Noir Devil

I received an email from Pasadena citizen and Harvard student Hayden Betts, who "thought my readers might be amused by" his animation about the Devil's Gate Dam.

It's got a sinister edge to it. And you know what? With all the drama centered around the Dam lately, I thought we could use some amusement. Check it out.

Hayden says, "I made the video because I'm kind of obsessed with Upper Hahamonga. I grew up hearing that it was an EPA superfund site and then I ran cross country for 3 years and learned most of the trails. I started to find out about the "paranormal" stuff after high school. I know that a few people disappeared in the first half of the 20th century so I was kind of riffing on that with the Noir feeling. In general there's all kinds of crazy superstition around the dam. Paranormal believers go up there all the time and occultists in the Jack Parsons school feel that all of upper Hahamongna is possessed or something because he hung around there a lot to do rocket tests. Suicides are nothing to joke about but this stuff is so ridiculous and happened such a long time ago that I figured I could make a cute video about it...

"As for process I drew the backgrounds in photoshop and animated in Flash. I got a friend to voice it. Not much to it. Again, this is by no means a big piece of work just a little something amusing. I hope write something much more significant that is centered around the area though."

I want to thank Hayden Betts for thinking of us! It's great to do something a little different now and then. And now and now. And just for the record, I don't find Devil's Gate sinister at all. Hee hee hee.

Too Big Dig

You can help save Hahamongna by being part of Hands Across The Dam on December 14th at 11:00 a.m.

In November I told you about the Los Angeles County Department of Water & Power's plan to clean out silt from behind the Devil's Gate Dam.

Because the Draft Environmental Impact Report is so lacking in scientific study I didn't think things would get this far. But the DWP has not yet been sent back to the drawing table.

Here's the County's website for the project. A couple of interesting things to note:

The photo at the top of their website makes Hahamongna (the open space north of the dam) look like a big mud puddle, when right now it's full of green, gold and red foliage, scrub and habitat for the many species of animals who live there. This is the part of Hahamongna they want to denude, and leave that way permanently. (See the artist's rendition above.)

Public comments are due by January 6th. Yet although the County has held public meetings to talk about the plan, apparently no one in the immediate neighborhood of Hahamongna heard about those meetings. They're the ones whose property values are going to plummet because:

For 8 months of the year, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day for the next five years, trucks will be driving into the Hahamongna Basin to remove silt. That's one truck every 1.69 minutes. You might be able to dump a truck in less than two minutes, but you can't fill it that fast.

That means trucks, trucks and more trucks, backing up into the neighborhoods and waiting their turn while they spew diesel fumes, dust and noise. It may seem like this pollution will confine itself to the neighborhood but in reality it can't help but spread to all of us, not just the five schools near the dig site.

I think we can all agree that the silt has got to go. But there's no reason it has to go in five years, when it took ninety years to pile up.

Visit saveHahamongna.org to read about a better plan. For more information email gobalvin@gmail.com or call Christle Balvin at 626-449-8815.

You can also sign up at the Facebook event page.

Hahamongna Needs to be Saved. Again.

I was going to quote a bunch of statistics.

I was going to tell you Los Angeles County Department of Public Works apparently doesn't have anyone on staff who can tell the difference between a dead tree and a dormant tree.

I was going to tell you about the County's draconian project to clear 4 million cubic yards of silt from Hahamongna Watershed Park by filling as many as 400 trucks a day and driving them out of the basin behind Devil's Gate Dam, kicking up dust and noise for the next 3-10 years, not to mention killing and displacing over 200 species of wildlife.

And, you know, property values.

I was going to tell you that Hahamongna is not a park in the manicured sense but a place for our wildness. But Karin already did that.

I was going to tell you that we have to clear the silt, but we have alternatives to the misery the County proposes.

Instead I will ask you to come to a meeting and listen, then make your public comment.

