For Dave and Gaye Babcock, Lake Powell is like part of the family.
The couple from Helper, Utah, have been coming for nearly 50 years. They got engaged at the lake. His daughter’s wedding was right here at Bullfrog Bay.
“We've had a lot of good memories here,” Dave Babcock said. “I hope they can keep us coming back.”
As the West’s historically dry, warm winter continues to shrink the nation’s second-largest reservoir, those memories may be fading into the past.
Lake Powell’s water levels are forecast to drop to new record lows. That’s bad news for 40 million people who rely on the Colorado River for water and power. It’s changing recreation, too.
“I'm shocked,” Gaye Babcock said as she pointed across the expanse of orange desert next to the lake. “This whole flat was covered with water, and to see it now, I wouldn't even believe that we're at the same place.”
In a gravel parking lot near the water’s edge, Dave walked around their new motorboat, the La Lorraine, doing some last-minute prep before a day of fishing. The couple had been thinking about visiting Powell later this year, but he decided not to wait. The lake has already dropped to the lowest reaches of Bullfrog’s only open boat ramp, and the forecast for spring runoff is bleak.
“I'm not sure we can put a boat in this fall here. It's kind of that simple,” he said. “We thought we better go get it wet before we can't put it in Lake Powell — or Lake Puddle, as we was calling it this morning.”
The Babcocks aren’t the only ones adjusting to the lake’s new reality.
Bullfrog Marina — a massive floating dock with hundreds of houseboats stored in its slips — is now being moved to deeper waters on the lake’s south side.
“It's an engineering feat that hasn't been done in this capacity,” said Robert Knowlton, regional vice president with Aramark, the concessionaire that runs the marina. “Probably not in my lifetime, that I'm aware of.”
But desperate times call for desperate measures. If the marina doesn’t move, Knowlton said the whole thing would likely be sitting on dry ground by July.
Barges will push the marina and its boats across the lake to Halls Crossing — a 2.5-hour drive by car. Knowlton expects the move to be completed by mid-June, with a small boat to shuttle people from Bullfrog.
There’s still a lot of water in Powell, he said, it’s just a matter of finding ways for people to get out to it. And his company’s committed to keeping the Bullfrog side of the lake alive.
“We're putting, I mean, exorbitant amounts of time and money to do this,” he said. “This is not a short-term goal for us.”
The idea is to eventually return the marina to Powell’s north side near a deeper ramp that’s planned along the lake’s main channel at Stanton Creek, just south of Bullfrog. The National Park Service estimates the ramp project will cost $73.4 million and allow access to the water even at an elevation of 3,500 feet — roughly 25 feet below current lake levels.
It’ll likely be a couple of years before the ramp is completed and the marina is moved back, Knowlton said.
In the meantime, the park service is building a primitive ramp, essentially extending the main Bullfrog launch that’s closed due to low water. That would allow boats to continue accessing the lake even after the water drops beyond the reach of Bullfrog’s north ramp. Knowlton anticipates the primitive ramp will open this summer.
He’s hopeful the recently announced water releases from Flaming Gorge reservoir “slows the bleeding” — preventing Powell from getting much lower this summer. And for those who do get out on the lake, he said, the receding waters have revealed new caves and arches that have been submerged for years.
“They can come see parts of the lake that have never been explored before,” he said. “It's not all negative.”
Along the lonely desert highway to Bullfrog, the only visitor services are clustered around Ticaboo, a tiny community of around 70 homes.
“Traffic to the lake is definitely a huge economic impact on Ticaboo and our businesses here,” said Michael Palmquist, director of outdoor recreation at North Lake Powell Adventures.
He’s worried social media posts sensationalizing the lake’s dire situation may scare some visitors off. But as long as boats can get in the water, he said, they will.
“I think the people that know Lake Powell are still going to come down. They're still going to enjoy it, just as they always have.”
Even the marina’s move isn’t all bad news, he said. It means one less competitor for his company, which also rents and services watercraft. Over the past decade, his team has also started offering UTV rentals and off-road tours, diversifying its business into non-aquatic activities.
“That's the silver lining for us,” he said, “is that we're able to offer more than just the lake.”
Some long-time visitors have found silver linings in Lake Powell’s dry year, too.
Salt Lake City resident Bill Adams has been boating here since the 1970s and was planning to get his pontoon out this spring. But he had some trouble with the boat storage.
The storage office is part of the floating marina, Adams said, and he had a hard time reaching them because the lake dropped so low into the canyon that they lost cell phone signal.
So, he was forced to rethink his Lake Powell vacation.
“I don't see it as bad,” Adams said with a laugh. “I see it as inconvenient, but not necessarily bad.”
Rather than getting out on the water, he and his son enjoyed several hikes through red rock badlands that border the lake. And exploring the dry side of Bullfrog has given him a different perspective on a place he’s known for decades.
“We always sort of want things to be the same. But they never are,” Adams said. “If you can't live with change, you can't be happy, because everything changes.”
As this parched year makes it even harder to keep Lake Powell the way it was, he said that may be a lesson for us all.
This story was reported in partnership with the Colorado River Collaborative, with support from The Water Desk at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
