Capturing the Art of Nature
Floods to Chehalis
A light drizzle just added to the mood of the serious flooding along the Fraser.
Category
Serendipitous Discoveries
2007
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It was a drizzly day to be heading to the back country but we wanted to explore Chehalis Lake in more detail and also view the serious flooding along the Fraser River. So we drove out through Agassiz. As we crossed the river we could see the first signs of the high water level. When we approached the Harrison River I thought a short detour to Kilby Park might prove interesting.Well the visit to Kilby was more than a little interesting. The park was completely flooded out and gave us the first true sense of the severity and scope of the flooding conditions we had been hearing about in the news. Our next stop was further up the Harrison River to view the marsh lands along where the Chehalis River joins it. This region is normally very grassy and has only small troughs of water channels but today it was entirely covered in water. There was no sign of the long wavy grass that is now buried under feet of water.
We back tracked a bit and started for the back country. Our first stop was Elbow Lake where we met a family camping on it shoreline for the week-end. I captured a few lovely muted shots of the lake as a soft drizzle fell. I also came upon a few images that beckon to the nastier side of human presence in the back country. After a couple of stops along the small lake we got serious and started the long drive to Chehalis. Well we got a number of miles up the service road but eventually came to a washed out bridge which prevented us from going further. This was quite disappointing as we would not be able to reach our intended destination. Since it was near noon we decided to stop and enjoy our Subway sandwiches.
As it was still early we decided to head out and explore the dykes along the Fraser as we traveled back home through Mission. The flow of the river and its high level were truly quite amazing.
Though we didn’t get to the lake we did find a number of interesting sights and gained some first hand experience with the power of flood waters.