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Volume 16, Number 6 | March 21-27, 2024
Glen Canyon Rises Tour hits GWS
By Ken Pletcher Sopris Sun Correspondent A sold-out, enthusiastic crowd packed the Glenwood Vaudeville Revue on March 14 to see the Glen Canyon Rises Tour (GCRT), a captivating multimedia presentation on the reemergence of Glen Canyon as Lake Powell recedes. The tour, on the second of four consecutive nights (including also Salt Lake City, Moab and Flagstaff) is the collective effort of author, journalist and film producer Zak Podmore; photographer and filmmaker Dawn Kish; and singer-songwriters Peter McLaughlin and Jackson Emmer — under the auspices of the Glen Canyon Institute (GCI) in Salt Lake City. The presentation was brought to Glenwood Springs by the Rifle-based Middle Colorado Watershed Council (MCWC). As Paula Stepp, MCWC’s executive director, told The Sopris Sun, “We are now in an aridity situation for the western U.S.; water that we thought was plentiful is not there now. There are a lot of complicated issues on how to share this water, and what happens with Lake Powell itself is very complicated. We just want to make sure that people are aware of water use.”
Background
Podmore, Emmer and Stepp joined The Sun in conversation to discuss the genesis of GCRT. Valley native Podmore (now based in southern Utah) has written extensively about the issues concerning the Colorado and other Western rivers, including his widely acclaimed 2019 book “Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West.” He has been at work on a new book, “Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River,” scheduled for release this August. Longtime local musician Emmer recently moved to northern California. Podmore: I had been working on the book for I guess two years at that point and spent most of my time out there with different scientists: ecologists, geologists, archaeologists. Emmer: Zak and I went to high school together and kept in touch. I had thought about doing some kind of trip to check out Glen Canyon. Zak told me he was writing a book about Lake Powell, Glen Canyon and was circumnavigating it. And I said, “Take me on a trip with you!” Podmore: [Circumnavigating Lake Powell] was the original literary device [for the book], but I didn’t really end up doing that. I explored most of the lake and majority of the tributary canyons. Emmer: The trip with Zak was only four days [last] April and was put together mostly by Zak and the institute. We had 14 writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers come and hang on the river. Jackson Emmer by Sofie Koski
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