Provo

Trip Report - Pogo Hole, Provo River, Utah by DavidWeber, Mar 19 2002, 17:04 GMT

First test in a series of proposed trip reports.

POGO HOLE RE-TUNED: TRIP REPORT

Over the past two weeks, Ken and I have been going to Pogo hole on the Provo which is in right now because of maintenance. Thanks to some hole tuning by one of our local paddlers, Billy, the hole has been providing some excellent early season play. The levels have been in the 200 CFS region, with construction continuing on the Salt Lake Aqueduct which usually draws water from the river and diverts it past Pogo. Billy had removed some rocks from the lower dam to lower the pool height, which made for a better pile to work with and removed the green water trough that had been barely present on the first day we went.

For those of you who don't live in the SLC area, Pogo hole is a man-made hole on the Provo river. Originally Pogo was a river-wide U-shaped ledge hole formed by a series of placed boulders. Over time, the banks of the river have widened significantly, changing the nature of the hole and requiring it to be tuned regularly to accommodate erosion and water levels. If you look at the photo of the hole below, you can see on the immediate river left and river right sides of the hole two triangular shoals. The downstream edge of each triangle is formed by the original ledge that formed the hole when it was first created. The upstream edge is formed by the rock piles which have been built up to re-focus the flow of water and increase the height of the upstream pool. The rock pile closest to the camera also has another diversion dam to the right of the branch. A larger version of this image is available here ( image 203 K ).

Randy Nate, another local boater, has done a lot of the work on this hole over the last several years, and is arguably 'the expert' on the Pogo hole.