Climbing in Hetch Hetchy?

[faust]

At this risk of stirring up some dam debate, has anybody else been hearing about this?

 

"For most of the past century, the Hetch Hetchy Valley . . . has served as a 300-foot-deep bathtub holding melted snow from the High Sierra for people and businesses in San Francisco . . . Now a group of environmentalists wants to drain the eight-mile-long reservoir and restore the valley to what John Muir once described as a 'grand landscape garden, one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples.' . . . More than 1,900 acres of submerged valley floor would be uncovered, an area that Muir liked to call the 'Tuolumne Yosemite.'"

 

NY Times article on Hetch Hetchy

 

Now of course the most important question is, would this uncover untapped granite in Yosemite NP?

 

[ 10-15-2002, 05:58 PM: Message edited by: faust ]

[faust]

guess i should add a picture . . .

 

[faust]

 

 

[ 10-15-2002, 05:35 PM: Message edited by: faust ]

[faust]

 

 

[ 10-15-2002, 05:58 PM: Message edited by: faust ]

[Peter_Puget]

Answer is yes and there already are some climbs in the area.

[texplorer]

Yes, i have heard of it. There are supposed to be big walls under them waters. Lets drain it and start doin some 5.10+ FA's.

[greghinemeyer]

absolutely

[cj001f]

Climbers Guide to the High Sierra Lists 3 different routes in the valley (up to 1,400 ft) all done after the dam - I've heard Galen Rowell's name attached to one or another of them, but I can't remember where I saw that.

 

I was just there on Sunday - I'm not really sure how much the dam has impaired climbing (and if you could boat it probably wouldn't at all) - it'd take off at most a pitch or so, if you take into account the height of the talus. That said, I'm more than a little sick of San Francisco's (and the rest of the fucking Bay Area) hypocritical bullshit with regards to this. Were all for inconveniencing everyone else in the world regards to the environment, but when it comes to us, no way we'll even look at doing anything differently. They should at least consider alternatives.

[chelle]

Faust - what's the date on the pic? Looks like an incredible meadowed valley prior to the dam. There are also some good looking granite walls up the Toloumne River valley in the Grand Canyon of the Toloumne. Hiked it about two weeks ago. A really beautiful place.

[gapertimmy]

hetch hetchy is what formed the sierra club, and many say, daming of the valley is what killed john muir. i had the pleasure of volunteering up in that country and there is plenty of rock above water around hetch hetchy, and in the NW portion of the park to keep most busy for a while!

 

there is actually some nice little TR's and some cragging near hetch hetchy as well. a good friend of mine is ranger in 'dem parts... i guess the NPS is increasing patrolling of the dam area due to 9/11.

 

amazing place, if in the area, try to make it up to lake eleanor and beyond as well. miles and miles of granite.... not as quite as cool as smiffy tuff, but hey, one can't be too picky.

 

ehmmic did you hike from tuolomne meadows all the way to hetch hetchy damn? how long did it take you? amazing country, great swimming holes.

 

[ 10-15-2002, 08:36 PM: Message edited by: gapertimmy ]

[gapertimmy]

faust... would you mind cutting and pasting the article for my lazy ass? i don't want to register to their site and get spammage.

 

really preciate it!

[Norman_Clyde]

I'm still clueless about posting actual photos onto this page, but here's another nice Hetch Hetchy photo:

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?pan:57:./temp/~ammem_98vn::@@@mdb=manz,eaa,aaeo,aaodyssey,hh,gottscho,bbpix,bbcards,magbell,berl,lbcoll,cwnyhs,cwar,consrvbib,coolbib,coplandb ib,curt,dag,fsaall,aep,fine,fmuever,dcm,cmns,cowellbib,toddbib,lomaxbib,ngp,gottlieb,alad,mcc,mymhiwebib,aipn,afcwip,fawbib,omhbib,pan,vv,wpapos,psbib,pin,presp,qlt,ncr,mesnbib,den n,runyon,wtc,detr,upboverbib,varstg,horyd,hawp,suffrg

 

My computer's paste function wouldn't operate when I had the cc.com URL window open. Help me, Tim and Jon!

[gapertimmy]

from the faq section:

 

To add a graphic within your message, just encase the URL of the graphic image as shown in the following example.

 

 

In the example above, the UBBCode™ automatically makes the graphic visible in your message. Note: the "http://" part of the URL is REQUIRED for the code. Also note: some UBB forums may disable the tag support to prevent objectionable images from being viewed.

 

**or**

you can save the picture to your hard drive, right mouse click on the picture, save picture as.... and then upload it to our photo album as well. I guess this is considering stealing a photo, but you didn't hear that from me.

 

gapertimmy

 

[ 10-16-2002, 07:53 AM: Message edited by: gapertimmy ]

[Poseur]

quote:

---

That said, I'm more than a little sick of San Francisco's (and the rest of the fucking Bay Area) hypocritical bullshit with regards to this. Were all for inconveniencing everyone else in the world regards to the environment, but when it comes to us, no way we'll even look at doing anything differently. They should at least consider alternatives.

