Massive Mud Flow After Opening Clogged Culvert Pipe

[00:00:00]Hey everyone, I don't know if we're going to hear anything in this video or not, but they're doing some logging up there only about a half a mile away.

[00:00:10]And they also have signs set up that they don't want anyone going through that logging site cuz it looks like they're going to be blasting some very large rocks they can't get with excavators out of the road.

[00:00:21]So, no one's allowed down there and I doubt anyone else is going to be driving by as a result of that.

[00:00:28]They want to make the road better. Doing some blasting.

[00:00:33]As they inch further down this road.

[00:00:37]So, we have a culvert pipe right here.

[00:00:39]I'm going to get camera number two down in here somewhere.

[00:00:43]This might be a good opportunity to use my flexible tripod and wrap it around one of the trees so the flood water can't possibly take it cuz I think this is going to be one we might be able to get a good blast going through.

[00:00:57]There's the old great mangled by the excavator.

[00:01:02]Come over here.

[00:01:04]The beaver dam drops down fast into very deep murky water probably full of leeches.

[00:01:12]By the looks of it, I think this beaver may have been relocated because I don't see any recent evidence. They've been relocating them around this area like crazy. So, once we remove these blockages, they're not going to be returning.

[00:01:26]So, there's an old lodge and there's another lodge down the road, but neither of them look recently worked on.

[00:01:34]They recently got rid of them. So, now we're going to determine can I step on this?

[00:01:39]Sort of kind of. I can't step any further out.

[00:01:43]I don't see any quite yet, but I'm sure there's leeches and me just being here will probably attract them over.

[00:01:49]How far in does the dam go?

[00:01:53]I think I can definitely get some going.

[00:01:54]Hopefully, we get some water going over the top that helps us dig out the mud.

[00:02:00]Cuz once you get a little bit of water going through, it quickly erodes the mud, exposing more sticks, and it's easier to pull apart.

[00:02:08]I think we should be able to do it no problem. If you listen carefully, you can absolutely hear the tree harvester going through the woods.

[00:02:16]But, we don't have to worry about trucks. They're turning around before they get to this point.

[00:02:23]I think they might not even be running the trucks until they're done blasting.

[00:02:28]Pretty cool.

[00:02:31]All right, everyone.

[00:02:33]Camera number two is going.

[00:02:37]This is the first time I've ever done a setup like this. Usually, when I think a lot of water's going to come out like this, I'll put the camera on top of it, showing it coming out from overhead, but a lot of people don't like that because they feel like you can see more of this way. But, that's how you lose a camera.

[00:02:56]Could take the whole tripod, but now that it's in a tree, I feel pretty safe doing it.

[00:03:04]Anyways, the pipe looks like it's in good shape.

[00:03:07]Time to go.

[00:03:20]Now, let's see if the water's too deep.

[00:03:22]Can I get the camera out here with me at all?

[00:03:27]Or maybe off to the side like this.

[00:03:32]How deep's this water? Not too, too bad.

[00:03:35]It drops in quickly, but I think I could put you right here.

[00:03:41]Just like that.

[00:03:45]Let's get to work.

[00:04:02]>> It's mostly mud. That's good.

[00:04:11]It goes in a bit though, so we got to get some current.

[00:04:18]Stuff is way heavier than you might think it is.

[00:04:29]I really don't want to go in this water.

[00:04:32]Hey, there is a massive ram's horn snail. One of the biggest I've ever seen.

[00:04:42]With an egg mass on it. I thought it was a leech.

[00:04:45]It's not the snail's eggs or anything.

[00:04:50]Could be leech eggs.

[00:04:52]I see multiple ram's horn snails actually.

[00:05:17]Finally got to the end of it. We need to make some current so we can start pushing instead of pulling. It's difficult to pull out against water pressure.

[00:05:32]We got a little bit coming over.

[00:05:43]Oh, those beavers making such a mess.

[00:06:31]There's a giant white-faced hornet hive in there.

[00:06:37]But it's old, thankfully.

[00:06:40]And I do see a leech.

[00:06:58]It might look like I'm being counterproductive, but once we get it surging everything that I'm forcing out there will be able to just pass on through.

[00:07:12]If I can even get it.

[00:07:14]Cuz I'm barely touching the backside of the dam.

[00:07:29]Beavers.

[00:07:49]>> Now, I'm getting flooded, you beavers.

[00:09:14]It's just out of reach.

[00:09:18]Is there a long log I can use?

[00:10:00]>> That's so slippery. I got to do the bark end.

[00:10:34]Oh, we got the DAMN TO WASH OUT.

[00:10:37]OH MY GOSH, YES.

