Sunday, June 15, 2008

Redridge in Spring



The old Redridge timber crib dam, in spring.

This one is from the archives. I'm in Regina at the moment, at math camp, er, a math conference. I've been taking lots of photos of prairie dogs and the vast emptiness that is Saskatchewan, so I'll post some of that when I'm back.

I took this one evening around sunset, while I was playing around with long exposures. Redridge, like a lot of places set on streams or lakes, changes a lot during the spring. Streams become rivers, trickles become waterfalls, and springs appear out of nowhere. The Redridge dams, which don't really hold water any more, actually start to look like they're doing their jobs during the spring -- which unfortunately also means that they are slowly degrading, since they're not maintained any more.

4 comments:

Dark Angle said...

Where is this dam in relation to the one we used to climb all over?

I love the phrase "the vast emptiness that is Saskatchewan". Canada's really big...

DC said...

The old wooden crib dam is behind (upstream, away from the road) the big steel dam that we climbed on. I'm pretty sure you've seen it before, but maybe not...

And yeah, Canada's REALLY big. You don't quite get a feel for that until you've been here!

The Really Sarcastic Weasel said...

Man, I miss the old steel dam.

I have a dream of putting wireless sensors on it and leaving them to record the impact after the timber dam dies then the inevitible collapse of the steel dam. My dreams are pretty mundane, what can I say.

Dam. Dam. Dam.

(Brought to you by the letters fmtut: fum-tut.)

DC said...

Those are quite some dreams there! I went to a talk recently by a Civil prof. His senior design team had analyzed the wooden and steel dams, and determined that they're much more stable than expected. Since the township took off the top 12 feet of wooden dam, it's not in any real danger of collapsing (at least until there's a 500-year flood event). Supposedly the steel dam could take the hit, too, except for that same 500-year flood.