Water, water, everywhere

The rain stopped late yesterday evening. I thought I'd go down to the park and see what there was to see along the creek. On the way to the Cherry Creek Trail parking lot I was mildly surprised to see water in the field to the south. A moment later I was driving through water as it flowed over the road. There was evidence that it had been higher very recently.

My walk took me down the central path running from the road to the Starvation Trail. There is a culvert running under the road at the beginning of the path. Water was gushing out of it, a clear sign of high water. This is the last culvert to show water flow and the first to dry out.

A hundred yards in there is an easy access to the creek itself. It was flowing just under bank high. I began walking down the trail I normally follow to check on the beavers' work. The grass I was moving through was wet. Before long so were my pants and shoes. By the time I was done the pants could have been wrung out they were so drippy.

The channel I was following was put in several years ago by the Army Corps of Engineers (they are in charge of anything 'water' in the park). That and a series of new culverts under the road were intended to relieve the frequent road flooding problems park users had to put up with.

Shortly after the new channel was joined by the original things started getting squishy. Another 50 yards down the path I was surrounded on three sides by inches deep water; the creek was beyond bank-full.

I backtracked a bit and struck off for the main path, which proved to be dry, for a while anyway. Some of the overspill water found its way to that path and was flowing down it, something I hadn't seen before.

My goal was to see the creek flowing under the Starvation Trail bridge. That went unsatisfied today. There were two inches of water flowing over the path many yards before the bridge. Though there is a culvert under the trail at that point, it was inadequate to handle the amount of water coming down that particular channel.

New goal: the western bridge into the wetlands. Remembering the flooding last spring I thought the best access to that would be walking the creekside trail. Of course that meant walking through lots of grass and hip-high weeds. The track is occasionally right on the lip of the creek channel. Those spots I avoided -- they were slanted and muddy, or potentially undercut, unsafe.

The bridge was finally realized. One end was under several inches of water. The flow gauge nearly was.

I found my intended way out of the mess blocked by lots of water on the path and had to return to the car the way I'd come. (Think more walking through grass and weeds.)

By the time I'd driven back through the trees, the water flowing over the road had noticeably receded. Bicyclists were barely getting their rims wet. I recall riding through such water many years ago getting my hubs and bottom bracket wet -- that was a flood!

I'm sure the beavers will have to restart their dam building from scratch after seeing today's flow. Nothing could be left of their first efforts.