In some areas, the snowmelt reveals unexpected surprises. This road was closed for the winter, and it’s the first time I’ve been here since fall.
I get a kick out of gravity. It’s so predictable.
This rock is so big it’ll take heavy equipment to move. And when I look up,
it seems like that rock might not be lonely much longer. I move right along, since I definitely don’t want to be standing under this many tons of stone, soil and tree. No thank you.
Across the river, the slope is made up of decomposed shale, which repels water.
It’s a peculiar material, because that water-repelling quality makes it hard for plants to get their roots down. This slope isn’t recently denuded; it’s been that way for ages. It makes for an odd riparian edge.
Another dog joined us back a mile ago, and now I see why: it’s not just fallen rocks that the snow left behind; it’s fallen deer too. This dog has visited this carcass before, I think.
My dog was so happy to be able to help.
Published on April 7, 2008
in water.
The road on the other side of the valley was closed by a mudslide. The mud was four feet deep across the road, and it took two days to get the road cleared.
This is where the mud entered the road.
A major irrigation ditch runs parallel to the road. It’s not filled with water yet, so mud filled the ditch and flowed in both directions. The road crew cut a hole in the ditch so the mud could flow down into the orchard and out of the road.
That red triangle of earth is a cross section of the far wall of the ditch–the near wall is under mud so you can’t see it. The road crew cut a notch in this hundred year old irrigation ditch so the mud could drain from the road and hopefully from the irrigation ditch as well. Below, a section of the rail fence was removed so the mud wouldn’t sweep it away. There is a lot of mud being held in by the solid fence on the left.
I realized the next day that I didn’t have a shot of the rockslide where this material originated. Today was overcast so the picture is a little bland, but you can see how the color of the mudslide matches the color of this high altitude rockslide.
This is technically a debris flow, not a mudslide–it’s not topsoil that’s moving, but subsoil. In the San Juan mountains, these debris flows are triggered by water; this one in particular is from last winter’s heavy snowpack and the quick meltdown. In some places, mudslides are a product of human interventions like deforestation, agriculture or road construction; here they’re a function of the region’s geology, and of water.
The debris flows start when the snowpack melts, and continue intermittently through the summer. A big rainstorm can move the mountains as well as the melting snow. In this area, water moves the earth.
Published on March 23, 2008
in water.
Today, the stream looks like a little river.
This is a photo taken three weeks ago from the same location, different lens. The local meltdown is happening fast, and there’s quite a lot more snow in the high country.
This shot was taken where the deer were crossing this winter.
The water has risen, and is rising still.
Published on March 2, 2008
in water.
Meltdown has begun! The streamflow is starting to increase, and the water is brown with silt.
Two weeks ago the creek was still bridged with ice, but now it is running free and starting to rise.
Doesn’t the word redux make you wonder?
re·dux /rɪˈdʌks/ –adjective
| brought back; resurgent: the Victorian era redux. |
[Origin: 1650–60; < L: returning (as from war or exile), n. deriv. (with pass. sense) of redūcere to bring back; see reduce
]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006. |
Published on February 26, 2008
in water.
Algae is blooming at the head of the valley.
The water is almost fluorescent green right where the rapid mountain stream slows down to fill a series of deep pools surrounded by cliffs. The river is from a forested watershed, but I’d guess a bunch of nutrients washed into the water somewhere upstream. Fertilizer from the golf course? Wastewater? The cliffs hold warmth from the sun, increasing water temperature and allowing the phytoplankton to go wild on those extra nutrients. Above we have the water entering the canyon, here’s the water in the pools
and here is the water as it enters the valley floor:
Twenty miles downstream the same day, the water is clean. The excess nutrients grew phytoplankton that was eaten by fish and insects and other living things. What a world we live in.
Published on February 21, 2008
in water.
Our irrigation ditch is typical of the water distribution system in this region. Here’s the ditch today, very low:
You can see that the ditch is unlined. There are stones in the walls to reduce erosion, and the bottom is earth. It’s really no more than a trough dug in the earth that the river is diverted into. It looks like a casual system until you see the water gate across the road.
