The Valentine's Day Flood

My friend and I went down with shovels and sandbags intending to dig out the pools, thinking that the creek might be high but not too high. We hiked the pct in from mojave river forks dam starting at 8am. We soon realized the creek was at an epic flood level like I've never seen. The crossing at kinley creek was especially difficult but we made it and ran into 3 women who had been camping near the springs(they said a mile away) for 3 days during the rain. They told us the creek was lapping at the top of the anniversary pool wall when they left.

When we arrived the creek was starting to enter the anniversary pool. The bend of deep creek had become an insane vortex of rapids. We saw coolers bouncing. We saw huge logs. We saw rock slides. The power of the waters was impressive and terrifying. An entire live tree on the beach near arizona pool was uprooted, tipped over, rammed into anniversary pool, and then pulled downstream and out of sight. The woodsy the owl sign fell over and disappeared under water. I have a feeling the concrete rock work in some of the pools will be damaged by this event. We ended up developing the little pool by the pct source as that was the only workable option. I dubbed it the "emergency pool". Hiking back at 2pm the Kinley creek had risen so much that the crossing was too dangerous and we had to take the bradford ridge up and 173 down, with all our backtracking the full hike was around 20 miles! Here are some photos: