Lake Powell Thunderstorm

I was excited to be back. It was the first time in several years. This time my family was with me, including young kids who had never experienced Lake Powell. We parked on hot pavement, high above Halls Crossing Marina. Some changed in the van while others slipped their sandals on and undressed in a wooden bathroom at the edge of the parking lot.

With swimsuits on we carefully made our way down to the water. A long yellow lizard dashed quickly across the hot sandstone ground and hid behind a boulder. The water was dark blue, just as I had remembered, perhaps even better. We found a small cove. Not the same one that had been there when I was a kid; all of them had disappeared. The water level was much lower now, causing the contour of the lake to change. My old swimming spot was now a dry, chalky-white rock, above where we now stood.

I slipped off footwear, lifted my shirt over my head, and sat glasses on a small rock. Then I stepped into the cool water, inching further in until I was up to my knees, and then my thighs. When the water began to soak into my bathing suit, I stopped, paralyzed by the sudden frigidity that seized my skin. My feet remained motionless, not daring to venture further into the cold. I ran my fingers across the surface of the water, creating figure eights at my side. Then, in one big motion, I plunged downward, immersing my shoulders, face and head. When I felt satisfied that my entire body was wet, I shot back upward, reemerging from the water, dripping incessantly. My cupped hands slowly ran backward over my hair, wringing out the water, and then I wiped my eyes dry. Now that I was wet, the temperature of the water wasn't too bad.

I pushed off from the rock below my feet and crawled across the water on my belly, arms working like a windmill, reaching into the water and propelling myself forward. I did this for several strokes, then non-nonchalantly flipped to my back and lazily paddled myself along, making large angelic sweeps with my arms.

The kids enjoyed the water also. We made them wear life jackets, even the older ones, as Lake Powell was not your average benevolent body of water. We tied a rope to a giant inflatable fish and I pulled it across the cove while one of the kids rode like a horse.

We ate sandwiches and potato salad for lunch and then it was time to take the older kids to the “deep end,” which was around the corner and inside another cove.  

Not only was the land at a steep slope, but the moss that grew on the rock below the surface was slick. The kids liked that. Once they got the courage to jump into the water, they struggled to get out. Brittany would crawl up the rock like a giant amphibian, get two hands and a knee above the water, then swoosh, she would slip back in. She giggled and laughed at this.

They would float in the deep, cold water with their life jackets on and wait for the waves from the boats to come across the bay to where they were floating. Then they would bob up and down like buoys.

We found a good diving rock that was about eight feet above the water and I let them take turns diving in. I let Jordan take off his life jacket. He jumped off the rock, feet first, plunged several feet below the surface, then reemerged, and swam playfully back to shore.

After several hours, the breeze began to pick up and storm clouds appeared in the north, across the bay above Bullfrog. We gathered everything and climbed back up to the van.  I stopped and took a picture of lightning that shot across the bay.

Part of the purpose for this small trip to Lake Powell was nostalgia. When I was younger we used to come to this same cove to swim, and we fished for striped bass from a boat. At night we caught crawdads beneath rocks and during the day we went to the store at the marina and bought self-serve ice cream cones and piled them so high that they looked like the leaning tower of Pisa! This was our final plan before we left—to find the ice cream machine!

But things didn't look like they used to. Since the water level had dropped so drastically, the whole marina had shifted to another location about a mile away. In fact, the more I thought about it, I wasn't even sure if the ice cream machine was here at Hall's Crossing, or across the bay at Bullfrog.

We drove over to the marina, but didn't see anything resembling a store, so we turned around, but not before stopping on the hill for a few minutes to attempt to get some more pictures of the lightning across the bay. By now, the wind was picking up and there was no doubt that the storm was coming. We returned nearby the parking lot where we began and I stopped at a small gas station at the entrance of town.

“Is there another store around here?” I asked a young blonde lady that was tending the building.

“Yes,” she responded in a genuine English accent.

She pointed out that it was where we had just come, down a road marked “closed,” and then across the floating walkway, thus locating it in the middle of the lake. No wonder we didn't find it, I thought.