Thursday, November 14, 2013
6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Jackson Elementary School Auditorium, 593 West Woodbury Road, Altadena

Saturday, November 16
2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m., Community Center, 4469 Chevy Chase Drive,
La Cañada Flintridge

Navel Gazing

Boz at Devil's Gate Dam, October 2009

City Daily Photo didn't have a theme day on January 1st, so today we're celebrating The Festival of the Belly Button by contemplating our navels. The question I'm to ask myself is, over the time I've been blogging, how has my photography changed?

 

Boz has eyelashes, November 2012

Mostly, two things:
1) I'm more aware of little details than I used to be.

and

2) I am now more interested in telling a story or conveying an emotion than showing you a thing.

You'll find the links to other worldwide navel gazers here.

Water Walk, 2

Whew! We've just walked through the magical passageway pictured in yesterday's post, just south of the Devil's Gate Dam in the central Arroyo Seco. There's a fresh, cold stream here that flows year 'round from east to west (sometimes it's more full than others). It's in my picture, actually, but so wealthy with reeds at this point that you can't see the water.

And what's this little house? At 5'4", surely I can lean my elbow on the roof.

I would love to tell you that faeries live here, or that it was built by elves, or even that it was once a folly for a turn-of-the-20th-century Pasadena maiden. But it's a mini water treatment plant, or so I was told by Bellis, my guide. We both think it's still in operation, because it sounded like machines were churning inside.

Those Details the Devil Is In

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works has completed its draft 20-year Sediment Management Strategic Plan for 2012-2032. The public comment period ends Wednesday, May 30th--which is vague, as they don't say if they mean 8am or 6pm or what--so I'd comment no later than the 29th if I were you at the first email address on this page. I understand the main document is over 500 pages, but a condensed version entitled "Community Meeting Boards" (second-to-last link at the right of the main Strategic Plan page) is said to give a good overview. 

Let's speak up. I understand the Devil's Gate Dam needs to be protected. I want to make sure Hahamongna is protected, too.  

A separate issue, but also important:

The Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee meets the fourth Tuesday of odd-numbered months--except this month, due to lack of a quorum. So the committee didn't get to talk about the upcoming community meetings to discuss the Environmental Impact Report schedule for the Hahamongna Multi-Benefit Project and the Hahamongna Basin Multi-Use Project.

But hey! We can talk about them here, regardless of the unfortunate mouthful of misleading names.

Because I want to get this right I'm going to quote Mary Barrie of Friends of Hahamongna, who has long been a tireless advocate for open space at Hahamongna Watershed Park. Mary's one of those heroes who reads the fine print, calls a lawyer, compares last year's map to this year's and helps the rest of us attempt to keep the city honest when it comes to Hahamongna:

"One of the important items on the agenda of last night's cancelled Hahamongna Advisory meeting was information concerning the Environmental Impact Report schedule for the Hahamongna Multi-Benefit Project and the Hahamongna Basin Multi-Use Project. Among the projects included within the Multi-Benefit Project are the much contested Sycamore Grove Sports Field and the expanded parking lot so please mark your calendars for these important meetings and pass this information on. The following information is from the city website.

Mary B"

Multi-Benefit - Multi-Use Project

EIR Schedule – the following has been scheduled:

Wednesday, June 27th, 6:30pm – Community Meeting
Pasadena City Yards, 2nd floor Large Conference Room
This meeting WILL NOT kick off the CEQA process. The purpose of the meeting is to provide information only.

Thursday, July 12th, 6:30pm – EIR Scoping Meeting #1
Salvation Army Fellowship Hall, 960 East Walnut, Pasadena, CA 91106
(Parking lot is entered from Mentor, south of Walnut)

Saturday, July 14th, 10:00am – EIR Scoping Meeting #2
Salvation Army Fellowship Hall, 960 East Walnut, Pasadena, CA 91106
(Parking lot is entered from Mentor, south of Walnut)

The Sycamore Grove Field is the same soccer field so many citizens have protested for so long. A couple of years ago we even organized a local blog day, where 23 bloggers posted their arguments for saving Hahamongna. At the ensuing city council meeting, hundreds of Pasadenish spoke out against athletic fields at Hahamongna. Not one person spoke in favor of them. Yet Sycamore Grove Field is still planned, even as the city cuts the budget in other areas.

