Brief Sunday Morning Trip To Tseng-wen Reservoir

Awoke at 6.00am today (Sunday), then went back to sleep and got up again sometime after 7.00am and drove out to the front end of Tseng-wen reservoir to see what has been happening with the remedial work. Made brief stops on the way in Yujing and Nanxi districts and didn't arrive until sometime after 9.00am.

First thing I did was take more snaps of the "east mouth" of Hatta's underground tunnel, following my discovery of the "west mouth" exit earlier this week. Here is what it looks like today from the opposing river bank...

I would like to see the original tunnel entrance if possible, but when on a previous visit I had followed the access road toward the entrapment pen I found the gates locked with nobody in sight to talk to. It might be one of those things I will have to ask permission for from the Water Bureau. Notice the reflections from the water to the left of the weir gates; all of the water flowing downstream is being diverted into the entrapment pen to enter Hatta's tunnel through to the other side of those mountains into the centre of Tainan County.

At the top of the access road, the sign confirms that further down the road lies the "east mouth" (東口 - "dong kou") of Hatta's diversion tunnel...

Further upstream the remedial work was now concentrated in one of the original sluiceway tunnels. Last time I was here they were still working on a new tunnel to divert the public road after it crosses the dam crest.

One of the things that they are trying to do here, I think, is re-model the arc of the sluiceway to allow gravity to shift more of the sediments from the reservoir bed into the tunnel and out into the river.

With the water level currently the lowest I've ever seen it, I was able to see the exposed shelf beneath those near 100-foot tall tainter gates. Note the little chap walking around on the mud below...

Although the shelf was itself bare as bone, it is raised to some considerable height above the reservoir's bed (perhaps ten to fifteen meters) and there is still a lot of water in the reservoir, though what the average depths are I can't say. The scale printed on the spillway division wall is in meters (above sea level), from 206m to 234, though from the high-water mark you can see that the water does not usually rise above the 228m mark...

From the other side of the reservoir (south-west) looking toward the upstream face of the dam...

I briefly thought about heading around to Dapu at the back of the reservoir to see if anything had been done with those odd concrete structures yet, but it was already after 11.00am and the dogs would need to be taken out to the park.

On the way back (out of the south end rather than the west end) I spotted what at first I thought may have been another falcon due to its relatively small size and straight tail. However, after taking a few shots and zooming in, I realized it was a juvenile crested serpent eagle - the black and white barred plumage along the wings is just right, as is their shape. This may be the first time I've seen one...

Coming down in altitude through the bee farms on the south side I had to pull myself up short upon seeing one of the adult eagles perched in a tree just across the road from me. Yet just as I fished out the camera, a bunch of racers came roaring past with their customized exhausts and the noise disturbed him out of his perch. The best I could manage was a couple of shots of him banking and turning on one of the midday thermals...

This week I was going to consider sending the little black bike up north for a train trip to Fengyuan this weekend (and thereby to Liyutan reservoir). However, I may yet put it off until next month as I start at a new job this week and there'll be plenty of paper work to be done plus other preparations.