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Waterway Map

waterwaymap.org

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Re: Waterway Map

#41

Post by bravefoot »

jkubicek wrote: post #2

The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything, which is a bummer, because I've always wondered how far up into the Sierras I could drop a canoe and still be able to paddle back to the bay area.

In the valley, we talk about the Cosumnes and Clavey rivers as "undammed" but they may still have flood control and irrigation equipment in them.

Growing up near the Mokulumne, one day I'd like to go from Camanche to the sea. It's not that far but would still have at least one portage at Woodbridge

Re: Waterway Map

#42

Post by ghaff »

jjav wrote: post #37
ghaff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have both hills and urban areas blocking about the whole east side of San Francisco Bay. Hard for me to imagine being able to get through that. And further north you've got the Central Valley.

Even cargo ships go all the way to Stockton and Sacramento.

Looking at a map more closely I don't know how much is practical in a canoe, but the answer to up thread is probably however far you can up towards Lake Tahoe then down through Folsom Lake to (most of the way?) to Sacramento then Stockton (or just directly to the bay) and probably to the Bay from there.

Not sure you can do the equivalent further south but it looks like you could do a lot of it that way--at least in theory.

Re: Waterway Map

#43

Post by jschrf »

spot13 wrote: post #33
croemer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not all of these waterways are navigable. There are even underground ones, essentially pipes.

Right. Like trails in the woods, they shift and evolve.

Bingo. Trying to map the flow of water is like trying to map the flow of time.

Re: Waterway Map

#44

Post by s3krit »

yawpitch wrote: post #6

Kinda neat to turn on the Navigable By Boat filter and zoom in on England to find where I live, and all the 2500 miles of actually connected and navigable English (and Welsh) canals and rivers I’ve been on over the last seven years. Or course there’s also a whole lot of “waterways” that sure as hell aren’t navigable by any boat that can support a human, but might have been at some point.

I went straight into these comments hoping to find another HN (potentially narrow) boater!

What's interesting and somewhat amusing is that this map has determined that the section of the Soar that joins with the Trent just north of Loughborough is apparently unnavigable. This time of year I'd generally agree.

Re: Waterway Map

#45

Post by pomian »

dnlbyl wrote: post #18
AlbertCory wrote: post #13

There's a group of people who regularly sail a great circle up the Atlantic, down the St. Lawrence & the Great Lakes, through the Chicago River & canals to the Illinois River to the Mississippi, and east along the Gulf Coast & around Florida. I can't remember anything more about it than that. Anyone?

I believe that is the Great Loop: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/great-loop.html

What is maximum mast height? There are loops in Europe like this, but you need a mast that you can take down, which means you are limited in boat size - for sailboats anyway.

Re: Waterway Map

#46

Post by nightbrawler »

pavon wrote: post #31

Who mapped these? In New Mexico we have a ton of dry arroyos that maybe have a couple inches of flowing water a few times a year. Zooming in at places I'm familiar with, a surprising number of them are mapped. I know of rez roads[1] nearby that aren't on OSM or any map I know of, but the ditch we used for cross country practice is. Wild! [1] Two-track dirt roads on the Navajo Reservation that are not regularly mainta…

I'm in New Mexico too, there's some creeks I frequent that are considered "navigable waterways" and unless it's monsoon season, you barely get your ankles wet lol.

Re: Waterway Map

#47

Post by callalex »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #10
ghaff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have both hills and urban areas blocking about the whole east side of San Francisco Bay. Hard for me to imagine being able to get through that. And further north you've got the Central Valley.

I'm not sure how hills or urban areas block the ability to canoe... Waterways always are locally low and canoe trips on rivers will typically have hills on either side of you. And I've been on plenty of canoe trips that went through the downtown of a city. Most older cities are built in some place navigable by boat.

There are many dams and gigantic underground pipes that carry the water through the area. It works fine for the water but not for kayakers. For example the Briones Reservoir is upstream of the San Pablo Reservoir connected by huge gravity-powered pipes under the mountains between them. They are in fact redoing them right now.

Re: Waterway Map

#48

Post by s3krit »

I've been waiting for the day that HN would have something tangentially related to the English and Welsh canal system so I could gush about it. For those that don't know, we have around 2500 miles of (mostly) navigable canals around the UK. They were built during the industrial revolution prior to the invention of trains such that we could transport coal and other goods relatively quickly and without damage (consider trying to transport pottery, for instance, on the perilous roads of the late 1700s. If the bumpy roads didn't destroy your wares, the highwaymen might).

These days, obviously, all that has passed and instead we have a community of almost entirely leasure boaters - some choosing to own narrowboats [1] purely for pleasure, but a significant amount of us choose to live on them. Some based in marinas but quite a few of us (myself included) preferring a much more nomadic lifestyle - being obliged by law to move every 14 days at a maximum to new areas and consequentially experiencing the richness and beauty of what is, in my mind, a living museum - a testament to our past.

Life aboard a narrowboat is cozy. You never have much space but I don't find myself lacking. It gets cold in winter, but most of us have multifuel stoves which we stuff with coal and (often foraged) wood. Right now I'm sat listening to the wind and rain lashing against the boat (it's almost 4am so I should really get to bed), the boat gently rocking from the weather. And I can honestly say that there is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat

Re: Waterway Map

#49

Post by lmum »

pavon wrote: post #31

Who mapped these? In New Mexico we have a ton of dry arroyos that maybe have a couple inches of flowing water a few times a year. Zooming in at places I'm familiar with, a surprising number of them are mapped. I know of rez roads[1] nearby that aren't on OSM or any map I know of, but the ditch we used for cross country practice is. Wild! [1] Two-track dirt roads on the Navajo Reservation that are not regularly mainta…

I added a set of arroyos in New Mexico using USGS quadrangle sheets, which originate from digital elevation models and ground surveys in the 1980s. They're tagged as "intermittent streams" in OSM. There's a lot more work to do outside the national forests and major cities. One thing I noticed is that the dry beds shape road and settlement patterns, beyond just being useful for navigation.

NM is undermapped relative to other states. I've wondered if this has to do with the complex governance and land claims (which can make it difficult to do bulk data imports).

Re: Waterway Map

#50

Post by southernplaces7 »

ijustlovemath wrote: post #40
inasio wrote: post #22

The Yucatan peninsula in Mexico is very interesting here, completely empty of waterways which would make one think it's a dessert area per other similar areas of the map, yet it's a very lush tropical jungle. A ton of water yet all of it runs underground, cenotes [0] are (mostly) undergound sinkholes, amazing to swim in [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote

Fun fact about cenotes: most of them were formed from the geologic upset that followed the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65Mya

Exactly, and if you look at a hydrological map of cenote locations in the Yucatan Penninsula, a very obvious, concentrated majority of them align very closely with the ancient buried crater's curvature. It's fascinating, and especially when you consider that of the millions of tourists and locals who visit the cenotes annualy, very few realize what the scope and ferociously violent origins are of the lovely little "scattered" blue pools they play in..
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