The meetings listed above will cover other things too, some of which may be good for Hahamongna. It's always complicated, never easy, but it's ours and we do have a say.

Update 5/29: Altadena Hiker Karin Bugge writes about the planned Sycamore Grove Field in today's Patch.

You Can Call It JPL

I haven't taken you to Hahamongna Watershed Park in a while. I suppose I've mentioned this before: nobody I know actually calls it that. We call it "JPL." For some reason we don't confuse the park with the aerospace research center. When someone asks if I want to walk dogs together at JPL I am not confused. I know they don't expect to wander among research labs and allow the dogs to pee on the telescopes. They mean Hahamongna Watershed Park.

Can you blame us? JPL is so much easier to say.

The reason for the nickname is obvious if you look at a map. The real JPL (NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab) sits perched sideways atop Hahamongna rather like a jaunty beret. And calling the park JPL isn't wrong; some of the earliest rocket experiments were launched there and even later ones have been tried on its sandy acres.

This view is closer to the Devil's Gate Dam than to NASA's JPL. The dam is close to the bottom of your map view, near the 210 freeway. (You can see it if you use the zoom in satellite view.) You can't see where I took this photo; it's off to the right, under cover of trees. But the Google shot of the dam looks relatively recent.

Stinky in a Good Way

If you follow the Saga of Boz (and why wouldn't you?) you know he had eye surgery about two and a half weeks ago. He had to wear a (shameful) cone for two whole weeks, during which time there were no none zero zip trips to Hahamongna Watershed Park (for his sake we call it JPL because it has fewer syllables, though I doubt he'd find the real JPL nearly as interesting).

First we inspected the Devil's Gate Dam. The County has dug out a good deal of silt in what might end up as an ongoing project. If you enlarge the picture you can see, left of center, a bunch of ducks ("bunch" being the scientific term), swimming as far away from Boz as they can get, even though all he ever says to them is "murph."

We usually walk all the way from one end of Hahamongna to the other, or at least from the dam to Johnson Field and back, but it was our first trip out in a while and the Pooper was easily pooped. You would be, too, if you had to stop and smell every damn thing in the whole watershed.

********

Now, this is totally off the subject but if you like cowboy music, the Coffee Gallery and Rocky the Flying Squirrel, I hope you'll read my latest article on Patch.

Urban Meets Wild

Not a complicated photo. (This one loaded really fast, that's how I know.) It's one last shot to complete the story about our evening at Hahamongna Watershed Park (see the previous two posts). You should probably click on it to enlarge it. Or at least I wish you would, otherwise it's just a little splash of gold in the black.

Looking north from the Devil's Gate Dam you see the Jet Propulsion Lab, affectionately known as JPL, with the lights of La Canada Flintridge off to the left and a couple of Altadena's gleams on the right.

JPL anchors the north end of the park and the Dam, where we're standing, marks the south end. In between are coyotes, dirt, rabbits and trees--wildlife doing its thing. There are also water catch basins, telephone poles and paved roads. It's not wilderness. It's a symbiosis of humans and the wild, and it's working pretty well for the nonce.

If you care about protecting Hahamongna and places like it you might check out the Urbanwild Network. They're having a potluck at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center Saturday, September 10th. Gather at 5:30pm, dinner at 6, program at 7.

Not the Last Day, After All

Word has it that the Devil's Gate Dam interim silt removal project is complete. If so, all the silt has been moved to Johnson Field from the dam. For now.

It's not the whole project by a long shot. There will be an environmental impact report before the rest of the work is done. I don't know how long that'll take or what the end result will look like, but it will be a much larger project.

Here's how Johnson Field looked last Saturday at dusk. Not nearly as bad as I'd feared. I took the photo from my usual spot, so those of you familiar with PDP's Last Day Project could make comparisons even if you've never seen Johnson Field in person.

A pan to the left:

It's a bit dark, but I hope you can see in both photos that the trees have been spared. Basically, the county workers piled the silt neatly at the north end of the sunken basin that is Johnson Field. The silt took up about half the space. Room for more silt in the future, I guess.

