Friday, July 16, 2021

From the Canyonview bridge

Looking at trail maps around the Campbell River, I saw a photo of a pedestrian (one at a time) bridge high over the river, a bridge not marked on most of the trail maps, but there was this one photo. I had to go see it.

The bridge from the first vantage point.

The trail starts at the John Hart generating station, and at first goes through walled-off alleys between the river and the station; there's an open spot with benches, photos of the underground workings, and totem poles, and then more alleys, with a hidden entrance. Once around the corner, though, you come out to a view of the river. And a staircase, a couple of hundred steps going up the hillside, flanked by blackberry bushes. Then a trail, still climbing. A short drop, a curve, and the bridge over a narrow canyon at the bottom. Then the trail goes on, climbing again. I stopped at the bridge.

The view downstream. The white buildings behind the trees on the right are the generating station..

And the view looking upstream from the centre of the bridge.

The view from the far end of the bridge.

I went off the path to the top of the rocks, to get a higher view. And from there, I could see around the bend in the river.

And what's that down there in the water?

Some sort of spinning device, anchored in mid-stream.

The river is narrow and shallow here, since most of the water is piped through the station's three generators. But the water level is lower, too; you can see the white, scoured rock where the water reaches in wetter seasons.

But what is that spinning thing?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Viendo mapas de senderos alrededor del rio Campbell, encontré una foto de un puente que no había visto; un puente para peatones, un puente angosto, donde hay que pasar en fila. Pues tenía que ir a verlo.

Primera foto: el puente desde el primer lugar donde salió a la vista.

El camino empieza en la planta hidroeléctrica John Hart, y al principio pasa entre paredes que esconden tanto la planta como el rio. Luego hay un area con asientos, fotos informativos sobre la planta subterránea, y postes tótem; después sigue el camino entre paredes por un poco, y por fin salimos a campo abierto. Y a una escalera que sube el cerro; unos doscientos escalones. Luego un sendero sigue subiendo, una curva, y allí abajo está el puente. El camino sigue, subiendo aun; yo allí me detuve.

Segunda foto: La vista desde el puente, mirando rio abajo. Los edificios que se ven tras los árboles son los de la planta generadora.

Tercera foto: la vista desde el centro del puente, mirando rio arriba.

Cuarta: desde el final del puente.

Me salí del camino para subirme a las rocas para una mejor vista del rio. Y desde allí, pude ver más allá de la curva en el rio.

Quinta y sexta fotos: ¿Y qué es esa cosa que gira y gira allí abajo?

El rio es angosto y lleva poca agua aquí; la mayor parte del agua se ha desviado hacia las tres generadores de la planta subterránea. Pero en esta temporada, también el nivel del agua ha bajado; se ve la roca blanca que en otras temporadas estaría cubierta de agua.

¿Pero, qué sería esa cosa en el agua?

4 comments:

  1. A new prototype turbine? Perhaps testing a smaller generator to augment the existing station? Well, that's 2 guesses and I'm out of ideas now!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It could be a type of flow meter. When you have the current velocity, and the cross sectional area of the river, then you can extrapolate the volume of water passing through at any point in time. https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/how-streamflow-measured?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! That makes sense. And thanks for the good link.

      Delete
  3. Wow, that's a high bridge. An the views!!

    ReplyDelete

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

Powered By Blogger