This picture is from November, and you can see that the ditchwater is being diverted towards us where it joins the stream that flows into the river it came from–this water just became return flow at this point. During the growing season, the gate is usually open. From here, the water would flow through a siphon under the stream and continue for miles and miles in ditches down the valley.
There is another big ditch that runs miles and miles along the other side of the valley. This ditch is empty during the winter… and it’s another honking big water diversion.
Can you imagine how much water is soaking down into the ground from these ditches??
You’re right; it’s a lot. So much water soaks into the ground from these giant ditches on both sides of the valley (and from the channels that feed off these ditches) that the wells in the valley are actually fed by ditchwater seeping down to the groundwater. The ditch systems are over a century old, and haven’t been updated since then except for the gates. Lining the ditches would save huge amounts of water, but the valley wells would run dry. This little local conundrum is repeated in valleys across the arid west.
Published on February 17, 2008
in water.
We’ve had steady warm wind for a few days, and the snow is disappearing. Yesterday, the stream opened up. Those tracks are from a dog or coyote that’s walking on top of the snow; the deer still can’t get through here.
A week ago, it looked like this:
and I was floundering around to my waist in snow; this week the snow is no more than knee high and it feels as though Spring might be dreaming of waking up.
Published on February 12, 2008
in water.
In the arid states west of the Mississippi, water is owned like a house or a car. It’s real property that is bought and sold separately from the land it flows over. If you have a stream or a ditch running through your property, you can’t use the water unless you own water rights.
Each water right has three parameters: the location that the water is taken from the river, the amount of water, and the date that the right was first granted. The date matters, because it’s a first in time/first in right system. In dry years, the people with the oldest rights get water, and the people with newer rights don’t. Western cities filed for water rights decades after the ranchers and ditch companies did–their population growth is more recent– so city water rights are more recent too.
From the earliest days of statehood, ditch companies filed for huge water rights and dug channels to deliver water to farmers far from the river. In La Plata County, 96% of the water is owned by ditch companies and ranchers. In some of the dry western states, as much as 90% of all the water in the state is owned by early agricultural claims–no wonder the cities run dry! This is our ditch. Isn’t it lovely?
Our ditch has rights that date from 1880 (according to the neighbors, it was dug by Navaho Indians the winter of 1879). The ditch company’s water rights are earlier and larger than Durango’s, so in a dry year our ditch shares provide us with irrigation water before the city has drinking water. Most ditches are empty during the winter, but this ditch is always full. And some of that water flowing in it is always mine. Love that ditch.
The water level is wholly controlled by humans, and ditch management has been wonky this winter. In the picture above, water is almost up to the footbridge. Two days later, the water is a foot lower and the snow is two feet higher. It looks like some kind of hydrological balance, but it’s not.
Published on February 10, 2008
in water.
A week after the deep snow came, deer still haven’t broken a trail down to our stretch of stream. I put on full snow gear to get to the banks of the stream for this water shot; in some places the snow was waist-high.
Five weeks ago this stretch was being used as a bridge
but not any more.
Published on January 20, 2008
in water.
How many times have you been walking along a stream when you came upon a car dump right next to it?
Chances are that streamside piles of chassis aren’t strays: they’re the solution to a real estate problem. Streams and rivers are often used as plot boundaries, which makes sense until you consider that streams and rivers move. The water velocity is higher at the outer edge than the inner edge of a curve, so the bends of a river are always pushed out and downstream. Over time, that stream or river writhes like a snake.
When people own land bordered by a stream or river, the landowner on one side of the stream owns a larger lot, over time, and the landowner on the other side of the bend loses ground year by year. Across rural America, landowners tried to stop streams or rivers from moving their beds. For most of a century, the cheapest solution was to cable together old chassis and secure them to the side of the stream.
This isn’t a dump; it’s riprap.
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