EISPIRATEN

Driving back from Crystal Lake I stopped at the East Fork Bridge to snap a few pictures of the impressive water level of the San Gabriel Reservoir. It's full and now stretches beyond the East Fork Bridge, leaving little playground for the OHV enthusiasts.


(Water level goes nearly up to the spillway rim.)


(Reservoir filling the banks under the East Fork Bridge.)


(Looking south toward the confluence with the East Fork.)


(Looking north toward the shore, OHV area, and Burrito Peak.)

Morris isn't nearly as full, but I noticed that they were releasing water from it as I drove down canyon yesterday.

Thats about 40,000 acre feet of water. Nice to see the pool that full. Not much room for another storm, but it's late for that. That might be why Morris dam levels are being kept low.

San Gabriel dam is a flood control structure primarily, though it does feed water to a tunnel that feeds a power house at the mouth of the canyon and a municipal water system in the valley.

If you pull over along Browns Gulch you can see the outlet works and they are probably releasing some water. The dam has two 123" Pelton needle valves, one Westinghouse 84" hollow jet and a smaller hollow jet valve, 48" diameter as I recall. At high head, the large valves can release a ground shaking 5,300 cubic feet a second.

This is a video of one of the Pelton valves releasing water.