15 Things You May Not Know About Lake Chelan

15 Things You May Not Know About Lake Chelan

1. Lake Chelan is 50.4 miles in length from end-to-end.

2. Approximately 100 glaciers drain into Lake Chelan from the surrounding North Cascade mountains.

3. Because of its location approximately 400 feet above the Columbia River, Lake Chelan was, for awhile, undiscovered by European explorers who were following the Columbia River down below.

4. Lake Chelan is the third deepest lake in the United States, behind Crater Lake in Oregon and Lake Tahoe in Nevada.

5. The water that flows out of Lake Chelan and into the Columbia River over 350 feet below does not form a waterfall. It is piped from the Lake Chelan Dam over two miles underground to the Chelan Falls Pumphouse where it turns the turbines, making electricity, and then enters the Columbia River.

6. Along the shore of Lake Chelan there are seventeen different campgrounds that cannot be reached by road, a large number of these cannot even be reached by hiking trails either, meaning that they are primarily boat-in only campgrounds.

7. The communities of Stehekin and Holden Village are not accessible by roads, only by boat, float planes, and hiking trails.

8. Much of Lake Chelan is deeper than the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

9. If the water level of Lake Chelan is too high and enough water cannot be released through the Chelan Dam’s spillways to lower it, water can be diverted down the Chelan River Gorge, bypassing the pumphouse below.

10. Beneath the surface of the water, there are actually two large basins (an upper and lower) that form Lake Chelan.

11. The Chelan River flows a distance of approximately 1.5 miles.

12. When the Chelan Dam was constructed it raised Lake Chelan 21 feet above its natural shoreline.

13. The current Chelan Dam is at least the third one placed at the low end of Lake Chelan, the others were washed out by flooding before 1900.

14. Lake Chelan is 1,541 feet deep at its deepest known point.

15. Lake Chelan’s water level will vary from as much as 1100 feet above sea level to a minimum of 1079 feet above sea level.