The breaking of branches and the thunder of hooves struck trepidation in my heart. The fading light of December dusk made the scene even more surreal. My girlfriend and I were directly in the path of a stampede of about 50 elk! The snow was so deep and the autumn so cold that the elk had remained on the shady side of Marble Valley where a rancher’s open air hay barn provided unnatural forage. This uninvited grazing is called “depredation.” The Colorado Division of Wildlife, now Colorado Parks and Wildlife, paid farmers and ranchers to feed these distressed ungulates during severe winters.
My neighbor at Prospect Mountain Ranch asked us to block the herd from returning up into the woods where they had camped for weeks. Of course, we agreed. He then proceeded to haze them. He wanted to move them back to the south face of Elk Mountain where they naturally spend winters in their crucial habitat. As the agitated herd charged toward us I was rethinking the wisdom of my decision.
The elk returned to the woods where they had been squatting. The elk had gnawed the bark of the mature aspen trees, girdling the trees and ultimately killing the aspen grove. This chewing is a sign of the nutritional distress they were in. The aspen bark offers carbohydrates but also salicin, an aspirin-like chemical that reduces inflammation. The elk did not comply with our efforts but by morning they had crossed the river and returned to the sunny side of the valley.
Mind you, this was not a normal winter by any standards. This was the Great Winter of 1982-1983. By mid October, I was already snowed out of the ranch in Marble. Oct. 16, we skied up to Lead King Basin, rewarded with face shots in 36” of fresh powder. When I left the ranch before Thanksgiving, I hung two long red chile ristras (wreaths) from each corner of the cabin’s balcony. The blood red wreaths were in brilliant contrast against the dark wood and white landscape. When we returned weeks later there were but two bare wires left where the ristras had hung. The yard was buried in elk droppings! We laughed at the thought of the smoking elk tails and joked about marching them right to the chili pot.
The snows continued. Aspen reported 52” in November and 71” in December. This was just the beginning. This was the biggest El Niño weather event ever recorded. The City of Aspen recorded 276” in town (23 feet). We don’t have a recording for Marble. It was a skier’s winter dominated by powder days. We hear the overused cliché, “The granddaddy of them all.” This was it, a winter of extremes! A large elk herd sheltered in a pasture along Highway 82 for months in their severe winter range. This meadow is now metropolitan Willits. The snow persisted into May. Remnant snow banks remained along the Marble Road into June.
By spring, local rivers swelled beyond their high water marks. Meanwhile, the drama downriver was poised to be one of the world’s worst man-made hydrologic disasters. Rain washed snow into the desert canyons. Lake Powell rose at the rate of one foot per day (a lake 190 miles long with approximately 2300 miles of shoreline). Water managers soon realized things were approaching critical mass.
Glen Canyon Dam was the crown jewel of the Upper Colorado River Storage Project and, made of 10 million tons of concrete, it was believed to be indomitable. Completed in the “golden age” of dam building, that June was the 20th anniversary of Glen Canyon Dam. On June 6, loud noises never heard before at Glen Canyon Dam roared above the deafening cascading waters. Boulders the size of Buicks rocketed down the spillway tunnels tearing apart its infrastructure as federal agents tried to divert as much runoff as possible. The discharged water turned a suspicious pink. The Navajo sandstone anchoring the dam was being pulverized. This hydraulic behemoth eventually gouged a hole bigger than the Goodyear Blimp in the tunnel.
The more visible alarm was the rising lake water which was soon approaching the level of the massive spillway gates. A failure of the dam threatened millions of people and vast agricultural lands downstream. Desperate times beget desperate measures. Having run out of options, reclamation crews welded braces on the dam, working 710 vertical feet above the raging Colorado River. Men installed 4’ x 8’ sheets of plywood to the spillway gaining precious height. The plywood held, but the water kept rising. Crews added a second level of steel panels. The water came within inches of overflowing this makeshift eight-foot wall.
On July 15, 1983, the water, draining a significant portion of the Rocky Mountain West, began to subside. Disaster was narrowly averted. For many, this drama 40 years ago seems implausible. (Winter 1984 broke many of the 1983 records.) Scientists, engineers and climatologists warn that extreme unpredictable shifts in weather patterns pose a risk to dams in general and Glen Canyon Dam in particular.
Water augmentation, dams and diversions dominate current discussion. The Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association (CVEPA) supports improved water management efficiency, resource responsibility and water conservation in lieu of new dams or water impoundments.

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