Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

The "glory hole" at Lake Berryessa in northern CA is flowing for the first time in a decade. Check out this great drone video, these are images that we've never seen before, since drones weren't around in 2006.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxOOnKL ... e=youtu.be

Wow!

Thanks for posting the video!

20 years ago when it was flowing like this a 41 yr. old woman decided it would be interesting to swim over to it to take a look.

She held on to the edge for 20 minutes before her grip gave up.

Common sense is not very common.

Very Cool.
How long is the detour around the closure?

I think it takes locals about an hour to get around to the other side, but the roads are cleared pretty quickly. I believe it's open now and has been since yesterday. The more rain we get the more slides and downed trees impact the roadway. It's supposed to be clear for a few days, which will help to some degree, but the ground has been dry for 10 years and now it's being dumped on incessantly.

I'm a little over an hour away, but I've been entertaining the drive up there just to see and hear it.

For reference, here's how the glory hole looked when we pulled the boat out last year. The lake level has gone up over 40' since December. People here are absolutely giddy. The year on the picture is incorrect, should read 2016.

That concrete spillway is 72' in diameter and drops 200' straight down to the 28' outlet pipe at the bottom of the dam (which is at the extreme right in the picture)

Very interesting. was a post on my wife's face book showing the glory hole at Whiskey Town lake.
Same thing, water overflowing into it. Whiskey Town lake is a few miles west of Redding Ca. That
is where I keep my toon during the summer. old jim

impressive! I'm surprised no dare devils have tried to ride.

Glory hole? Jerry Jones will be there.

Thanks for the link.

It looks like the only thing keeping a floating object (boat, pontoon, etc.) from getting to the drain is a floating line. Is that right? It would seem like a boat that wasn't tethered and no one paying attention could make it's way down the drain.

Now, THAT was impressive. Thanks.

Thanks for posting that. I remember back in the late 80s when a submarine that I was serving on was in the shipyard in Vallejo. The crew spent a weekend up there on the lake and had a great time with several rental boats. The water level was a little low but I remember it was a beautiful lake.

I'm sure an untethered boat or anything else could eventually make it's way over to the hole and take the express elevator to the bottom of the dam, but as far as I know it's never happened.

I mentioned that one lady that swam over to take a better look, she's the only item I've heard of going down it besides water and lake debris. I read this morning on the NY Times site a local expert stating that the velocity of water to the hole is not powerful enough to keep you from swimming away from it if you found yourself near it. I'll take his word for it, although the lady apparently didn't get the memo. I'm not sure how smart that was for him to state that, the few idiots that know people that can read that to them just might get an idea.

It's great that California reservoirs are getting topped off.

I hope that the Cal water wizards manage the surplus efficiently. /sarc

Seriously, I hope that we, along the Colorado River System, see some benefit from the wet winter. If anything, we shouldn't have to pump as much water to California, although I'm sure they will demand their allocation, even if they have to pump it into the ocean.