I have a list of disappointments related to this work, but those disappointments are (mostly) not with LA County. There's plenty of time for it to get worse but so far, the work they've done has been more sensitive than I expected. We even saw a few toads at the fountain. With a little rain we'll soon have some nice weeds growing in the silt. Maybe wildflowers.

We were treated to spectacular skies that night. More pictures to come.

The Best Laid Pipes

Boz and I had planned to hike yesterday. We were going to head to Johnson Field, where this pipe stands. Or stood. We're not sure. A lot's been going on at Johnson Field lately, and for all we know this above-ground access to water has been buried under the mounds of silt being moved from behind Devil's Gate Dam to what we hope is temporary storage in Johnson Field.

But we didn't find out for sure last night, as we had to postpone our hike. We'll find out later today, though, and bring you a report.

Fun news for the meantime: the September issue of Pasadena Magazine features the Dena's daily photo bloggers. For her article, "Daily Affirmations," Kelly Shimabukuro interviewed me, Laurie Allee (Glimpses of South Pasadena), Kat Likkel (Pasadena, 91105 and Beyond) and our already sorely missed Ben Wideman (The Sky is Big in Pasadena and wherever else he goes). Thank you, Kelly!

It was Ben who turned me on to our newest daily photo blogger. She's a bit anonymous, but she's got style. Check out All Over Pasadena.

Phase I

Remember our Last Day Project? For one year, on the last day of every month we stood in this spot at Hahamongna Watershed Park and looked out over Johnson Field, watching it change with the seasons.

A few hundred yards away, Devil's Gate Dam was backing up with sediment. After years of neglect plus a Station Fire and two seasons of heavy rain, the sediment must now be removed. Much discussion has ensued about how to do so, and it looks like a two-phase plan will soon begin. In order to pacify those who don't want debris-laden trucks on their street, the first phase could involve LA County piling sediment in Johnson Field as soon as the annual toad population clears out.

Toads hang out in wet places. They're about the size of a thumbnail and the color of a pebble. Because they run and hide when I come near them the pictures I've gotten are lousy, but Walt Mancini of the Pasadena Star-News got a good one. The toads will go away when the water dries. It's drying now.

I'm glad the County is willing to wait for the toads to leave. Let's be honest, these little guys are being saved long enough to get eaten by snakes and coyotes, but that's better for the ecosystem than a pile of sediment. Then again, a pile of sediment is better for a city than a failed dam in a flood.

So it looks like we might have a decent compromise, at least for now. Nobody gets everything they want but everybody gets something. That's democracy, and it's beautiful when it works. The coyotes and snakes will need to go somewhere when the trucks come. They know all about compromise. They'll likely end up in the yards of the people who didn't want trucks on their street. Are coyotes in the yard better than trucks on the street? If you live alongside Hahamongna, you may not have a choice.

I'm not crazy about piling sediment in Johnson Field, but I'm crazy about compromise. It's the only way unless we want a monarchy, and I wouldn't vote for that.

There will be a Phase II.

The next meeting of the Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee will take place at 6pm this coming Tuesday, July 26th at the Pasadena City Yards - Training Room, 233 West Mountain Street, Second Floor, Pasadena 91103. On the agenda: Update on the LACDPW Post Station Fire Sediment Removal Project.

Zen Monday: #150

Zen Monday is the day you experience the photo and give us your thoughts rather than me telling you what the photo's about. Although this one isn't particularly complicated.

Bobcats in the Back Yard

A who's who of LA County environmentalists showed up at Eaton Canyon Nature Center yesterday morning to make plans--for Hahamongna and for the future. As can be expected from a first meeting of many minds, it was inconclusive.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works plans to clear fifty acres of sediment from behind the Devil's Gate dam. I think most people agree the sediment must be removed. The problem is that LADPW has disingenuously used the Station Fire (now a year and a half gone) to declare an emergency, bypass the usual Environmental Impact Reports and tear out fifty acres of natural vegetation along with the sediment. They have investigated no alternatives.

