The plane wings vibrated with each acceleration. The small craft picked up speed as it headed north, with the 9,223-foot Triangle Peak as the clear aviation waypoint some miles down the valley. It was the second of three EcoFlight excursions the morning of Tuesday, Aug. 25, coordinated in partnership with the Town of Carbondale to offer various community stakeholders an aerial tour detailing the state of the Crystal River Valley.
The headwaters of the Crystal River are close to the Pitkin and Gunnison counties’ boundary on the western side of the central Elk Mountains. These tributaries feed into the watershed above the town of Marble, drawing water down from the 14,099-foot Snowmass Peak, 12,953-foot Mount Sopris, Geneva Lake and Yule Creek.
The Crystal River Valley is one of the quieter watersheds originating from the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. The water is home to multiple species of trout and riparian plants and animals. As it flows downstream, the river has long supported Carbondale-area agriculture and is a popular outdoor recreation area.
The Sopris Sun boarded the flight for a first-hand look at how drought is impacting the watershed, and to learn more about Carbondale water projects and ongoing community-conservation efforts to obtain Wild & Scenic designation for the Crystal River. The river flows for 40 miles to the confluence with the Roaring Fork River. EcoFlight is part of a coalition, along with Roaring Fork Conservancy and Wilderness Workshop, seeking the protective designation for the first 39 miles of the river.
The Crystal River is one of a few in Colorado with no dams or out-of-basin diversions. In response to widespread community support for the Wild & Scenic designation, Gunnison and Pitkin counties, the Town of Marble, the Colorado River Water Conservation District and the West Divide Water Conservancy District signed an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) in late May, formalizing opposition to future developments that would alter the watershed’s current status as a free-flowing river.
Despite the support, the river has faced environmental challenges this year. As the source of drinking water for some 7,000 people in the Crystal and lower Roaring Fork valleys, it has also been integral for generations of agricultural production in the region.
EcoFlight’s mission is to provide aerial perspectives to advocate for wildlands, watersheds and culturally important landscapes, thus Scott Wenning, the Town of Carbondale’s assistant public works director, said, “We’re just hoping to get a conversation started.”
Wenning added that the Carbondale water team believes that inflows to the Crystal River have decreased in recent years. Mount Sopris sits only a few miles southeast of town and the lower Crystal River. The mountain’s rock glaciers have been active during documented human habitation of the region. While Colorado once had many active surface glaciers, that surface ice has totaled only a few square kilometers throughout the state.
Most of Colorado’s glacial ice in recent centuries has been within rock glaciers. The mass of eroding stone in these formations protects the ice from heat and sublimation, allowing slow melting to gradually feed watersheds.
Mount Sopris was one of these ice sources, with several large rock glaciers on its north side adding sustained water to the Crystal and middle-Roaring Fork watersheds. Wenning said that monitoring of inflows around the Nettle Creek headwaters on the northwest slopes of Sopris indicates that the source ice is nearly gone. He added that flows, which had been relatively consistent despite the drought, have decreased in just the past few years.
Being aboard the EcoFlight, differences between the headwaters and lower stretches of the Crystal River were clear. Despite the ongoing “exceptional” drought, forests and meadows around and above Marble appeared lush and green, with only flatter, high-elevation terrain visibly dry. But farther north, ranchland and meadows around Carbondale and the Thompson Divide were yellow and brown. Although, some active ranches and golf courses were clearly identifiable with swaths of green amid faded forest and shrubland areas and parched, dormant fields.
These types of visuals are the goal of EcoFlight experiences. The Town of Carbondale representatives who organized the recent Crystal River flights hope that this exposure will help motivate stakeholders to come together on local resource conversations, particularly to collaborate on solutions for water management along the stretch of river before the Roaring Fork confluence.