Break out the Beach Balls, Colorful Umbrellas, and the Volleyball net, Mother Nature has given us a new beach at DCHS. Sparky, Bear and I went for a hike to the springs today ( 1-25 ) to see the new changes brought by the floods, before the new rain moves in overnight. All I can say is Wow! In late August the creek was all colors of green, thick with fast growing new bushes, trees etc, it was lush, everything growing on all the nutrients of the dark mud from the fires. From that to what the place looks like now is such a drastic change. The huge sand bank above the Arizona Pool is just amazing. There are trees down in the flood zone in many places. The Womb Dam has lost about 4 of the rocks that make its top, probably struck by logs. The Aniversary Pool used to have a dirt mound that supported its north end. The mound is completely gone and the dam is leaking. Both the Womb and the Aniversary Pools are full however, the Womb at 101 degrees, the Aniversary Pool at 106 degrees. The hot water source flows at the Arizona Pool, and the main source up by the PCT are running at a very noticeable increased flow. I have seen in the past that the heavy rainfalls increase the source flows. There is even a spot below the Womb were some of the solid granite is gone form the flooding. The serenity Pool has the stream in it and is maybe 10 inches deep. All of the flooding exposed areas in the banks that haven't been above ground for years. I found in a spot by the grass area the tops of three plastic bottles that were exposed, being buried below the grass before the flooding. One of the bottles cap was gone, and it had water in it, I pulled it out of the dirt and poured out a yellow looking liquid. Another bottle had Magic Mushrooms in it, wet and looking quite old. The last bottle had what looked to be paper Acid and some other blue pills which I was told later were probably Extasy. They were also wet from the flood waters. It was somebody's stash, I wondered how long they had been there. I also found a wooden pipe, about an inch and a half in diameter and about 5 inches long with drawings on it. I also found a small axe, a small rake, some obsidian chips and what looked to be an old silver spoon. I went up stream a ways to look at things. There used to be a very big bueatiful Cottonwood tree up there about 200 yards on the west side of the creek. Some picture's I took of the fall colors this year show the top of that great tree in the background. Its gone, no sign of its trunk or anything. There is a big Sycamore in the grove of trees down stream from the Crab Cooker area that use to rise above all the other trees in the grove with its green leaves that would blow this way and that in the breeze, so scenic. But that big sycamore's upper branches are all broken from the heavy snow. Sad to see the damage to the bueatiful big trees. Of course Mother Natures onslaught is not all bad by any means. Deep Creek will be cleaner than its been it a long while. The waters will be refreshingly clear, and the bottom of the pools will be clean sand once again. Also these scouring really open up the creek bed for walking since the thick vegetation is now gone or stripped way back. One thing I was dismayed to see was the amount of trash, below the flood level at DCHS that has already been left by the visitors since just a couple of weeks ago when the flooding subsided. Sad that these people have such a lack of caring for a wonderful natural landscape like DCHS. I did take a bag of trash out and collected trash on the east shore into a pile above the flood level. I think with the appeal of all of the new sand, lots of driftwood and the clean creek may get things even more busy down at the springs this summer. Oh, and I almost forgot, I added 19 new photos I took today at the Wizard's pictures link below, page 46 -= last photo, all on page 47, and the six photos on page 48. I can tell you its even more dramatic to see it in person. Hopefully the rain will stay away this Saturday so we can check it all out some more at our monthly DCV meeting :-) Lastly, the womb now has a nice sand bottom. Personally I think it would be wise to leave the depth of that pool about 4 feet or less keeping the sand bottom. The sand provides a great walking surface for people to move around the pool and it also fills the " Big Void " under the cliff which tends to collect everything that falls to the bottom. In doing this perhaps the problem of the itchiness experienced by some may be helped, or even eliminated by this. I really enjoyed the sand bottom after the last big flooding of 92/93 :-)
