Cleanin' Up the L 9-5-20

[TubeDude]

Originally had plans to hit the lake early for some fishing before joining others in our BFT cleanup session at Lincoln Beach.  But when my shut-in wife expressed an interest in going I made a hard left turn and changed plans.  Instead of arriving at O-Dark Thirty, we drove up at the ramp about 8ish.  A couple of boat trailers in the lot, but nobody else from BFT I could reckernize.



So, since a part of the plan was to check out the possibility of opening up one of the old ramps at the L, that's where we headed.  We were greeted by huge swarms of cavorting midges.  But they subsided as the sun rose higher.  Mosquitoes were only a minor irritation.  We turned them OFF.







Found the westernmost ramp mostly grown in with phragmites, but with a partial channel that could probably be opened fairly easily.  Howsomever, the water level is dropping fast and it won't be long before it will be too shallow to launch at that end.  Continued on to the other small ramp...on the east end...where it drops into deeper water quicker.  It was completely filled in with 8 ft. high phrags.  Decided it was going to be a project but thought I'd get it started to gauge how much more work would be needed.








I had brought calf-high boots, a shovel, a machete and some lopping shears.   First order of business was to clear out all of the nasty spider webs...and the big saltbush spiders that made them.  Next I just started swinging the machete into the stands of phrags.  Made some progress.  After mowing down a pretty fair hole into the mass of greenery I was up to the tops of my boots.  Need at least hippers when I return.  Next I took the shovel and started working on uprooting the clumps of chopped down phragmites.  Doable, but requires working through a foot or more of nasty mud that has been deposited during the years of disuse.








After an hour of phrag molestation, I picked up a plastic bag and a reach tool and joined TubeBabe in picking up the trash so graciously left for us by the usual Utah Lake slobs.  Unbelievable.  In one small area of shoreline there were multiple Corona Beer bottles and even more Modelo Beer cans.  And one semi-considerate soul left a 12 pack of Bud Light cans all packed back into the case...but still left it on the shoreline.  Class.








TubeBabe and I both ended up with a fair amount of trash in our respective plastic bags...along with some other stuff that wouldn't go in the bags.  Left the L area looking a lot better.  But from past experience I can almost guarantee that by next week you will not be able to tell we even did a cleanup.  Hope the other folks doing cleanup duty also got a bunch of trash to the dumpster.








Drove back to the ramp and still couldn't see anybody wandering around that might be part of the cleanup crew.  So we just watched the guy cavorting around in his ultralight aircraft for a few minutes and headed off (about 9:30) to go visit our daughter and see her new home in Saratoga Springs.