Park Ranger Enjoys Hot Time at Salty Resort : Salton Sea Offers Wildlife, Winter Sport--and 100-Plus Degrees in Summer

Dennis Imhoff’s cabin windows were covered with snow when his transfer came through.

The ranger was leaving Donner State Park in the frozen Sierra for a new home with miles of deserted beaches, exotic birds and the best fishing a man could wish for. A choice assignment--or so it seemed.

Hot, Humid, Smelly

On a recent Monday while Imhoff was on duty, the temperature reached 109 degrees at Salton Sea State Recreation Area, with the humidity at 70% and a rotten-egg smell hanging in the motionless air. The mercury had measured consistently over 105 degrees in recent weeks, with some 112- to 115-degree days.

“If you let it, it would be extremely oppressive here because of the heat,” Imhoff said.

Garth Tanner, chief deputy director of operations for the California State Park System in Sacramento, said that the Salton Sea park has a high turnover rate for employees. There are three positions currently unfilled in the park. “We find we have a higher percentage of vacancies there than elsewhere in the system,” he said.

Although the job bulletin describes pleasant aspects of life at the Salton Sea--balmy winter temperatures and a variety of birds and animals--a prospective ranger who asks around might be deterred by the flip side of the job:

Wives and young children, imprisoned inside their air-conditioned trailers, become slightly crazed by the time Dad, the ranger, comes home, also grumbling about the heat. Aside from the ever-present sulfur smell created by algae in the sea, there is a periodic stench caused by a naturally occurring fish die-off. At those times park employees must truck loads of dead fish from the beaches up to the hills to be buried.

Winter Visitors

In the winter, peripatetic retired people and other seekers of warmth flock to the Salton Sea for the sun. Eighty percent of the visitors come from Los Angeles and San Diego. The seashore is not such a bad place to be at that time of year; some people even call it beautiful.

At the height of summer, however, the only visitors are a few fishermen who come for the corvina. Park rangers--who like to share their knowledge of an area by talking with visitors, and giving interpretive talks--have no audience.

Cultural and recreational amenities, too, are lacking. The North Shore Motel, normally a hub of activity in the area, was abandoned on a recent Monday. On the off-chance that a guest would arrive, the desk clerk stuck to her post in the air-conditioned office. Even her dog would not go outside.

It’s too hot to jog or to play tennis on the court at the North Shore Motel--the net is in poor shape anyway, said Imhoff, a jogger and tennis player.

Most of the restaurants and small businesses that dot the shore are closed in summer. There’s no place for the park rangers to go out to eat.

Park employees do have their own beach, Sneaker Beach, just a short stroll from the residence area. But the water in the sea is hot--as much as 100 degrees in summer--and thick. It leaves a slimy film on the skin. There are vicious barnacles that slice the bare feet of waders. A female ranger did jump in the water and swim last year to rescue some boaters; other than that, no one does much swimming.

The Salton Sea park staff have something in common with the birds, reptiles, fish and fauna that inhabit this harsh region: They adapt.

On what seemed to a visitor to be an unbearably hot morning at the park, ranger Imhoff seemed to be enjoying his job. The boiling air outside the entrance station was throbbing with the shrieks of cicadas as Imhoff set out on patrol. Imhoff pointed out the empty cicada cocoons dotting the bottom of a park display board. With the cicadas just hatched, he said, soon he’d be watching the fly catchers and dusty phoebes chase after the insects.

His fascination with desert creatures takes Imhoff’s mind off the temperature. Just the other night, he said, he spotted a pink-skinned, lizard-like creature called a desert gecko for the first time.

Imhoff has become attached to the toads that sit around the entrance station “like a bunch of old men,” gobbling bugs from the air, and to the gopher snakes that mimic the coiled posture and waving tail of rattlesnakes when cornered. A snake called a red racer has made its home under Imhoff’s trailer. “I’ve been told by old-timers they’ll bite you until they don’t have any teeth, and then they’ll gum you,” Imhoff said with a grin.