Hahmongna is a sensitive wildlife area, a natural watershed. This is coyote habitat. It's hawk, kingfisher, rabbit, heron, rattlesnake, bobcat, ground squirrel, etc. habitat. Where are these creatures going to go, into the neighborhoods? (Yes. They'll go into the neighborhoods.)

What can you do?

Visit Hahamongna. Learn why it's important. There will be a Hahamongna Walkabout Saturday, February 19th from 9:00am - 12:00pm.
Get Educated. Read the County DPW's plan.

Demand a full environmental review.
Is there an election coming up in your district? Ask your candidates where they stand on this issue and what they plan to do about it. Regardless of what district you're in, your Pasadena City Council person votes on the fate of Hahamongna.

I've talked a lot about Hahamongna this week. PDP is not going to be All Hahamongna All The Time. But Hahamongna is dear to my heart, so I hope you won't mind me updating you on the status of this surprising gem of open space in the midst of our city.
---------------------------

About the photo:

I don't often get a chance to view Hahamongna Watershed Park from the north. I took this shot less than a week ago, looking down from above The Meadows. I hope you'll click on the photo to enlarge it.

Some features:

-the jewely pools on the left are catch basins controlled by Pasadena Water and Power. The green areas along the left (east) side of the park look that way because we had a good rain this year.

-the tanks in the right foreground belong to JPL. During the Station Fire helicopters were filling up there, so I assume the tanks contain water.

- in the center foreground, the ground is lower than in the green parts. A year ago that area was filled with vegetation. But the spring rains of 2010, then more rains late in the year, came pouring down from the mountains in a rushing stream so powerful it took out acres of growth.

-what may be harder to see is that there is still a lot of water at Hahamongna. The freeway is the light colored band across the right center of the photo. The Devil's Gate dam is slightly left of center. In front of those, the shimmer of high, brown water. Many trees are submerged.

Sediment and Sand

Although the January 25th meeting of the Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee was well attended, it was a low-key affair. Folks were calm and polite. But if there had been any sand at Casita del Arroyo, one might have seen toes drawing lines in it.

Many citizens don't want Hahamongna to be another Arcadia Woodlands disaster,
LA County is all set with its Post Station Fire Sediment Removal Project for Hahamongna
and
the Committee (HWPAC) has procedures to follow. It's not always easy to know which way they're going to go.

But Tuesday night their toes were showing.

Highlights of the discussion:

Past Committee chair Tim Wendler expressed that he would like to see alternatives to the current plan that would "cause less environmental impact." (Basically, the 50 acres just north of Devil's Gate Dam will be freed of vegetation and kept that way, if the County is true to its word.)

LA County's Ken Zimmer said there are no alternatives to the plan.

Apparently not satisfied with Mr. Zimmer's answer, a Committee member whose nameplate I couldn't see asked him if alternatives had been studied.
He said there were no alternatives.
The Committee member rephrased her question. "Did the County study the possibility of reinforcing the [Devil's Gate] dam without tearing out acres of wildlife?"

"That possibility was not studied," said Mr. Zimmer.

The committee asked the County to return with alternatives to the current plan. Whether the County will do so remains to be seen. Maybe they don't have to. Maybe they can just kick that sand in the public's face.

Obviously I don't have a good feeling about this. I hope to be proven wrong.

The next meeting is currently scheduled for March 22nd, 6pm. As soon as I know the location, I'll notify you.

In the photo:
Pasadena city staff member Loren Pluth operates the computer as staff member Rosa Laveaga watches the screen. Committee members had visited nature centers in other cities to get inspiration for the Environmental Education Center planned for the Hahamongna Annex. But that's another story.

Check out Laurie Barlow's Post about it here.


