Okay, so I was a little overzealous in my post about the state of Jefferson.
It wasn’t until I read some comments thanking me for the science lesson that I started thinking about what I had done. What I did was unscientific, and unfitting for a journalist or teacher (or even blogger) of any kind. I said that the water coming out of the spring at Spring Creek is from Crater Lake, when in truth, no one actually knows whether or not this is the case.
While it is generally accepted that water does seep out of Crater Lake (at the rate of 89 cubic feet per second, according to Kenneth Phillips’ 1968 paper), no one has ever demonstrated that it seeps out at any particular place other than on the northeast side, where the side of the caldera has a lot of unconsolidated gravelly material. In 1968, Phillips’ measurements indicated that the amount of water produced by Spring Creek alone was three times the amount lost by the lake to seepage (see link above). So, while it is certainly not impossible that Spring Creek is sending Crater Lake water to the Pacific via the Klamath River drainage, no one actually knows for sure, and my description of the process was rather simplistic and, well, presumptuous. It made for a better story, though, didn’t it?
Maybe so. But, as much as I’d like to be a good tale-teller, I can’t do it at the expense of the truth and the scientific method.
So, where is the rest of that Spring Creek water coming from? Stay tuned (possibly for a long, long time…)
