Boaters Beware of Debris

By Dennis Rahm

Over the past week, the level of Lake Chelan has risen from 1093.79 on May 13, to 1096.08 on Sunday, May 20. Chelan County Emergency Management and the PUD are projecting continued high levels of run off through the end of the month.

With the rising of the lake level comes an increase in drift and woody debris that is floated off the banks and rocks along the shoreline.

Boaters are urged to watch for logs, wood chunks and those deceiving pieces of drift that are water logged and lurking just under the surface of the lake. We call those “prop busters”.

I spent the past week uplake at Lucerne and took some video of the boisterous Railroad Creek as it rushed down from Holden Village to the Lucerne Dock. Along the way, it has forged a new channel through the aptly named Driftwood Bay.

Also pictured is the log jam of debris floating between the two uplake docks at Lucerne. As lake levels rose, those logs started to make their way down the lake.