McDowell Sonoran Challenge

A 22 mi. Mountain Bike, 9 mi. Hike, or 15k Run

Saturday, February 27, 2010
The McDowell Sonoran Conservancy (MSC) and the city of Scottsdale are pleased to present the second annual McDowell Sonoran Challenge- Bike, Hike, or Run.
The timed challenge will be held on Saturday, February 27, 2010 in State Trust Land designated for conservation, to help spread the message that the McDowell Sonoran Preserve needs to be completed. Through a special land use permit, MSC has been granted access by the Arizona State Land Department for this special event to support McDowell Sonoran Conservancy.Separate courses for mountain bikes, trail runners and hikers lead participants through beautiful mountains and desert. Hikers experience the historic Brown’s Ranch on their 9 mile trip, riders bike a 22 mile course past Granite Mountain and Balanced Rock and runners raced 15K past Cone Mountain. Course map is below.

Register at http://www.active.com/ or go to http://www.mcdowellsonoran.org/ for more information.

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Cave Creek Dam Flood

One Week After The Flood
Cave Creek Dam
Cave Creek Dam was built in 1923 and is a reinforced concrete barrel arch structure. In 1979, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the earthen Cave Buttes Dam just downstream of Cave Creek Dam to replace Cave Creek Dam. A channel was excavated around the right abutment of Cave Creek Dam to allow equalization of the flood pools. The older Cave Creek Dam no longer provides flood protection but was preserved due to its historic significance.





Two Weeks After

Found a few Saguaro's that have fallen over on the ride to the Cave Creek Dam.
Looking inside a dead saguaro
One of two old cement pads where two house's set at one time both had two car garages.
Old Well
Looking down inside the well
Found this big rock with a hole through it.
New pond
Mud drying up and cracking this one has MTB tacks in it.
Cave Creek Dam and no more water just mud.
See the water line now that was deep
Just a sea of mud and muck
On top of the dam
What is that I see. I thought at first it was a big boulder.
But it looks like a Jeep stuck in the mud.
A Closer look and it's a Jeep stuck in the mud don't
know how long is has been there.
As The Sun Sets

More Cave Creek Dam Photo's
The End!
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Fountain's & Moon's

The fountain & the moon in Fountain Hills, Arizona
Fountain Hills is a town in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA.
It has the world's fourth tallest fountain.
The eponymous fountain was built in 1970 by Robert P. McCulloch, the year before the reconstruction of the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, another of McCulloch's projects. The fountain sprays water for about 15 minutes every hour between 9am and 9pm. The plume rises from a concrete water-lily sculpture in the center of a large man-made lake. The fountain, driven by three 600 horsepower (450 kW) turbine pumps, sprays water at a rate of 7000 gallons per minute though an 18-inch nozzle. With all three pumps and under ideal conditions, the fountain reaches 560 feet (170 m) in height[4], though in normal operation only two of the pumps are used, with a fountain height of around 300 feet (91 m) feet. When built, it was the world's tallest fountain and held that record for over a decade.


The End!
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Roosevelt Lake Trip

