photobyjohnbo

Cellpic Sunday – Canyon Lake

Canyon Lake

Phoenix, Arizona.

Canyon Lake is familiar to me from ground level (or should I say water level). Lynn and I have been on the lake with our friend Marty and some of my family members, and we have taken the river cruiser Dolly on a Canyon Lake excursion. I recognized the lake immediately as we flew by.

Access to the lake is via SR 88, the Apache Trail, a road with beautiful views of the desert and lake. You can see part of the highway just left of the marina, and you can follow it along the west side of the lake in the image until it disappears into the nearby Superstition Mountains.

The Mormon Flat Dam isn’t visible in this image, though you can almost imagine seeing the top of it at the extreme left edge of the lake near the narrow point in the northwestern section. A campsite nearby is a place where Mormons from Utah camped. That campsite is now known as Mormon Flat.

The dam also generates power for Phoenix and features two generators, one of which contains a pump that puts water back into the lake to help keep the lake at a constant level. The maximum depth of Canyon Lake is 131 feet (40 m). You can find more information about the lake and dam here.

There are four dams and lakes on the Salt River that are managed by the Salt River Project. The fourth lake, Saguaro Lake is just visible near the top left of this image. The lake is small, with a maximum depth of 110 feet (34 m), and the Steward Mountain Dam that created the lake contains a single 13,000 kilowatt (kW) generator that only operates in the summer months. More information about Saguaro Lake can be found here.

About the photo: About the photo: Captured by my Samsung S20U, I processed it in Lightroom and Luminar Neo. That large set of mountains to the left (west of Canyon Lake) is the Superstition Mountains, the legendary home of the Lost Dutchman Mine that people still try to find. Click on the image above to view it in 2K HD on my Flickr site (and see the entire sequence of Cellpic Sunday images captured on my inbound flight to Phoenix.)

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

45 comments

    • Our cell phone cameras can truly capture a lot of data and software developers know how to make the tools to bring it out in our images.
      Looking at my image with fresh eyes, I think I should have toned down the blue in the background. It’s a bit strong. >grin<

      Reply

  27. You and Lynn don’t sit still. I’m amazed at how many places you have been! I wonder why all dams don’t have pumps that put the water back in place. That’s ingenious. It also must take a lot of pumping. It’s also probably the reason that on an aerial map Western Mexico is brown and the Western United States is green. Great article, John. Here’s my, not-so-serious post. https://alwayswrite.blog/2022/05/26/every-little-thing-circles-curves-and-cuddles/

    Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.