“Does it have a self-serve ice cream machine?” I had to ask.

“Yes, it does.”

I hurried back to the van and assured the family that we were going to have ice cream after all . But things were quickly changing as we made that mile-long ride back to the marina. We looked down across the lake and the entire bay—that was once a gentle dark blue—was now pock-marked with waves of white. Boats were scrambling to find refuge and the lines of vessels parked at the marina bobbed up and down and side to side.

We parked the van within forty yards of the water and knew that we had to hurry. The storm was coming fast, with gales quickly picking up dust and trash. Our entire family raced to the water's edge and it was there that I first saw the floating walkway and its long stretch to the marina store. The floating walkway was maybe eight feet wide with wooden planks and nothing at all for a side railing. What seemed like fifty yards to the store, also seemed very daunting. The long walkway undulated with the waves of the water and twisted it like a rubber band.

I gripped Jenna's hand tightly and together we stepped onto the floating causeway and walked across about fifteen planks. My feet swayed up, then down, as if I was on a surf board, or perhaps a bucking bull. The wind's gust took shots at us, trying to blast us into the water. I balanced myself out with my arms and looked side to side, being quickly reminded that there was nothing to grab onto. The only thing flanking our position was the deep water that rumbled in turbulence. This was crazy! Jenelle and I took one look at each other and knew we had to turn back.

We hadn't made it but a few steps from the floating walkway when the rain hit. Nothing was gradual, but quick, hard pelting drops pinged nearly horizontally from the sky. The air turned a wet white and in less than two seconds we were all drenched, only able to look down and run to where we knew the van to be. I stooped down and swept Jenna's into my arms, holding her face into my shoulder. A box flew into the air and mud ran off the hillside and onto the pavement.

I unlocked the van as fast as I could and within a few panic-struck moments, we were all inside the vehicle and breathing a sigh of relief. The rain continued to erupt all around, cascading across the windshield so thickly that we couldn't see a thing.

Instant relief infused my body, grateful that we decided to turn back when we did. Had we been further along the causeway, no doubt we would have been bucked into the water like a cowboy from a bronc.

We waited for ten minutes until deciding that the storm would not subside anytime soon. I turned the ignition and switched the wipers to rapid motion and we drove up the hill away from the water.

This is not how we planned to end the day.

The road out of Halls Crossing passes a couple parking lots, another small store, and a boat launch. We didn't notice any of this with the rain pounding all around and a low cloudy mist that almost touched the ground. There is a good view of the bay before you crest the hill, but that was behind us and we didn't bother to look.

The area around Glen Canyon is rugged and barren, yet majestically beautiful. Canyons and gulleys of Navajo Sandstone intricately run together, creating a funnel effect to any burst of water found beneath its breadth.

After cresting the hill, the road drops into Castle Wash, named by the Mormon pioneers who trudged through the same place and found Anasazi Indian ruins that resembled a castle. I clutched the steering wheel as the canyon road began to snake, and a sheet of water glazed the pavement.

As the rain began to subside, another marvel emerged. Streams of water flowed over the brows of the slick-rock like lava spilling from a volcano. Water overflowed everywhere, off every cliff, sending new cascades off ledges, and creating new rivers down formerly dry canyon beds.

It was one of the most amazing sights we had ever beheld!

Even when the rain ceased to fall from the sky, it continued to tumble from the rocks. We stopped at a few places along the road to snap pictures and admire the power of nature. At Castle Ruin, the same ancient relic that the pioneers passed by one hundred and thirty years earlier, we pulled over and witnessed brown, murky water passing over the top of the alcove where the fortress lay. The ruin sat protected beneath the overhang of rock, behind a sheet of gushing water.

At the top of Clay Hill Pass, the narrow canyon widens its span and many of the raging rivers now subsided into rivulets. Red clay appeared as a bright color of ocher and the greens of rabbit and sage brush became more vibrant.

The rain had disappeared, but the strong misty smell of wet earth was everywhere. ♠