Four Peaks To Theodore Roosevelt lake
Darren
A pond and Weaver's Needle in the back ground.
Four Peaks Wilderness Area
This Wilderness was established in 1984, and contains approximately 60,740 acres with a major mountain rising up in its center from the desert foothills. The Four Peaks themselves are visible for many miles, and are one of the most widely recognized landmarks in central Arizona. The rapid change in elevation produces interesting and unique plant and animal communities. Elevations range from 1,900 feet near Apache Lake to 7,600 feet on Brown's Peak.
The Great Western Trail
 The Great Western Trail is a unique corridor of braided and paralleling trails for both motorized and non-motorized users. The trail system traverses 4,455 miles through Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. It incorporates stunning desert and canyon landscapes, plateaus, woodlands, dense forests and alpine meadows. It links 18 National Forests, Tribal, State and BLM administered lands and encompasses the most diverse vegetation, topography and wildlife in the western United States.
Jakes Corner, Arizona
Theodore Roosevelt Lake the western end.
Located roughly 80 miles (130 km) northeast of Phoenix in the Salt River Valley, Theodore Roosevelt is the largest lake or reservoir located entirely within the state of Arizona
Roosevelt Lake is the oldest of the six reservoirs constructed and operated by the Salt River Project. It also has the largest storage capacity of the SRP lakes with the ability to store 1,653,043 acre feet (2.03900 km³) of water at full capacity.
 Salt River Project Employee Living Area
Prior to completion of the bridge in October 1990, traffic drove over the top of the dam. The bridge itself earned rare distinction when the bridge was named one of the top 12 bridges in the nation in November 1995. The American Consulting Engineers Council cited the bridge for overall design, size, eye-appeal and design challenge. Other bridges cited were the Golden Gate Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge

The $21.3 million bridge was built to take traffic off the top of Roosevelt Dam. Roosevelt Lake Bridge is the longest two-lane, single-span, steel-arch bridge in North America. The bridge, spans 1,080 feet across Roosevelt Lake providing two-way traffic. The original dam-top roadway was designed to allow two Model-T Fords to pass abreast, but today's recreational vehicles and full-size automobiles are too wide to permit two-way traffic.
Stopping the lake sludge

Former President Theodore Roosevelt dedicated the dam named in his honor March 18, 1911. The reservoir contained 526,875 acre feet of water and was at elevation 163.15 on the dam, the day of the 1st dedication. At 4:15 p.m., the car carrying Roosevelt rounded the point from which he took his first view of the dam. The sight of Roosevelt's car, was the signal for the discharge of 11 guns at the dam, followed by the cheers from the hundreds gathered (upwards of 1,000 people attended the event.) The U.S. flag and the blue Reclamation Service flag floated above the parapets of the dam. Roosevelt said the two proudest achievements of his administration were the Reclamation Act and the Panama Canal.
The old Dam Road
I was temped to go further
Rebar not like now a days rebar
Roosevelt Dam has received a 450,000 cubic yard concrete facelift. After eight years of construction, $430 million, and 849 miles of reinforcing steel (re-bar), the Safety of Dams modifications at Roosevelt Dam are complete. The modifications raised the historic dam 77 feet to 357 feet.


Prior to completion of the bridge in October 1990, traffic drove over the top of the dam. The bridge itself earned rare distinction when the bridge was named one of the top 12 bridges in the nation in November 1995. The American Consulting Engineers Council cited the bridge for overall design, size, eye-appeal and design challenge. Other bridges cited were the Golden Gate Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge.
A challenging aspect of the Theodore Roosevelt Dam modification project was designing a concrete overlay for the dam that would be compatible with the underlying masonry structure. The Bureau of Reclamation chose a single-curvature approach using conventional mass concrete placed in 10-feet high, 70-feet wide blocks, ranging in thickness from 10 to 50 feet. The first concrete block was placed in September 1992 and the final block was placed June 28, 1995 raising the dam to 357 feet tall. The additional 77 feet of dam height increased the water conservation storage capacity by 20 percent and provides for more than 1.8 million acre-feet of flood storage. The new mass concrete blocks with vertical joints were placed as alternating odd-even cantilevers. Reclamation's quality control testing program requires close inspection of the concrete batching and placing operations, and regular testing of cast concrete and concrete components. Mass concrete compressive strengths average 800 pounds per square inch in seven days based on 12 by 24 inch cylinders, and 4,500 pounds per square inch in one year based on 12 inch cores.
This looks like some thing out of D-Day may be a old bunker. But its a tunnel leading to the top of the Roosevelt Lake Dam. 
Deep it's not a cave or a mine. It's more like old drill bit holes to blast out the side of the mountain.
The old missile silos never know.
Old Time Photo's the way the Dam use to look.
In 1990


The End!
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