Flaming Gorge Dam Tour (Monday, August 23rd, 2016)

We reached the Flaming Gorge Dam Visitors Center about 1:30 in the afternoon.  

One of the old turbines from the dam's hydroelectric plant

A map of Flaming Gorge Reservoir.  Each picture we take is only a very small piece of the reservoir.  The arrow off to the right shows where the dam is.

The visitor's center offered a tour of the dam, so since we seem to have a thing for dam tours, we signed up to go.  The tour was free, and one would be leaving in about 10 minutes.  Score!

After walking out and looking down to the bottom, we descended 422 feet in an elevator from the top of the dam. 

Once inside, our tour guide, Mason gave us some of the statistics on this particular dam.  
- Construction started in 1958 and ended in 1964.

- It took two years of constant concrete pouring with 2000 workers that worked 2 shifts, 24 hours per day.

- Seven workers were killed during the building of the dam, but none of them are in the concrete.

- The lake has 374 miles of shoreline.

- Where the water comes in to the dam it is 180 feet deep.

- The water temperature at the bottom is 40 degrees.  
- When they first built the dam, this 40 degree water was being released into the river and was killing the trout because it was too cold, so they added selective withdraw, where they combine deep water and surface water so the water coming out of the dam at the bottom is between 50 and 55 degrees, which is the optimal temperature for trout.  They now have great fishing in the river below the dam.

- The turbines spin at 3 revs per second and the water runs through them at 180 pounds per square inch.

- Where the water comes out at the bottom of the dam, it is 65' deep.

- As they were filling the reservoir, they chopped down all of the trees from the shoreline, so unlike Lake Powell, you can't damage a boat prop by hitting an old standing tree beneath the surface.  We know this one from past experience!

During high water years, they release the extra water through these pipes.  Other than that, they are not used.

This guy would wear greased pants, and walk along the cables above the gorge to grease them.

The dam during construction.  The river water is going through the one diversion tunnel.

The Flaming Gorge Dam has three turbines, but only two typically run at a time.  In this picture, the top of one of the turbines is directly in front of the camera while they do maintenance on the turbine.

The hoists used to move the turbines around.

After we looked at the turbine room, Mason took us outside to look at the river, and to see the dam from the bottom.

If the third turbine was running, the water would also be turbulent by the closest door

Steve fed the fish in the river below, so we could get a closer look at them.

When we finished our tour, we got back in the car to take some more pictures of the area around the dam.  We immediately saw this guy in the road.

The diversion tunnel from the construction of the dam is still there.

As we leave the dam, we are heading to a little town called Dutch John to see if we can find ourselves a cabin for the night.