First Reservoir Trip Of 2014: To Dapu At The Back Of Tseng-wen Reservoir

This afternoon I went up to the back end of Tseng-wen reservoir, where the river passes under Dapu bridge on its' way down to the reservoir. This was my first reservoir trip in a long while and it was good to get out into the countryside on my own for a few hours. I wanted to see whether there had been any additional construction at this strange location. There had not been, and the two concrete structures are now swamped in a ten or twelve foot deep crust of dried up sediment.

Compare that shot above with a shot from the same location in May last year. Nothing appears to have changed save for the additional sedimentation. Last year I had been able to count fifteen port holes in the tower shaped structure, but this time it was buried so deep that I could count only eleven. In the wall shaped structure on the far side, I had previously been able to count upwards of thirteen port holes, but this time only six or seven (some of them have been filled in).

Being surprised at finding no apparent progress at the site, I decided to head back across to the east side of the river and go down to the shore to take a closer look. There were no staff on site, save for an old man seemingly living out of a shipping container surrounded by a few stray dogs.

It had obviously been assembled as a series of modular blocks and the cut of the angles was very rough; there wasn't a single straight line about it.

Here is a shot looking at the wall shaped structure from the other side. Several of the upper port holes had been filled in though the four below had been left exposed and open, with the steel pipes inside already turning the colour of rust.

The tower shaped structure had also had its upper holes filled in with what seemed to be the concrete left-overs from the construction of the wall shaped structure. However, like the wall its lower port holes remained open and exposed to the elements with the pipes inside left to rust. The tower was hexagonal in outline and built to an altogether higher standard than the wall.

Beyond the hexagonal tower to the north, the mountain edge from which I had taken my previous shots was clearly visible to the top left...

Looking westward downstream. There was a drop of about ten or twelve feet from the mudflats down to the water's edge. That's a lot of sediment.

The overall impression was of two structures that had seemingly been abandoned and forsaken...

However there was a stack of unused equipment that had been left behind (though without any security to speak of...)

The weather was disappointingly cold and overcast, and although I did meet with a kite and one or two eagles they were not within range for long enough for me to capture them with the lens.

I will improve upon last year's shots.