Report from Crane Pond

[McChuck]

Did a hike around the lake and the only word I can say about it is- depressing. They have very recently taken bulldozers and removed whatever was there keeping the lake up, and it is now suddenly about 3 feet lower. I know this due to all the lily pads lining the banks of the lake. This couldn’t have happened more than a week ago, as they still looked green.

The trail on the right has been drastically widened, and now allows truck, four wheel drives, etc to drive to the dam. The OT is still beautiful single track, but then we get to the new ramp/access which is a bulldozer scour about 100 yards from the parking lot, leading down to a mudhole. Looking out across the lake I see Lily pads everywhere which I would think indicates it is now very shallow.

Maybe there is a plan to build it all back up….but it is fairly certain that they will never fix the dam.

I can’t describe how devastated the whole are looks now.

As to kayaking- I would suppose a good rain will still make the Creek run doable, but not sure how the lack of head in the spillway will affect timing or volume of water.

 

• This topic was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by McChuck. Reason: When man tries to improve nature- he always makes it worse

[Levi Rhodes]

Interesting.  I wonder if this will make the dam more runnable than before.. Could be a silver lining in there somewhere for paddlers.

[McChuck]

It looks to me that you could go right thru the breech now (assuming you don’t have your paddle cross-wise). If you did it, you would do about 15 feet of first descent.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by McChuck. Reason: Always four sides to a story- your side, their side, the sworn truth, and what really happened

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