L.A. Times Kayaks L.A. River, Great Article, Photos, and Vid

Of course that river is navigable. Photo from last week's kayaking expedition. Better photos at the L.A. Times site.

Once the EPA declared the L.A. River navigable, the Los Angeles Times’ Louis Sahagun decided to go kayaking.

Sahagun has written a great article and the times photographers and videographers have put it together as a great web extravaganza. The full article appears in the Sunday paper (which includes a big picture of me! – available Saturday) and online here. Here are two brief excerpts – but go to the Times and read the whole thing:

Wolfe’s party took advantage of that legal gray area, launching at dawn on a recent workday in one canoe and five brightly colored kayaks just south of Los Feliz Boulevard in Atwater Village — one of the few stretches of the Los Angeles River that has a soft bottom and still looks like a river.

It is a rambunctious urban patch of rumbling water, serene greenery and occasional homeless encampments, framed by slanting concrete walls rising to electrical power-line towers, set to an endless soundtrack of freeway traffic. Paddling on the murky water, the kayakers surprised hundreds of shorebirds and waterfowl. Huge carp darted past like bronze torpedoes.

A few minutes later, the vessels were hurtling down shallow rapids that dropped 10 feet, leaving everyone sopping and exhilarated.

Overhead, an osprey hunted for fish near a Metro Rail facility. Thousands of shimmering young carp the size of half-dollars zigzagged in the shallows. Pigeons sipped groundwater burbling out of fissures in the channel’s concrete shoulders. Sirens and horns blared in the distance.

Here are the L.A. Times links: Article, Photos, Video.

Creek Freak also has other L.A. River kayaking stories, past L.A. Times river expeditions, and there’s more great L.A. River boating video footage at Rock the Boat – a full length documentary in progress.