Selenium Scare

Imhoff, 42, grew up in the little town of Rio Vista on the Sacramento River, where he learned to love fishing for catfish and striped bass. Although the Salton Sea is thought by some to have the best fishing in the state, Imhoff hasn’t been fishing here. The California Department of Health Services has posted warnings saying the fish contain levels of selenium potentially harmful to humans.

“Right now it’s kind of a specter because people still don’t know a lot about selenium,” Imhoff said. Many old-timers continue to eat fish caught in the sea, saying they never felt better, but the selenium warnings have reduced visitation to the Salton Sea by as much as 20%, he said.

Imhoff drove his jeep slowly through the park. Although rangers here are allowed to wear shorts, Imhoff prefers his full-length green park-service pants.

Imhoff parked in an enormous parking lot in front of the visitor center. This was going to be a big resort area once, he said, as glamorous as Palm Springs. And indeed, for a time in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, the boaters and campers used to fill this lot.

But over the years the lake got saltier. No one goes boating anymore except the fishermen. On this morning there were five cars in the lot. The visitor center was closed for the summer. There was no one using the grass-thatched lean-tos intended to shade picnickers overlooking the murky sea, 277 feet below sea level.

If anyone has a tougher summertime job than Imhoff, it’s the maintenance workers who never retreat to an air-conditioned car or office, working outside at the Salton Sea all day, installing pipeline, mowing lawns and servicing chemical toilets.

Imhoff stopped near the visitor center to visit with his fiancee, maintenance worker Christine Murray. Murray had red pliers in the back pocket of her khaki shorts. She wore a water-soaked bandanna around her neck to keep cool; even her tennis shoes had been drenched with a nearby hose. Murray, a 22-year resident of the Salton Sea (her parents own a trailer park on the North Shore), was hatless in the sun, and her energy seemed undiminished by the heat.

Lawns Do Grow There

Imhoff finished his first patrol at 10 a.m., bought a can of lemonade in the Bombay Market and returned to his office to do paperwork.

This is Imhoff’s second summer at the Salton Sea. He took the position because he felt it would prepare him for promotional opportunities, he said. Expecting to be here one or two more years, he’s making some improvements around his trailer--such as growing a lawn. The soil may look barren, he said, but put some water and fertilizer on it and you can grow anything.

The former area supervisor, Rick Ray, who also accepted a Salton Sea assignment for promotional reasons, recently transferred to the San Luis Obispo district.

Ray said that his wife, Nancy, never did adapt to the heat. The couple suffered from cabin fever, an affliction usually associated with cold climates, he said. On August days, they were restricted to the indoors except for a few hours in the early morning and evening.

The Salton Sea was created 81 years ago when the Colorado River broke through an irrigation canal and filled a natural sink. Fed thereafter by the runoff from Imperial Valley agriculture, the sea was declared an agricultural waste basin, or a sump, in the ‘20s.

A number of species of ocean fish that were transplanted to the sea died off; but a few species thrived, so today fishermen who care to brave the heat can carry off 50 and 60 croaker in a day, Imhoff said. There is no limit on any fish, except orangemouth corvina, for which the limit is nine, he said.

Valuable Bird Sanctuary

Birds attracted by the fish found the Salton Sea a good stopping-off place on their migrations. Once a simple sump, today the sea is host to an interconnected chain of wildlife.

The sea has been rising in recent years, submerging the picnic tables at Sneaker Beach. If the Imperial Irrigation District diverts the excess agricultural runoff as it has agreed to do, the lower water level will cause increasing salinity. This could mean death for the fish, an event that would put an end to visits by fishermen and birds, thus possibly eliminating the need for a state recreation area altogether.

Imhoff supports a costly plan that would artificially lower the water’s salt level by removing and processing water.

Imhoff will transfer to another park eventually, but no matter where he is, he wants to see the Salton Sea survive.

“It takes some learning to appreciate the desert,” he said. “I can’t say I love Richardson Grove (a park in the Humboldt County redwoods where he formerly worked) more than I love the Salton Sea.”