Post by Fire21 on Jun 3, 2019 11:35:00 GMT -5
Took off yesterday to see the flooding along the Powder River, 36 miles west of Gillette. The river has two short folklore statements about it...A mile wide and an inch deep; and too thick to drink, too thin to plow. Neither is even close to true. We'd heard about low level flooding along it, but although it is running full bank to bank, we saw no flooding.
But the mountains 40 miles farther west looked to have lots of snow up on the peaks, so we continued west to look at them. We stopped for a homemade picnic lunch at the city park in Buffalo. It sits alongside Clear Creek (believe me, it is clear...just the opposite of Powder River!). The creek was roaring; the flow is really high and fast. Warmer temps up high are feeding lots of water to it.
We continued on upward and started seeing patches of snow a ways below where we usually camp, around 6500 feet probably. As we went on up, the amount of snow increased in the wooded areas, although most sunny areas were clear. There is a lot of standing water in low areas. At Powder River Pass (elevation 9666) there was less snow than we expected, but above that is a LOT of snow on the peaks, which range upwards of 12,000 feet. I'm hoping the forecast of a cooler than normal summer will keep the melting rate rather slow and thereby sustain a decent flow in the various creeks for a longer time.
We made it to Meadowlark Lake, which still has a few places with ice, but not very thick anymore. We checked out a National Forest campground there, and although accessible, it is very muddy in places. There were two hardy campers in there though with their trailers. Anyway, we turned around at that point and came home. It was 53º at Powder River Pass and 77 at Gillette.