A Wyoming Creek Flows into Two Oceans (2017) | Hacker News Reader

A Wyoming Creek Flows into Two Oceans (2017)

cntraveler.com

126 pointsDoreenMichele31 comments

There's a creek like this in Banff National Park in Canada [1]. It is amazingly fake. It was rebuilt when I was younger and the rocks that keep the creek in place are not found upstream or downstream of the divide. Before it was rebuilt, it flowed into a marshy area and trickled off to both sides. My guess is that it was originally constructed by the railroad (which is right next to it) as a tourist attraction when crossing the divide.

The problem with a divide creek is that it is inherently unstable. One of the sides will erode more quickly than the other, which diverts the water and erodes the remaining side to permanently capture the water.

I note that photos of the Wyoming creek show a suspicious number of rocks in perfect place diverting some water off to the lesser branch. Perhaps someone has been fighting off the inevitable end of the fork.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_Creek

Maybe someone has been hiking out there to maintain the creek, but that's some serious middle-of-nowhere territory, so I doubt it. Also, it's depicted as a big flat marsh on the USGS 7.5' maps, so I imagine it doesn't experience much erosion.

It is a day's hike from the roadhead, on an established trail, and at the point of the split, the water flows freely. The run-off from a single storm could be enough to close off one branch, and if left to its own devices, this fork would probably open and close repeatedly before settling on one direction.

Pics and more info: http://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/09/parting-of-waters-creek...

Thanks! That website is a JavaScript-soaked nightmare, but I'll try to check it out when I'm next in the area (and maybe even do some creek maintenance ;-).

I came to comment exactly the same as your last 2 paragraphs. The article notes:

"One of its most popular hikes is a fifteen-mile trek to see a branching of Two Ocean Creek called "Parting of the Waters.""

You would guess that there is people interested in guiding others on these hikes. Or maybe regular hikers just don't want to see it gone! Or even maybe it hasn't yet eroded, any of these would be perfectly valid explanations.

Yeah when I played in my sandbox as a child (not with my kids recently or anything....) and tried to get multiple flows from one source inevitably there was some difference between the two outlets and one would capture all the water.

There is also a "triple divide" point in North America, from where water can flow into the Pacific, Atlantic or Arctic Oceans. It's either in Montana or Jasper National Park in Canada depending on whether you define Hudson Bay as part of the Arctic or Atlantic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Divide_Peak_(Montana) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Dome_(Canada)

Similar to "Pico Tres Mares" (Three Seas Peak), in Spain:

> The Pico de Tres Mares (Three Seas) got its name because it is the source of three main rivers which flow from it into three different seas - the Híjar, tributary of the Ebro which flows into the Mediterranean, the Pisuerga, tributary of the Douro which flows into the Atlantic and the Nansa which flows into the Cantabrian sea. This peak, which rises to 2,175m, reveals a splendid circular panorama to the north of the Nansa, to the east of the Sierra de Peña Labra and the Montes de León, and to the west of los Picos de Europa.

So, if you were a salmon, you could swim up from the Pacific and back down to the Atlantic--theoretically. Is there anywhere else you could do that?

There are some really long salmon runs in Idaho. The Salmon River is one of the longest, I believe. Fish travel several thousand miles up it to spawn in their home creek.

That's an impressive feat of endurance considering that salmon seem to eat very little (if at all) in fresh water.

http://salmo.proboards.com/thread/39/salmon-eat-fresh-water

"All the explorers looking for the Northwest Passage between the oceans never realized that they could have sailed across America this way—if they'd used tiny little boats that could handle the six-inch shallows of Two Ocean Creek."

Is anyone going to take that as a challenge? And video it?

Now I'm imagining a viking longship but with the spiderbot legs from Wild Wild West.

I wonder how navigable it is - you are paddling up a mountain; I imagine there’s a few spots you’ll need to carry the boat around rapids/falls.

I was thinking more of a sort of robotrout with leaping abilities..

Canoeing this route just hit my bucket list.

This means everywhere uphill from this creek can't be assigned to a watershed, or we can't model watersheds as a tree. My guess is water modeling software can't handle this situation.

(Cases where an elegant model covers almost everything but not quite are frustratingly common.)

The Casiquiare canal (it's natural, despite its name) connects the Orinoco and Amazon river systems during peak waterflow system. That's #4 and #1 in terms of discharge, and they don't form a clean water divide.

I think only if watersheds are required to terminate on an ocean, but that does not work for basins that are not connected to the sea, one notable example of which is not that far south of this point, containing the Great Salt lake. An alternative view (touched on in the article) is that technically, the fork is the end-point of the Atlantic-Pacific divide, and everything upstream on this creek is in a watershed that has one end on one branch downstream of the fork, and the other end on the other branch. In this view, it is the paths downstream of the fork that are not in a watershed. This is not a useful viewpoint, so I agree that this is a corner case in which the tree model does not work.

Also in Wyoming is the Great Divide Basin, an endorheic basin straddling the Pacific-Atlantic Continental Divide.

In a not-to-distant past it probably drained out northeast towards the North Platte [1], but is now a closed basin with about 43 meters of elevation separation before it would overflow at bedrock. Further complicating this is a bunch of sand dunes over its most likely outflow.

[1] http://geofaculty.uwyo.edu/heller/Papers/Heller%20GSAB%2010....

Nice, I found that to be most fascinating on Rand McNally maps from back in the day. I cycled past the Great Divide Basin on the road down from the Tetons, through the Snake River canyons and the view did not disappoint. High points on the divide were attracting lightning on a near continual basis from the late afternoon onward and it was quite a light show.

Other instances:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_drainage_sys...

That was a really interesting tidbit of information.

I was also caught a bit off guard by the website, cntraveler. I only ever heard of conde nast as the company that used to own reddit. The author's name was also interesting as it's the same as the famous Jeopardy winner, which this being a quirky trivia type of article makes me wonder if it's the same person.

It is the Jeopardy winner. As a hint, in most online publications you can click on the authors name and it will take you to a bio and/or a list of other articles by that author in that publication.

It's always amusing to read articles "from the future". The byline date is May 1, 2018. Perfect for a super human like Ken.

Apparently it’s been corrected to 2017.

Cute, I just noticed the headline is written in the format of a Jeopardy clue.

Yes, it is. If you click on the authors name at the top, you get sent to his bio.

> I only ever heard of conde nast as the company that used to own reddit.

Condé Nast has been around for over a century, and has owned dozens of magazines - starting with Vogue I believe.

For some reason on Firefox mobile as soon as I load this page I get a drop down at the top with my search history.

Ditto, Firefox desktop Linux. I suspect it's javascript selecting an input box with a very common name like q or search.

Likewise, Chromium on Linux. Search box appears when I try to scroll with the down-arrow key.

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