Groundbreaking Ceremony

From Chattahoochee Bend

a guest entry by Laurie Searle

The groundbreaking ceremony at Chattahoochee Bend State Park was awesome today. About 100 folks met up at the granite outcrop off of Flat Rock Rd. During the program, gracious thanks was given to the many people who helped make this park a reality. The Friends of Chattahoochee Bend State Park did a great job of coordinating this event, and inviting everyone to participate in the future support of the Park. I can't wait until the park opens, which they say will be in about 18 months.

Here is Laurie's article about the groundbreaking in the Chattahoochee Hills Weekly Reader.

and Sam adds:

There are more pictures in the photo album, including this one of Ronnie Eakins, who made it possible for GAOC to begin making the map of Chattahoochee Bend.

21 feet of water

The great flood of 2009 is over, and I made my first trip to the park after the waters receded. They called this a 500 year flood, and I can believe it. Upstream from the park we received over 18 inches of rain. That water had to go somewhere, so it flooded the Chattahoochee River. The road that I use to access the northern side of the park was flooded and closed in four places. The evidence is easy to see - the muddy water left marks on the trees and vegetation like a dirty bathtub ring.

From Chattahoochee Bend

My totally unscientific survey of the flood in the bend of the River reveals that it was 21 feet above normal level on the east side of the bend and 20 feet on the west side. The high water mark is easy to find. The obvious floodplain was underwater to a depth of maybe 10 feet. I came up with the answer of 21 feet by counting the LIDAR contours on my basemap. The difference between the east side and west side probably has to do with the topography. An area between 300 and 400 meters from the riverbank was flooded. That's a lot of water.

I'm not going down in there to look at it more closely. The news is full of reports that millions of gallons of raw sewage got washed down from Atlanta. I think I will at least wait for the leaves to fall to go back into the floodplain - every leaf is coated with mud. I could see plenty of standing water too.

So I stayed up on the "hills" in the center of the bend. I put "hills" in quotes because they look like hills on the map, but when you are standing there it can be difficult to tell. The contours are very gentle, and cannot really be used for precision navigation. They are covered with a confusing assortment of randomly-shaped fields, pine plantations, green areas, and forest. Not confusing enough to fool an expert orienteer, but I think they will cause some significant head-scratching. There is plenty of this area to keep me occupied until the leaves fall and the flood waters dry out.

From Chattahoochee Bend

Another problem is that now I need to recheck those areas of floodplain that I did before the flood. I haven't done that much, and it was over where the hills make their closest approach to the river. It can't be helped though. At least there have not been significant new blowdowns and resulting rootstocks.

A Rough Day

A rough day in the open fields. The weeds are head high and wet. And you can see the Plant Yates smokestacks from there (a Georgia Power plant). I spent a lot of time standing still, pencil poised over the paper, trying to decide how to represent what I was looking at. There are simply not enough levels of the open field symbol. There is "open", which I reserve for mown fields and lawn. There is "rough open", which I use for everything else. I can modify that by using scattered trees and the two levels of vertical green bars. It gets complicated, and there are a lot of decisions to make. Not much ground was covered. Like I said last week, the bend in the river is going to take a while.

I also ventured down into the floodplain. 300 meters between the last contour and the river. Yikes! This will be very difficult terrain for the orienteer, but at least they will have my map to help them. I have nothing - the photo is of little use unless there is some kind of old field or road. The lidar contours loop back and forth and over and around. It's very wet down there.

So I am thinking of postponing the fields until after the first frost, which won't be until November. Instead I will map the forest around the fields and down into the flood plain. Maybe after the frost the fields will be more pleasant to tromp through.

On the way out I drove south instead of north to see how the new park road is coming along. It looks pretty good. This will be the entrance to the park. No sign that there is much activity inside the park yet. Rumor is that there will be a groundbreaking next month.

And now for something completely diferent

A new page, moving up into the actual bend of the river for which the park is named.

Open fields and pine plantations.

The open fields are extensive and very overgrown. It will be interesting to see how the park manages these fields. From an orienteering standpoint, it would be great if they were cut and burned occasionally. If not, they will grow back into forest, a process that can take decades. We've got plenty of forest. (It's hard to see in that picture, but that's a nice gully that I added to the map).

The pine plantations are planted in rows. Sometimes very thick, sometimes very open, with rows wide enough to drive a truck down. Those were all former fields and pastures, converted at some point to trees. They need thinning and burning too. The thinning that was done further south in the park did not come up this far.

If there are fields and pastures there must be old barns and buildings. If there are old buildings there must be lots and lots and lots of trash. Including glass bottles.

There is a lot of territory in the bend of the river - over two pages of basemap. I'll be up here for quite a while.

The oddest thing I have ever found while mapping

The torso of a manikin. Where's the rest of it?