---

So true, so true...

[gapertimmy]

for those interested, a good read on the subjet would be cadillac desert. a grand tale about water rights, and how LA dried up the owens valley and almost killed mono lake. sorry for the thread drift.

[faust]

i did some more surfing and found an activist site that has pre- and post- dam pictures. scroll down to the bottom for links to pictures. that first picture i posted was from a sierra club journal in 1908.

 

Paradise Lost

 

and here's the entire times article:

 

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif., Oct. 8 — An old black and white photograph hangs behind the bar at the Evergreen Lodge, a rustic roadside establishment just outside this park. It shows wildflowers dancing in the thick grass. A river glides between a pair of imposing granite walls.

 

To visitors here, the scene from 1914 looks instantly familiar

"People think it is Yosemite Valley," said Dan Braun, the lodge's proprietor. "But it is not. They have no idea that Hetch Hetchy looked like that, too."

 

For most of the past century, the Hetch Hetchy Valley, 15 miles north of its more famous and bigger sibling within the park, has served as a 300-foot-deep bathtub holding melted snow from the High Sierra for people and businesses in San Francisco and its suburbs. Now a group of environmentalists wants to drain the eight-mile-long reservoir and restore the valley to what John Muir once described as a "grand landscape garden, one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples."

 

The proposal has generated excitement among employees of the national park, consternation among San Francisco's water interests and political feuding between the environmentalists and City Hall. A citywide ballot measure in November calls for raising $1.6 billion to improve the Hetch Hetchy water delivery system, which several studies have shown to be outdated and vulnerable to a big earthquake, but environmentalists are opposing it.

 

The environmentalists want to dismantle the 80-year-old O'Shaughnessy Dam on the Tuolumne River and release the 117 billion gallons of water behind it in the Hetch Hetchy Valley. More than 1,900 acres of submerged valley floor would be uncovered, an area that Muir liked to call the "Tuolumne Yosemite."

 

"People say this is a radical idea, but wasn't it a radical idea to put a dam in a national park?" said Ron Good, executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy, which was formed to raise money and support for the restoration plan. "Imagine the opportunity we have to allow nature to recreate another Yosemite Valley."

 

To start, the environmentalists are thinking small and are not proposing any specific way of replacing the reservoir. Instead, they have asked San Francisco to help pay for a study to determine the cost of the proposal and to come up with alternatives — perhaps building or expanding reservoirs or using aquifers. The study would also seek a replacement for the hydroelectric power generated by the system. Mr. Good and the other proponents say they do not want to take water or power away from San Francisco, but rather rework the network "so it is a win-win for everyone."

 

So far the city has refused. But San Francisco's top water official, Patricia E. Martel, said the door was not entirely closed, even though she and many other officials consider the idea far-fetched and suspect it would cost billions of dollars.

 

Ms. Martel, who is general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, said the agency would cooperate with a study that was paid for and undertaken by some other organization. She also said the general notion of replacing the reservoir would be explored in environmental reviews that would soon be needed as part of repairs and upgrades planned for the system.

 

"We are willing to cooperate with the environmental groups, but we are not willing to take the lead and say our mission is to restore Hetch Hetchy," Ms. Martel said. "We don't believe we have a requirement to fund that study."

 

Another leading water official, Art Jensen, also expressed willingness to consider the proposal. Mr. Jensen is general manager of the San Francisco Bay Area Water Users Association, which represents 29 cities, water districts and a private water company that buy Hetch Hetchy water from San Francisco.

 

"It is a fascinating idea," Mr. Jensen said. "I would like to think I have an open mind and never turn my back on a fascinating idea."

 

In the old days, Hetch Hetchy — it was named by the Ahwahneechee and Paiute Indians for the type of grass that once grew there — was a breathtaking glacier-carved valley in a newly established national park, not unlike Yosemite along the Merced River. But Congress voted in 1913 to allow San Francisco, 160 miles to the west, to flood the valley in an effort to secure a reliable water supply. Richard W. Sellars, a longtime National Park Service historian, describes the decision as "the most famous and egregious invasion of a national park."

 

Muir was a fierce opponent of the reservoir, and was said to have died of a broken heart in 1914 after failing to block it. "Dam Hetch Hetchy!" he wrote in his book "The Yosemite." "As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."

 

Among Restore Hetch Hetchy's supporters is Donald P. Hodel, the former secretary of the interior under President Ronald Reagan, who floated a similar restoration proposal in the late 1980's. Though the dismantling of productive dams is not common practice, Mr. Hodel said he got the idea from Rocky Mountain National Park, where a damaged dam was taken down a decade ago. Since then, there have been other dismantling of dams, especially ones that interfered with fisheries.

 

Like Muir before him, Mr. Hodel was silenced by powerful water interests. Mr. Hodel said he had little in common with the new group pushing for the Hetch Hetchy study, but he was willing to lend his name to the cause because he still believed in it. He also remained incensed at what he described as the duplicity of many San Franciscans. They are known to champion environmental causes, he said, but seem blind to the destructiveness of their own water policies.

