Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Walking Across Upper Baker Dam With Spencer Jack

In the picture you are looking at my great nephew, Spencer Jack, taking a picture of the Mount Baker volcano.

This past weekend Spencer Jack took his dad and favorite girl friend, Brittney, to the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest to drive and walk across the Upper Baker Dam.

And to swim in Baker Lake which has been rendered a pleasant swimming temperature, due to the unusually warm summer Western Washington has been experiencing.

Upper Baker Dam opened for business in 1959.

Upper Baker Dam serves the dual purposes of generating electricity and providing flood control.

The dam is 312 feet high, 1,200 feet long.

Despite this being an era of heightened security, you can still drive across Upper Baker Dam, which is not the case with Grand Coulee Dam.

Driving across Rocky Reach Dam, on the Columbia River, has never been doable, but Rocky Reach Dam has a lot of tourist amenities, like fish ladders and a big interpretive center, which now require security checks.


Above Spencer Jack is aiming his camera over the edge of Upper Baker Dam. You can see blue water 312 feet below.


Above Spencer Jack is still on the Upper Baker Dam, turned around, taking a picture of the reservoir known as Baker Lake.

Upper Baker Dam has that name because downriver, that river being the Baker River, there is another dam, known as Lower Baker Dam, or just Baker Dam, so known because it showed up long before Upper Baker Dam, with Lower Baker Dam opening for business in 1925.

Lower Baker Dam is 285 feet high, 550 feet long. Lower Baker Dam dams a section of the Baker River known as Eden Canyon. The reservoir behind Lower Baker Dam is known as Lake Shannon. Lower Baker Dam also generates electricity and helps with flood control, holding back water from entering the Skagit River, about a mile downstream.


Above we are looking at Spencer Jack, and his dad, my favorite nephew, Jason, playing in Baker Lake. I don't know why Spencer Jack's uncle, he being my favorite nephew, Joey, was not along for this excursion.

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