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Comment by jkubicek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything

Selecting "Rivers" shows an awful lot of dry gulches and alluvial fans that haven't had water in them in half a century or more.

Yep.

Navigable by canoe leaves Australia with about 50 km of two rivers in Gippsland to be navigable.

It shows the Hunter and the Nepean as a single system.

Connectivity between ephemeral waterways which are joined by ephemeral lakes is poor.

All in all I think it speaks to the ownership of the market by private interests and the lack of utility of water navigation for most people.

Is there a "drag canoe" option?

As a native Sacramentan and boater, you can definitely get from the Sierra to the bay. Would you take your boat out to get around dams? (Lake Natoma dam, Folsom’s dam, etc). If you wanted and could do that, you positively could do the ride. The American is fed by snow melt from the top of the sierra and plenty of water in the spring to ride it down. Once you reach the delta the current would help you less so you better have some good oars. Also be ready to navigate some serious rapids in some spots on the American. Nothing that a little kayaking class wouldn’t prepare you for.

They used to have a few large riverboats that used to bring people from Sacramento to the bay. One called the Delta Queen and the other called the Delta King. Three presidents even rode on them including Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Jimmy Carter. They permanently affixed the Delta King on the docks in Old Sacramento where you can still eat at a restaurant or stay in an onboard hotel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_King

All that to say, plenty of boats in and around the Central Valley.

> “The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything”

The data is 100% from OpenStreetMap. That map only looks at things with the `canoe` tag in OSM. There are a lot of waterways in OSM which do not have this tag. If you know of missing data, you can just edit OSM and it'll show up on WWM.org tomorrow!

(I made WaterwayMap.org)

There are a ton of rivers and sections thereof that are easily navigable flatwater in MA which don't show up.

Compared to Europe, US is sparsely mapped in OSM. But even in Europe there are not many waterways tagged with canoe.

And it's seasonal. Flatwater vs. whitewater (also bidirectional vs. one). How hard? How much portaging?

None of it's really reasonable for a binary database.

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

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.

The parent was asking about getting down to the SF Bay from somewhere in Sierras. I'd have to study a map in detail but I doubt there are much in the way of east/west routes in that area. Also, while there are navigable waterways in cities they tend to be very limited. There's often one river in older cities that flows through the center somewhere.

It really depends on the watersheds. You can get to Boston from pretty far north but you would have to cheat by going down the coast from the mouth of the Merrimack River which I think captures all the rivers in southern NH/northern MA.

San Francisco owes its growth as a city to the fact that the Bay provides a connection between the Sierras (and their goldfields) and the Pacific Ocean.

Regarding Boston, the interesting thing is that it used to be connected to the Merrimack via the Middlesex Canal. My understanding is that this is silted up now (which you presumably already know) but it shows how many more connections we used to have.

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.

There are a significant number of canal systems to the east of the bay. I have no where boating is allowed, but the ones we frequently drive past are ~100 feet wide and extend at least out to Stockton and Sacramento. I have no clue if you can get past those cities, though.

There's no blockage - in fact oceangoing cargo ships can travel all the way to the Port of Sacramento, thanks to a thirty-foot-deep channel maintained by the Corps of Engineers.

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.

> how far up into the Sierras I could drop a canoe and still be able to paddle back to the bay area

I've thought of doing this, I wonder if there are any good resources on best paths to take.

It showed one path in my area which is a portage trail for canoes connecting two waterways

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