![]() As water retreats from the reservoir, once-submerged side canyons are beginning to harbor lush ecosystems.Īfter spending decades under mostly-still water, these canyons are laden with heaps of sediment that settled onto on the lake’s floor. KUNC A lizard sunbathes in a side canyon of Lake Powell on April 10, 2023. “And then there's a little bit of heartbreak knowing that this area is probably going to be submerged again in a couple of months.” “It's really, really interesting seeing the way that the ecosystem is recovering,” Lehto said. She pushed past a dense thicket of willows as we hiked through the canyon. Teal Lehto, who makes short videos about the Colorado River on TikTok under the name “WesternWaterGirl,” was also on the expedition. Bird calls echo off the smooth walls and melt into a distorted chorus. ![]() Occasionally, toads jump from the stream’s sandy banks. The crystal-clear creeks are full of spindly bugs that float on the water’s surface. All around our feet, the shallow water teems with life. Reminders of Glen Canyon’s return to some form of pre-reservoir normal aren’t always as static as the bathtub rings on canyon walls. Even last summer’s high water mark is about eye level. The high water line, set in the early 1980s, is more than 180 feet above our heads. The fact that the whole time we were just hiking, we would have been underwater, is shocking.” “The scale is hard to wrap your head around. He ambles along through the ankle-deep water, pointing up toward the infamous “bathtub rings,” chalky white mineral deposits on the canyon walls that serve as visual markers of the reservoir’s heyday. Stauss – an environmentalist who refers to Lake Powell as “the reservoir” – invited a small group of adventurous water wonks to chronicle its historically low water levels. ![]() “But as far as Glen Canyon goes, it's a pretty amazing silver lining.” “It's a scary future for water in the West,” he said. KUNC Jack Stauss of the Glen Canyon Institute dashes through a thicket on April 10, 2023. At the same time, the drop reveals a spectacular landscape that environmentalists have heralded as a “lost national park.” Climate change has put the West’s key water supply on the ropes. The falling water levels have created a harrowing visual reminder. ![]() But for a brief moment in the late winter and early spring of 2023, Powell was creeping lower by the day. Until July, snow from an epic winter in the Rocky Mountains will melt and flow into the reservoir, and portions of those side canyons will flood anew. Lake Powell is already receiving a major springtime boost. You start to see stuff come back on a really unprecedented scale.” ![]() “There are ecosystems that thrive in these side canyons, even when they've been de-watered for just, like, four years. “I call this the moon zone,” Stauss said, as his shin-high rubber boots splashed through cold pools and eddies. He works as the outreach coordinator for Glen Canyon Institute, a conservation nonprofit that campaigns for the draining of the reservoir and highlights the natural beauty of Glen Canyon, which was flooded in the 1960s to create Lake Powell. On a warm afternoon after the reservoir had dipped to a record low, Jack Stauss walked along a muddy creek bed at the bottom of one of those canyons. As the water recedes, a breathtaking landscape of deep red-rock canyons that cradle lush ecosystems and otherworldly arches, caverns and waterfalls is emerging. If you want to see the Colorado River change in real time, head to Lake Powell.Īt the nation’s second-largest reservoir, water levels recently dipped to the lowest they’ve been since 1968. ![]()
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