Wyoming Range river dammed by landslide

[TexasTowelie]

Dustin Child saddled up one of his horses Monday and rode into the northern Wyoming Range to make sure that his clients weren’t a big rainstorm away from being swept up by a wall of water.

Child, who owns Willow Creek Horseback Rides, heard that a large landslide was spotted miles up his business’s namesake creek, and he went to see for himself. Riding down the creek from the Greys River side, Child passed several small slides triggered by the big spring melt, then the big one.

“Half the mountain came down,” Child said.

To his eye the landslide was as high as 200 feet in places, covered 1/4 mile of the Willow Creek canyon and formed a 15- to 20-acre lake that’s probably 30 or 40 feet deep. As for the hazard, he didn’t think there was one.

“It could possibly could do something next spring, but there’s so much debris,” Child said. “It’s an unreal amount of debris. It dammed it up as far as it’s going to go, and now the river’s cut a stream between the debris pile and the far west side.”

Read more: http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/environmental/wyoming-range-river-dammed-by-landslide/article_d5fb1ea3-7911-5bba-9bc6-5d10760149c3.html