UPDATE:
THIS JUST IN from Altadena Patch:
If you want to find solutions and prevent the destruction of Hahamongna Watershed Park, come to an organizational meeting of environmental activists:

• Where: 1750 N Altadena Dr, Pasadena, CA 91107 (Eaton Canyon Nature Center)
• Date: January 29, 2011
• Time: 10:00am

• In the wake of the destruction of the Arcadia Woodlands and concerns over the sediment removal plans for Hahamongna, a group of local environmentalists are meeting to discuss forming a local environmental coalition.
  The idea would be to have a group that could help influence public environmental policy in a positive direction.
  Members of the local Sierra Club, Audubon Society, and other organizations will be in attendance.
  The meeting will take place at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center.  All are welcome.
• Features: Open to All, Volunteer

• Email: dczamanske@hotmail.com 

WTF

The Hahamongna basin fills up with rain and silt every year. The Devil's Gate Dam has a job to do--keep all that stuff from flooding Pasadena, South Pasadena and beyond.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works Water Resources Division Flood Control District (LACDoPWWRDFCD for short) has a job to do, too--keep the dam in working condition.

Well, the LACDoPWWRDFCD's been busy, you know? So many dams (14), so little time. The sediment behind the Devil's Gate Dam has been building for some time and could have continued to do so. But the 2009 Station Fire scorched the mountains so severely they couldn't retain their soil. In early 2010, along with ash and debris, it all came flowing into the basin by the ton. Actually, it came by the cubic yard--almost a million of 'em.

Last year was an average rain year. Another year like it will bring the dam near to "uncontrolled flow at the spillway," according to Ryan Butler of the LACDoPWWRDFCD. Last Tuesday, Butler and Ken Zimmer of the LACDoPWWRDFCD presented the Postfire Sediment Removal Project (PSRP) at a meeting of the Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee (HWPAC).

Beginning in September of 2011, long after this coming winter's rain (which, you may recall, could bring the dam near to "uncontrolled flow" if it's an average year), the LACDoPWWRDFCD will first create a road into the basin from Oak Grove Drive near La Canada Flintridge High School. Then they'll remove 15 acres of native willow trees from the basin. By then they figure the rains will set in so there probably won't be much sediment removal next fall and they'll cease working until the spring of 2012.

Then (two rainy seasons from now, I guess we should pray for drought?) the emergency work begins in earnest. That will be 300-400 trucks per day, 7:30am-5pm Monday through Friday between May and December, hauling sediment out of the 50 acres closest to the dam to sites in Irwindale and Azusa. The job is expected to take 3 years at a projected cost of $35 million.

The "emergency" status of this project gives the LACDoPWWRDFCD a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption, meaning an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) isn't required (even though there's still more than a year to do it--but you know, so many EIRs, so little time). The LACDoPWWRDFCD still has to get permits from the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (LARWQCB) and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Each of these agencies may require some sort of mitigation, environmentally speaking.

More questions will be asked. The city of La Canada Flintridge will have to weigh in. Mary Barrie of Friends of Hahamongna wrote an excellent report about the LACDoPWWRDFCD presentation. Arroyo Seco Foundation Managing Director Tim Brick expressed, among other things, his belief that this should be an issue in our upcoming municipal elections.

The stuff's gotta go. But does it have to go like this? The outgoing chairperson of the HWPAC, Tim Wendler, asked if other plans were considered before this one was chosen. "There's not a lot of options," said the LACDoPWWRDFCD's Zimmer. He added, "Deferring clean-outs doesn't work." Seeing as the LACDoPWWRDFCD has been deferring clean-outs for some years now, I guess we could say we have proof that he's right. Zimmer had the second-best line of the evening when he said, "Believe it or not, this is the fast track of the county."

The best line of the evening came from HWPAC member Maria Isenberg: "Can we get rid of that nasty little soccer field?"

I will bring you good news about Hahamongna later this week, I promise.

Here's good news about the PDP/PPM Contest:
Steve Scauzillo of Temple City (Daily Photo) is this week's winner of the PDP/PPM books contest! Steve was among those who answered correctly, "Who were the original architects of Pasadena City Hall?" It was the San Francisco firm of Bakewell and Brown. I took this week's poo bag to the Pasadena Farmers' Market and asked the beautiful daughter of one of my favorite merchants to draw a name at random from the correct answers. Steve won a copy of the lovely book At Home Pasadena from Prospect Park Media.

