Ah memories :-) Back in the big El Nino event, in the Winter of 1992, into 1993 as I remember, it had been raining for weeks and I knew Deep Creek would be runnin real high. One especially heavy day of rain I decided to bail on my work for the day and see if I could make it up to DCHS to get some pictures of the flooding. I parked in a area on the North side of the Deep Creek Canyon near a place I call the Eagles Crest. I dropped down a ridge, very steep, into the canyon. I connected with the PCT and crossed the Rainbow Bridge ( bridge downstream from DCHS ) and made my way back upstream along the PCT to where Kinely Creek is crossed. Kinely Creek was flooding like most folks have never seen it. I spent a while trying to find a place to get across. I had to find some long logs to lay aross the rocks and rushing water to finally make it across Kinely Creek at a spot below the PCT where this creek spreads out. My two pooches at the time were Simba and my current dog Tuka. Once across we slogged our way up to DCHS. It had been raining hard the whole time of this hike. When I reached DCHS I began taking pictures of the flooding. There was no one there as you can imagine since the creek was a raging torrent at that point. The pointed rock granite island that sits out in the Lagoon near the Womb was only showing its little pointed top occasionally as the flood waters raced around the bend above the Arizona pool. I was quite wet and feeling chilled. All of the hotpools where under the flood waters. At that time there was no Aniversary pool, but if there had been, it would have been under the flood waters too. So, I built a temporary pool with rocks and a piece of blanket I found. I built this little soaker just above where the current aniversary pool is, just below the trail that cuts behind the rocks. I got my wet cloths off and soaked in the rain will watching, and listening, to the raging flood waters. It was really something to see the canyon with that much water coming down it. After a time the sun shown just briefly through the clouds and I got up from my soak and snapped a few pictures of the bright light of the sun brilliantly hitting all the wet granite in the area. Finally it was time to go. The pooches and I made our way back down the PCT to Kinely Creek and had a difficult crossing in the last light of day. I was most concerned about one of my dogs falling in the swiftly running waters at Willow Creek and getting caught in the rocks, or under vegetation and drowning , or worse, being swept down to Deep Creek itself which was only about 75 yards further down. We made it across Kinely Creek and continued to the Rainbow Bridge, crossed it with the loud and tumultuous flood waters below it, then the real fun began. It was raining hard again and I had to climb straight up a steep ridge that comes out of the canyon in a short distance, gaining in elevation a height more than the elevation gain from DCHS to the Bowen Parking lot. I was very wet, and chilly, my rainsuit was only useful to keep some of my body heat in because of all the sweating I was doing. My clothes were completely wet. It was, as I fondly remember, a grudge march to the top :-) When I got to my truck, I got into the back of my shell and made some hot soup I had brought, and put some dry cloths on. It had been an adventurous day, and the strenous hiking even though very tiring, I find to be very relaxing, once you stop :-) Some of the pictures from that day can be seen at the Wizard's pictures link below, and, at the site above it " more hotspring pictures " which has some of my pictures listed under Wizard. That was the highest flooding I have ever seen at DCHS and I'm glad I took the day off to go witness it in person. Well, thats my story, and I'm stickin too it !
