A Spring Game of Ultimate Frisbee on the Open Space

By MIKE NORTON

I thought I’d start things out with this cheery photo of a friendly Wednesday evening Ultimate Frisbee match at the edge of the Clinch Park Marina on West Bay. I still don’t quite understand the rules of that game, but it’s certainly good exercise.

So are you in the market for a little good news? Here’s some:

I got a nice note the other day from a reader in Columbus, Ohio who comes to Traverse City every summer to conduct a week-long training program. He was very kind about this blog, but he had a serious question – what is the situation with the water levels in Grand Traverse Bay?

As you may or may not know, the water levels in all five of the Great Lakes have been going down for several years, causing a lot of problems for boaters, commercial shipping, and owners of beachfront property. All kinds of theories have been advanced for this alarming trend; some folks blame Global Warming, while others have hinted that sinister forces in Arizona and new Mexico have been stealing our water. Old-timers, on the other hand, have told us to relax – it’s part of a regular cycle that nobody really understands. If you wait long enough, they said, the water will go back to its old levels – and if you wait a little longer, it’ll rise so much that everybody will start complaining that it’s TOO high.

The reader from Columbus had a very specific concern, though. Back in the 1990s, he used to bring his daughter along on his annual trips to Traverse City – and she loved snorkling out among the boulders below the Old Mission Point lighthouse. “It was perfect because of the big rocks in the 5 ½-foot-deep water that we could climb upon and rest,” he wrote. “Well, all of that is history with the falling water level.”

Anyway, his daughter lives in Quito, Ecuador now, but she’s planning to visit Traverse City again (along with her Ecuadorean husband) and she was wondering if the water level was coming back. “I told her I doubted it, but I would check around,” he said.

Well, I have good news for them – and for you. The levels in those lakes have been going up for some time now, and thanks to the abundant snow and ice cover from this past winter (ice keeps the water from evaporating, which is a big source of loss even in winter). Lake Michigan is now 13 inches higher than it was at this point last year. The Army Corps of Engineers is predicting that it will rise another four inches over the next month.

So will the shoals at Old Mission Point be deep enough to snorkel at this year? It’s hard to tell – but the trend is definitely in the right direction.

Have a great weekend!