Canyon Lake Gorge

— What are the odds of seeing a gorge that was created in your lifetime? I don’t know how often that occurs. However, in 2002, the Canyon Lake Gorge was formed in a matter of days. It all started with heavy rains during the week of June 28, 2002. The amount of rain that fell that weekend was over 35 inches. Then on the afternoon of July 4, lake water began to go over the spillway seen above. Anything along the way — enormous boulders, roads, houses, full-grown oak trees, soil — was washed away leaving behind a gorge that is approximately one mile (1.6 km) long, with an average width ranging from 130-200 ft (39-61 m) wide and reaching a depth of sometimes 50 ft (15 m). The water continued spilling over the dam for about six weeks. This limestone gorge exposed fossils, fault lines, and even some dinosaur tracks dating back to 111 million years ago. Because of this impressive geological phenomenon, there are even some hypotheses raising the possibility that other canyons around the world could have been formed by similar catastrophic situations instead of slowly through time. Here are some numbers to give you an idea of the water power from this storm.

The normal water flow from Canyon Lake is around 350 cubic feet (9.9 m3) of water per second. During the storm, water was flowing at a rate of up to 67,000 cubic feet (1,900 m3) of water per second! The actual flood crested in just three days, but water kept on overflowing for six weeks. So much soil, debris, and rocks were moved that together all of that could have created a 30-story building the size of a football field. If my GPS recorded our hike correctly, the elevation change from the spillway to the bottom of the trail, where we exit the hike, was around 160 ft (48 m).

The photo below only shows the spillway on the right side and the first two terraces created right below the spillway. That is about 30 ft (9 m) below from the spillway. One can perceive the soil that was removed between the two banks we now see on the photo. Further downstream, the depth increases.

Tours are given daily and last about 3 hours. Visitors walk down the gorge with a guide and see examples of fossils, fault lines, streams and waterfalls that appeared after the gorge was created, and even some dinosaur tracks. Those tracks are believed to have been from an acrocanthosaurus, a meat-eater dinosaur approximately 30 ft (9 m) long, 3 tons in weight, and leg length over 10 ft (3 m). The video at the bottom features the Lagoon and also a waterfall in that area.