Update from Friends of Chattahoochee Bend

Went along on the Friends of Chat Bend hike this weekend. Showed them a few of the cultural artifacts I had found and some of the terrain down to the tip of the big bend. Laurie also went along, and made a nice photo album.

We also got an update from the board of the friends group. Construction contracts will begin Dec 1st and last for 18 months. These will include the extension of the new park road west, a maintenance shed, visitor center, and campground. Projected opening date to be June of 2011.

If I'm lucky the map will be finished by then!

Nasty Smelly Water

From Chattahoochee Bend

Over a month after the flood and there is still water standing down in the floodplain. I might could deal with the standing water (it's only a few inches deep), but it stinks. Smells like sewage, which is not surprising. Millions of gallons of raw sewage got swept downstream from Atlanta in the flood.

I plan to take a week of vacation from my real job next month and work on the map. Hopefully the water will drain off or soak in before then.

From Summer to Winter

A sudden change in the weather to cool and windy had me wearing a coat and blowing on my hands this morning. I'm still working the forest in the bend of the river, holding off on the flood plain. It's still wet down there, with plenty of standing water.

From Chattahoochee Bend

Here's another photo of the bathtub ring left by the flood. It runs right across the middle of the photo through the cane.

From Chattahoochee Bend

The hardwood forest in the bend of the river is beautiful, with lots of impressive beech trees. This is their preferred habitat, the beech bottoms.

From Chattahoochee Bend

Sometime next month I plan to take a week off from my real job and finish the northern half of the map - I hope.

More Tractor Tires Than Any Orienteering Map?

Or maybe more tractor tires per square kilometer than any orienteering map in the USA.

From Chattahoochee Bend

From Chattahoochee Bend

What happens two weeks after the 500 year flood? The mosquitoes go wild. They're everywhere, they're everywhere! They haven't been a problem since early Spring, but today they were whining around my ears. It was cool enough to wear a coat, so at least I didn't get bit.

Here's another view of the flood bathtub ring, this time over on the west side of the big bend. You can see the mud coated leaves partway up this small tree. There was a lot of water down in here.

From Chattahoochee Bend

You might think there aren't any woods down in the bend of the river, but there's plenty. I spent my time today wandering about in the flat trees. It can be tough to orienteer in deep woods without contour lines. Plenty of ditches and gullies.

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.