both of the waters.”
Carmen and about 40 other Indigenous kayakers had spent years training for the expedition with the help of Ríos to Rivers. Founded by Aspen resident Weston Boyles, 38, the nonprofit organization works with Indigenous youths around the world to protect rivers through advocacy, education and exchange programs.
Historic paddle
In anticipation of the removal of four of the Klamath’s six dams, Boyles teamed up with local Indigenous youths and kayak instructors to launch the Paddle Tribal Waters program, with the goal of supporting young tribal members aiming to be the first to paddle the mostly free-flowing river since the first dam was built in 1918.
Although Carmen had heard about the dams growing up, it wasn’t until joining the program that she learned the full history of the decades-long effort by tribes and environmentalists, including her own Hoopa Valley people, to remove the dams from the Klamath and restore the salmon that local tribes once depended on.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that is happening, and it's nearby,’” she said. “I was in shock, and I learned about the history and what my ancestors and people before me have gone through for these dams to finally come out.”
Carmen spent two years in the Paddle Tribal Waters program — taking tribe-led classes on river ecosystems, advocacy and cultural knowledge, as well as learning to whitewater kayak both in her own backyard and on exchange trips to Chile.
“I built a love for kayaking,” she said. “And then I was like, I'm definitely doing the descent, like I can't stop kayaking now.”
The journey from the river’s headwaters to the Pacific Ocean wasn’t easy, from camping in a remote, rugged wilderness to tackling a number of Class 4 rapids on the upper Klamath, including one called “Big Ikes.”
“I got battered into this hole for a little bit, and if I didn't know how to roll, I'd probably swim that day, which wouldn't have been fun, because there were a lot of rocks,” she said. “I ended up being OK, but everyone was like, ‘Carmen, what happened?’”
Ruby Rain Williams of the Karuk tribe, who turned 18 on the trip, said the paddle group faced other challenges beyond navigating technical and dangerous rapids.
“There were definitely some hard parts, like getting up every morning around 6:30, and also the flat-water days on the lake with the headwind were quite treacherous,” Ruby said.
They also learned some valuable river-trip lessons, including the importance of sun protection.
“I remember the first couple days, we're all like, ‘Oh, we don't need sunscreen. We never wear sunscreen,’” Ruby said. “You know, we're swimming in the river all day and I put pink Zinc on my face just to look cool and I had polka dots burned all over my cheeks and my ears were burnt, and even my eyes because I didn’t wear sunglasses. It was just gnarly.”
Reshaped landscape
Along the river, the young kayakers saw how the dam removal and restoration effort had started reshaping landscapes and communities as they paddled through former reservoirs and dam sites, including Northern California’s Kikacéki Canyon, where for decades the water had been diverted to a power station, leaving a dry stretch of riverbed.
The four recently removed hydropower dams, which were built between 1918 and the mid-1960s, were still producing relatively low amounts of electricity. According to PacifiCorp, which operated the dams and is owned by Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway, the sites were producing less than 2% of the operator’s total power generation — enough to power about 70,000 homes when they were running at full capacity.
In addition to losing a relatively low amount of power generation, there were other concerns about removing the dams. These included potential impacts of drained reservoirs such as exposed sacred burial sites that had been previously submerged, increased fire risk, loss of tax revenues for nearby counties, and decreased property values for former lakeside homes.
Still, scientists and advocates for dam removal maintained that the dams and their reservoirs worsened water quality in the river and that removing them would reduce the likelihood of sediment buildup, toxic algae blooms and diseases that thrive in warmer, stagnant waters and are harmful to salmon. They also maintained that the dams blocked salmon from returning to their upstream habitat where fish lay eggs and babies grow before migrating to the ocean.
Eventually, local tribes and other dam-removal advocates came to an agreement with PacifiCorp and federal regulators, and in 2022, the four dams on the lower Klamath were approved for removal.
In order to alleviate some of the community concerns, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), which helped broker the dam-removal deal, and Resource Environmental Solutions (RES) are now overseeing restoration efforts. These include working with fire officials concerned about the loss of a wildfire-fighting resource once the reservoirs were drained to set up dry-hydrant systems that allow crews to pull water directly from the river.
They also worked with the Shasta Indian Nation to mitigate the risk of damage to newly exposed cultural sites. Last year, the state of California also transferred some of the land near one of the former reservoirs back to the group.
Other restoration projects include excavating sediment that had built up behind the dams and planting billions of native seeds along the riverbanks and former reservoir sites.
The two dams that remain in the upper section of the river in southern Oregon are primarily used to divert water for irrigation and farming. During their monthlong river trip, which began in Chiloquin, Oregon, the Paddle Tribal Waters group carried their kayaks on land and portaged around these remaining dams.
Salmon returning
Brook Thompson, a scientist and Yurok and Karuk tribe member, researches salmon life cycles and water quality, and joined the paddlers for the last few days on the river.
Despite an unexpected salmon die-off after the first of four dams came down last year, Thompson said hundreds of miles of fish habitat on the Klamath and its tributaries have now opened up and dwindling salmon populations are already returning to spawn in greater numbers.
“We really did not know what was going to happen with the salmon and if they would return right away, or if it would take years,” Thompson said. “So the fact that they immediately started going past where the dam sites were is so exciting for me as a tribal member.”
Researchers have also found lower rates of disease-carrying parasites and toxic algae since the dams were removed last year, according to Thompson.
