Friday, April 11, 2014

The Overflowing Sinkhole - Continued!

The overflow of water from the sinkhole filling up the dry stream bed I posted yesterday seemed to get stalled under the bridge, and I could hear it gurgling away as if it was going down another sinkhole.  So I left and returned in about half an hour - by that point the flow had broken through and was starting to fill up the stream bed downstream of the bridge.

It proceeded downstream here more slowly, but these four pictures were all taken in about 20 minutes.  I did meet a nearby chalet owner who said sometimes the stream only does flow as far as the bridge, and disappears underneath.  They assume there's another sinkhole under there.

If that sinkhole was capturing part of the flow, that would account for this part filling up more slowly.

It's not far from the cliff here.  The chalet in the background sits quite close to the edge of the cliff, with a view over Bowles Gully as it's known, where the ephemeral waterfall is located (along with Avalanche ski run, reputedly the steepest in Ontario).

The creek bends to the right in the distance, and then it will bend abruptly left to flow over to the cliff, behind those cedar trees in the back left of the picture.  Soon that waterfall will be flowing - even though it's very difficult to ever get a view of it.

A day later the stream was a torrent of water, charging down the formerly dry stream bed toward the falls.  This is another look upstream 48 hours after the flow started.

And this is the flow downstream a day later too.  I'm sure the waterfall is thundering over the edge now.  I'll try to get down there for pictures over the weekend.  It's a challenging hike/climb/walk to say the least, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that I can get there.

10 comments:

  1. Excellent captures! Hopefully you can manage the waterfall.

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  2. Wow, seems like a pretty dynamic system. I thought I knew what a creek was, and then I moved to Mt. Rainier NP. They call things creeks there that, when at high water (or during a lahar), ANY Californian would call a river,if not a raging, ripping-out-parking-lots torrent. PRETTY darn impressive what liquid and solid water can conspire to create (or destroy).

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  3. Interesting! We have karst topography here, and plenty of sinkholes and caves. (I wrote about this a few years back: http://webcroft.blogspot.com/2011/05/along-trail-at-hupps-hill.html)

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  4. In England watercourses called 'creeks' are few and far between, where they do exist they are usually tidal estuaries and navigable ways through mudflats. To make up for this we have many other words 'brook', 'bourne' and river in Southern England. Elsewhere there are 'becks', 'burns', 'waters', etc etc. Disappearing streams like yours are frequent in parts of Yorkshire.

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  5. All the creeks & rivers are overflowing up our way too, as you can well imagine. The ice came out of the river & into the mouth of the lake in Southampton this week. Quite the sight to behold.

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  6. Nice captures again - but those sink holes kind of spook me!

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  7. Wow! Quite a transition! Lucky you were there to document it.

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  8. Can't wait to see your waterfall pics!

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  9. This is all very interesting. Keep us posted.

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  10. It's pretty scary, really, with flooding around here.
    (ツ) from Cottage Country Ontario , ON, Canada!

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