 

"All of the arguments made against a study of Hetch Hetchy were about San Francisco's birthright to flood that valley — that it is our vested economic right," Mr. Hodel said in telephone interview from Colorado, where he lives in semi-retirement. "Those are the same arguments made by slaveholders in opposition to abolition."

 

Mr. Hodel was especially critical of Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was instrumental in sinking his proposal when she was mayor of San Francisco and a fierce opponent of any tinkering with the reservoir.

 

"You would think she would say, `Let's look at the facts, let's look at the merits of this,' " he said. "But she had determined to her satisfaction that it would never work and it was unsuitable."

 

Ms. Feinstein said that whether mayor or senator, the idea of tearing down the O'Shaughnessy Dam looked the same to her.

 

"It makes no sense to destroy the source of the highest-quality drinking water around," Senator Feinstein said.

 

The Hetch Hetchy environmentalists said their overall strategy was to persuade and cajole, but they have gotten off to a rocky start with officials by taking a stance against the November ballot measure.

 

The measure, Proposition A, would allow the city to borrow $1.6 billion to help pay for about $3.6 billion in repairs and seismic improvements to the Hetch Hetchy water delivery system. The system brings water from the valley through 280 miles of pipes and 60 miles of tunnels to about 800,000 people in San Francisco and 1.6 million in its suburbs.

 

The proposition is supported by the San Francisco water utility, Senator Feinstein, Mayor Willie L. Brown and a majority of the city's usually fractious Board of Supervisors. Ms. Martel, the utility's general manager, said large stretches of pipeline are more than 75 years old and desperately need to be replaced.

 

But A. Spreck Rosekrans, a senior analyst with Environmental Defense, one of the groups behind the effort to restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley, said that with billions of dollars in improvements ready to be spent, the moment was right to re-think the entire system.

 

Environmental Defense and the Planning and Conservation League wrote to city officials asking them to study the feasibility of restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley. When the officials balked, the groups vowed to fight Proposition A. Other influential environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have joined in criticizing the proposition.

 

Win or lose on Proposition A, Mr. Rosekrans said the struggle for Hetch Hetchy had only begun. Because of the great interest in national parks around the country, and the particular popularity of Yosemite, Restore Hetch Hetchy is looking to support from outside California to counter and eventually overwhelm the local resistance.

 

In the meantime, Mr. Good lectures to civic and community groups and leads interpretive tours around the reservoir, where he suggests the submerged rocks "are holding their breath" and the Tuolumne River is "crying out for life again."

 

Standing atop the 312-foot-high concrete dam, water sprinkling from two eyelets behind him, Mr. Good quoted Muir as a source of the environmentalists' resolve:

 

"Imagine yourself in Hetch Hetchy on a sunny day in June, standing waist-deep in grass and flowers as I have often stood, while the great pines sway dreamily with scarcely perceptible motion."

 

(New York Times, October 15th, 2002, www.nytimes.com)

[vegetablebelay]

Any scuba-climbing opportunities down there?

[gapertimmy]

quote:

---

Originally posted by vegetablebelay:

Any scuba-climbing opportunities down there?

---

i was waiting for that one. where is that angry old bastard anyways?

[Terminal_Gravity]

How many of you have acctually been to Hetch Hetchy. I found it creepy & weird to walk across the dam(n) and imagine the submerged wonder. I think that it gets less than one percent of the Yosimite visitors. Re-establishing the Hetch Hetchy would mitigate the sicking crowds of the valley.

 

The face of the dam itself needs a bolt ladder, one with really long holes.

 

Hetch Hetchy now, Glen Canyon tomarrow and then we can start on the Columbia lake system.

[gapertimmy]

i've been. any dammed valley looks odd. I think if they ever did empty it (won't happen unless it gets monkeywrenched) the valley would look awful, and would never restore. there would be a bathtub mark all around the rock, kinda like the nasty skid marks i just left in the shitter.

[Lambone]

Any of you guys know much about the Three Rivers Dam to be built in China?

[iain]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lambone:

Any of you guys know much about the Three Rivers Dam to be built in China?

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what about it? it's big

[Terminal_Gravity]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lambone:

Any of you guys know much about the Three Rivers Dam to be built in China?

---

I read a really cool thing in a geology journal awhile back. Apparrently, it has been theorized that a new large ( and heavy ) body of water forces the earths crust to eventually adjust. If I remember right, the azwan dam on the nile didn't have many faults under it when it was built and now there are more and they appear to be growing.

 

The 3 rivers will be, by far, the largest man made lake to be built. I would expect that the earth will personally see to its quick removal via massive earth quakes. Of course that is "quick" by geologic time standards.

[iain]

The is increased seismic activity beneath Lake Mead as well, due to the weight of the water.

[iain]

The intense sediment load of the Yangtze will mean some major problems keeping the dam from filling with deposits.

 

It will be one mile across and almost 600 feet high.

 

It is forcing the displacement of about 2 million people.