Thompson decided to study environmental engineering, water infrastructure and ecosystems after tens of thousands of dead salmon clogged the lower reaches of the river during a major drought in 2002, after a decision by the Bush administration that reversed environmental protections and allowed upper Klamath farmers to divert much of the remaining water.
“Witnessing thousands of fish die on the river firsthand as a 7-year-old really devastated me, personally, because these salmon are not just a food source for my family, they weren't just our income — I paid for all my school clothes and supplies through selling fish as a kid — but they’re also a connection to family, they're my connection to my ancestors and they're really the lifeblood of the tribes here,” Thompson said.
Now that the dams are out, Thompson hopes reconnecting with the river, including through salmon fishing and recreation opportunities, can help address a rise in health concerns such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well as mental health challenges faced by tribes in the region, including addiction and suicide.
“When you lose out on that culture, you're having all these issues health-wise, and you're having people die because of it,” Thompson said. “I know for me, if I'm not by the river, and I don't get a chance to fish and pray and be thankful for this food that feeds my body, that connects me to my ancestors, then I don't feel as well mentally either.”
Although the Klamath was once the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast, young people such as Ruby, the Karuk tribe member, had only heard stories about those days.
“My grandma and my dad always told me how there used to be so many salmon in the river, you used to be able to walk across their backs and almost make it across,” Ruby said. “There was such an abundance of them that my grandpa would go spearfishing and be able to see them swimming through the river, because it was so clean and healthy.”
During a fall scouting trip before their monthlong journey, Ruby and another young kayaker were some of the first to witness the salmon migrate past one of the former dam sites in Kikacéki Canyon.
“We looked down, and then there's these salmon just flying up the river, and you could see their heads at the top of the river's edge,” Ruby said. “I've never seen that before. And to be able to say that I saw some of the first set of salmon make it up above where the dams used to be was incredible.”
‘Only the beginning’
John Acuna, a Hoopa Valley tribe member and Ríos to Rivers kayak instructor, helped lead the group of young people on the Klamath just a few years after being introduced to the sport.
Despite nearing the end of a long expedition with only a day left on the river, Acuna sees the monthlong descent as the beginning of something bigger.
“This is the biggest dam removal in history, and kind of the question is ‘What do we do next?’” Acuna said. “The hope is that this sets a precedent for other dam-impacted rivers and dam-threatened rivers, and I think our work has kind of just begun.”
Ríos to Rivers board member and river guide Jaren Roberson, who grew up in Arizona, agrees — and he hopes the recent dam-removal can be a model for how his own Diné (Navajo) and Hopi tribes can have a greater say in how water is allocated in the Colorado River basin.
“Indigenous people should be figures in these resource management areas because they’re the ones who have been taking care of them and have been living in these places for generations and generations and generations,” Roberson said.
During the last few days of the trip, Boyles, Ríos to Rivers’ founder, invited Indigenous groups from Bolivia, Chile and New Zealand to join a flotilla with dozens of local tribe and community members, which accompanied the long-distance paddlers as they neared the end of their journey.
Afterward, the visitors were invited to share their experiences with dams in their own communities during a two-day symposium on the Yurok Reservation, near the California towns of Requa and Klamath, where the river meets the ocean.
“In other basins, the mistakes of building dams, of destroying habitat, destroying culture, can be avoided if we learn from the past,” Boyles said, addressing the symposium crowd July 12. “And that's a goal and a vision of ours, is to make sure that folks in river basins that have yet to be impacted or could avoid having the big impacts of dams, can come here to the Klamath and other parts of the world and learn from all of your lived experiences.”
Reaching the ocean
On July 11, the final day of the monthlong paddle, dozens of community members lined the beach and cheered as the flotilla, with the young kayakers leading the way, emerged from the mist and paddled toward the Pacific Ocean.
Clarence Hostler, of the Hoopa Valley, Yurok and Karuk tribes, and two younger men brought traditional drums to welcome the paddlers.
He grew up swimming on the river as a kid in the 1950s, but he had to stop after he got a rash from the toxic algae.
“So I hadn't been on the water on the Klamath since 1965, and just a couple of days ago, I joined the paddle group and it was a stretch of river that I'd never been on because I didn't want to get that rash again,” Hostler said. “And then being with the group, it settled with me that this was a triumph of a spirit coming back to the river, that we get to live with the river again after so many of us had to stay away from the river because of the contamination.”
Seeing the young kayakers paddle the river, after experiencing decades of violence, protests and legal battles over fishing and water rights on the Klamath, brought him to tears.
“A lot of the early warriors had to do the difficult work, and there are some of us, older ones, who carry the knowledge of old ways,” Hostler said. “But now, some real work starts with these young people who are activists on the water because there's more contaminated water yet that needs to be worked on.”
As Carmen and her fellow kayakers reached the ocean and splashed in the waves, she felt the weight of that history.
“We shouldn't be having to do this — like, there shouldn't have been dams in the first place — but we fought a lot for nearly a century, for decades and decades, and now dams are finally out,” Carmen said.
Even with feelings of sadness and frustration over what her people endured, Carmen is proud of what she and her peers accomplished.
“We're making history,” she said. “This is something I never thought I’d ever do, but I’m doing it today.”
Now that the dams are out, Carmen and several of the other young kayakers who have already started their own kayak clubs, are looking forward to returning to their communities to help the next generation of young paddlers reclaim their rivers and their ancestry.
This story was produced by Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio, in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