UPDATE: here's the county's sediment removal project.

Devil's Gorge

As long as we're visiting the devil's head rock formation in the Devil's Gorge below the Devil's Gate Dam, I figured we'd get a look at this actual gate in what we might call the devil's throat--his gorge, if you will. This is part of the water system in the dam, although I'm not sure which part.

Our devil's nose and pointy chin are at left (see yesterday's photo for comparison). To give scale: if I stood at the center of that gate my head would come up to about two thirds its height, maybe a tad more. At least that's my best guess. I'm 5'4" tall. The gate was across a stream from where we stood and as it was deep there I didn't try crossing.

I don't normally show graffiti on this blog, but as this is such an unusual spot (for me--apparently not for vandals with cheap paint) I decided to post it.

It's not a particularly dangerous hike, but you need high boots and a walking stick. And I shouldn't have to tell you this but just in case: don't attempt it when there's water behind the dam. To illustrate, Mister Earl found us this amazing video. Thanks, Mister Earl.

PDP/PPM Books Contest, week 4

Local Pasadenamites (as opposed to what--international Pasadanish?) will immediately recognize this rock formation, even though it's covered with gunite. It's our famous devil of the Devil's Gate Dam. This rock formation gave the dam its name.

But who named the "Devil's Gate" gorge? That's this week's contest question. Once again, I've linked you to the answer. (Read the whole post, it's fascinating.) Many thanks to Ann Erdman, Pasadena PIO, for her great blog.

If you've been checking in for the past few weeks you know the contest rules, but in case you haven't, here they are:

1. Email the answer to me. There's a link to my email in my profile at the upper left. You have until midnight tonight, Pasadena (Pacific) time. Answers in the comments section will be rudely ignored.

2. That's all you have to do.

3. Tomorrow I'll ask my cutest, most innocent neighbor child to draw the winning name from a hat. I will search diligently for an actual child. I'll announce the winner in Sunday's post.

4. PRIZES! For your holiday gift-giving for for your lucky self:

Once again, this week's prize will be a brand new copy of Hometown Pasadena 2009-2010, thanks to Colleen Dunn Bates and Prospect Park Media. After today I only have one more copy of Hometown Pasadena to give away. We'll do that next week.

THEN we'll have another week or two of giveaways because we have a copy of At Home Pasadena, the lovely, hardcover coffee table book about beautiful living in our beautiful town;
AND
stick around, because we also have a copy of the brand new novel, Helen of Pasadena, by Pasadanish Lian Dolan. The book is now available at bookstores everywhere. Whet your Helen appetite by reading chapter one here, or meet Lian in person at Vroman's November 14th at 3pm.

Many thanks to Colleen, Lian and everyone at Prospect Park Media.

Aerial

I took this photo last year at about this time, then forgot about it. I ran across it last night, messed with the color and contrast, and came up with this.

I'm not sure what to say about it except I like it.

Yes, I took it in Pasadena. It's not an aerial shot. I was gazing out over the Devil's Gate Dam, looking north. This area is all overgrown now, but a year ago after the Station Fire and before the winter rains, the land was bare and a little stream trickled through it. We had ceased to take the dogs down there because of the color of the water. It was orange, though not this bright, from the fire retardant run-off from the Station Fire, according to Bellis. Dogs just don't care. They'll splash about in liquid plutonium if it looks like fun.

I detect footprints in this photo. They could belong to me, and to a certain canid I know.

iPhone Wednesday #7 - Shovel

John got this close-up of a shovel near the Devil's Gate Dam not long ago.

There's still much work to be done over there. After rain last weekend the water has risen again, collecting debris behind the dam. Workers have corralled the debris (everything from driftwood to plastic bottles to stray socks) so when it's time to release the water, the debris won't be released with it.

shovel detail

John took a lot of photos of this medieval-looking thing. I'm fascinated by the irregularity of it, not to mention the colors. As John said, some forms of technology have been with us for a long time, and there's no need to change them.