Discussion: Storm damage

Sorry to hear of such damage to a beautiful nearby resource. How much rain did you get? Those Santa Cruz mountains seem to always be wet. Almost like a rain forest by my memory. So it must have been an unusual deluge...unless most of that damage was on poorly-designed fill.

Was the small dam at Lake Ranch Reservoir in any danger of collapsing during the storm? I imagine that reservoir is now brimming!

That is a shame. I was suspecting from all the rain this winter that there would be lots of damage discovered to dirt roads and trails as soon as people started trying to use them again. I bet many of my East Bay hill runs will be affected.

Thanks for pointing me to that Wikipedia article, Chitown. It must be a couple of years old. I've been running there for over 20 years, and it used to be "lightly used". But a couple of years ago, they opened up a new (and lovely) trail from the lake up 3.5 miles to Skyline. Mountain bikers started using the trail in large numbers. Word got out. Dog walkers started using it. That groups of mothers with baby carriages. Well, a lot of those people won't be using it for some time.

The dams at either end of the lake are fine. They somehow let almost all the water out of the lake, perhaps to prevent damage to the dams. The lake level was down to where it is at the end of a dry summer.

We got a LOT of rain. One day there was a storm with winds over 75 mi an hour. I'm just guessing, but a l think it might have been that wind sweeping down the side canyons that caused a lot of the damage. Huge trees have been uprooted, and they dragged down hillsides with them. That one side canyon I mentioned is so changed it's hard to believe it's the same place.