Thursday, April 3, 2014

Wodehouse - The Most Fascinating Creek Around

Wodehouse Creek is opening up as the ice melt gets underway.  This is one of the most fascinating creeks anywhere in my opinion, starting in an enormous spring, getting smaller as it flows downstream, plunging into a group of sinkholes, and emerging again as another large spring - actually a series of 5 separate springs spread over several miles.  I had beautiful sunny skies to take these pictures yesterday - and it's all within five miles of our house.

This is the creek 200 yards after it emerges from the huge spring on this farm.  It generates a stream nearly 30 feet wide and 2 feet deep immediately, so you can judge how big a spring this is - not just a trickle from under a few rocks!

You can take pictures at 4 bridges, so you're going to see repeated updates of these over the next few weeks as I document the fluctuation of the creek.  Here it flows down into the large (and still totally frozen) Wodehouse Marsh, quite a good-sized stream at this point.

After flowing mysteriously through the large marsh under the ice, it flows over or through a beaver dam and opens up again to form this stream - in my mind perhaps a little smaller than the stream above, but still there's a substantial flow here.  The frozen beaver pond is just out of sight on the right.

On the other side of the second bridge the creek floods again, forming a wider channel as it flows south.  This channel will be nearly the width of the picture in a week or two.

But at the next bridge, in my view, the creek is definitely smaller.  It does flood here, and is flowing faster, so it's hard to estimate the difference, but this is where I begin to think the creek is getting smaller flowing downstream.

This is the view from the last bridge as it heads toward the sinkholes (all still totally frozen).  This also will flood widely within a week or two.  The fascinating part of the stream is still downstream, around the sinkholes (once they unfreeze), but it's my belief that this creek gets smaller going downstream because there are other unknown sinkholes upstream where it loses part of its flow.  And further downstream for a brief period there will be an ephemeral waterfall as all the flow can't fit down the sinkholes.

I'm hoping to document this more carefully this spring than I've had the chance to before, so watch for further dispatches from the Wodehouse Creek watershed!

Linking to:
http://skyley.blogspot.ca/

17 comments:

  1. I hope you had your snow boots on - it is a beautiful creek. There is a river in Idaho that disappears for miles and reappears not so much sink holes but through an area of volcanic rock.

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  2. Beautiful, changing scenes as the season moves to warmer days, This is a series that entrances me, and I'm sure all who read and visit. A stunningly deep blue sky to add further beauty. Cheers, Jean.

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  3. So this creek could be called peek-a-boo as it disappears into sink holes only to pop back out further down. Good series of photos.

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  4. Such an unusual creek! You had a nice day to document it. Love the blue skies.

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  5. Hi
    il Canada è veramente una grande terra meravigliosa e piena di sorprese !
    Molto belle le tue foto... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr che freddo, però :)
    Buona domenica Myriam

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  6. How lovely! Great series. I love watching the slow approach of spring! Cautious.
    http://travelerswife.blogspot.ca/

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  7. This will be interesting to see you document as the spring season unfolds. I find it interesting that there are so many sink holes in your area. What is the cause of them and are they ever a hazard to homes or farm land? When one sees a sink hole in Florida swallowing a house or cars it's pretty scary. Could that happen in Ontario too? Just wondering. :) Have a nice weekend.

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  8. Nice photos and documentation about the Spring. I'll be interested to see how this progresses as Spring fully unfolds.

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  9. Snowy river banks that will soon melt away when spring's touch finally makes it that far north. Beautiful SWF photos! Now following.

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  10. Thanks for the tour of that beautiful creek! Looking forward to seeing the sinkholes in action.

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  11. Blue sky, white snow and water - a beautiful combination. Beautiful pictures.

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  12. Interesting that the creek becomes smaller. Makes for some interesting photos.

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  13. The stream is very pretty now that it's so blue and flowing between those white-covered banks.

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  14. We have the same spring views! I'm in Ottawa Valley and we are just starting to see the thaw. The river is starting to show breaks in the ice and all the little creeks are flowing fast. Should present some amazing photo ops in the next couple of weeks.

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  15. Neat place! Just across the mountain from us there's a place called Lost River where the river disappears. There are many underground caverns in Virginia and West Virginia which were formed by underground waterways.

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  16. Isn't that interesting. It could be narrower if it is deeper. Or maybe bits of it seep away through other small cracks

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