Walking the Karst

Walked in through the Wodehouse Karst again the other day, just a few days after our traiol clearing workparty.  This time, it was with a friend who had never been in there to see either the sinkholes or the spring down below the cliff - he was fascinated!

We stopped a minute at the depression in the ground that is the basement of the old cabin, still a bit of a stone wall visible, but mostly a jumble of rocks.

And then we came to the stream valley that contains the sinkholes.  We had lots of rain last Thursday and Friday, and there seemed to be more water flowing that a week ago.

When we got to the sinkholes, this was really clear.  Water was pouring down between these boulders, dropped straight down into the crevices beneath.

And the water extended 15 feet beyond the sinkhole I photographed last week, into this cul-de-sac in the clay, vanishing into the limestone below.  I estimated that the flow into each of these sinkholes was about 1 cu.ft/second, quite a bit after the rain we'd had.

We crashed our way through the brush to see the final sinkhole, but the water was pooling over top of it, so you couldn't see any actual sinkhole.  I've never seen the stream without at least a small pool of water here.

Then we took the trail to the back of the old farm, now all grown up in trees.  Never-the-less, there was evidence of early farming, both the stone pile in the foreground and the fallen split rail fence along the trees.

I enjoy finding these bit of evidence of a different landscape in the past, once field and now forest.

To see the spring, we had to climb down this crevice.  It's not as difficult as it looks, and someone has tied a rope to help.

But it's still a very sudden and steep descent between the limestone.

When we got to the trail below, we first walked south to see the smaller spring emerging into this stream.

Then we came back north to the main springs.  The sun was reflecting off all the water, and I had to stand behind this tree to avoid sun flares.  There are actually three places where water emerges from the ground here, on in the lower right, one in the centre  right, and one in the distance.  They all merge quite quickly to form Bill's Creek.

I haven't often see this much water in the creek, presumably from those two rainy days we had.  But we both said that there looks to be much more water emerging here than was disappearing down those sinkholes!  There must be other sinkholes upstream that are contributing to the underground flow.

The water was absolutely pouring out of those springs, and foaming its way down the ravine of Bill's Creek.  What a great walk on a perfect November day that actually felt like September!

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