[00:10:39]The part that I couldn't reach washed out. Now I can get the rest of it, hopefully.

[00:10:45]You should see that on camera two. And camera one just got soaked by accident.

[00:10:50]I got to check up on it.

[00:10:52]Think we're fine.

[00:10:58]Now we might be able to get it open all the way.

[00:11:07]Good flow to let everything pass now.

[00:11:25]That pile drifted away in the wind.

[00:11:28]So it's gone.

[00:14:16]>> Because they're relocated, I'm trying to open it completely and very nicely.

[00:14:27]I don't feel excavator damage on this one, but there's still a bit of really hard dam on the bottom.

[00:14:34]Oh, you hear that?

[00:14:36]We are completely open at the entrance, but there's a little bit of stuff caked in there.

[00:14:42]It'll probably erode off, but I'm trying to GET IT TO GO.

[00:15:15]Almost done. It's really helping me. You can hear those rocks tumbling.

[00:15:20]You want the foundation in the front of to be down level with the pipe so nothing can get held up when it's done.

[00:15:28]I don't know if those sticks are going to float over again or not.

[00:15:31]They should make it through without the help of the beavers.

[00:15:45]Almost done.

[00:15:46]It's like 90% of the way.

[00:16:03]It's going fast now.

[00:16:08]Almost done.

[00:16:12]Yeah, this pipe's in good shape. Very little excavator damage.

[00:16:18]I want to hear that all the way in.

[00:16:40]Hear that? I reach in all the way.

[00:16:43]It's gone.

[00:16:46]The erosion really helped us.

[00:16:48]Make sure to clean up the end a little bit better.

[00:17:10]I think we're done.

[00:17:12]Maybe a little from this side.

[00:17:19]We'll leave this stick here just in case we ever have to do it again.

[00:17:25]Pretty long. I got to pull it out of the road.

[00:17:34]Hey, we're all set.

[00:17:42]That great is a little mangled, but I'm considering putting it back.

[00:17:47]I just know that stuff when the water drops and that starts having current, it'll likely come over here.

[00:17:59]And lately there's been a lot of muskrats around here that will help maintain beaver dams even when the beavers relocated, but they have trouble blocking something that is that open.

[00:18:13]Here's what it looked like before.

[00:18:16]And here's what it looks like now.

[00:18:22]Doing good. And you'll notice when you lower the level of a swamp, you'll start seeing bubbles coming up everywhere.

[00:18:29]It's because as the water drops, gases are able to be released. I had some people in my comments not understanding that at all saying that I was wrong because wouldn't more water pressure force the gas up?

[00:18:42]No, because what happens is the stuff rotting in the depths with a layer of mud on top of it, it forms the gas deep underwater.

[00:18:55]That water pressure against the mud is forcing those gas gas pockets.

[00:19:00]As the water pressure decreases against the mud, they can slip on through.

[00:19:06]Here's an overhead angle of what it looked like before.

[00:19:12]And here's what it looks like now.

[00:19:14]The whole pond is a little bit murky.

[00:19:16]You see all the sediment cuz it's eroding all sorts of spots that have been held up.

[00:19:22]Like look over there, you can really see current coming in draining that back section there.

[00:19:29]But still not a lot of water. We're dropping fairly fast. But I see current coming out of this whole other area of the drainage ditch which eventually might pull that stuff over.

[00:19:38]But I think most of it'll pass.

[00:19:41]But we're working in this area for a while. We'll check it out in a day or so. Make sure.

[00:19:46]But you see there's random bubbles coming up everywhere.

[00:19:49]Now let's go look at the other side. I think the flow is actually slowed down from its maximum.

[00:19:54]So I'll have to show you all that.

[00:20:01]Here's what the end of the pipe before looked like.

[00:20:06]And here's what it looks like now.

[00:20:08]Yep, we put that camera in a good spot.

[00:20:11]I think any tripod would have got ripped down.

[00:20:16]Look at the whole woods here is flooded in all different directions. Wow, look at that.

[00:20:22]That is a ton of water coming out. I really want to see camera number two and see if any like orange water or anything came out because that pipe really, really looked like it had some stuff built up. You see all these logs stuck around the trees?

[00:20:42]That would knock over a tripod. That's why I typically don't do that, but I'll start using my bendy tree tripod now.

[00:20:56]Here's what it looks like from the second camera's perspective.

[00:21:03]And here's what it looks like now.

[00:21:06]Pretty good.

[00:21:07]Here's what it looked at. Here's what it looked like at its possible maximum flow.

[00:21:14]And here's what it looks like now.

[00:21:17]That only took us 17 minutes of effort.

[00:21:20]We did really, really good.

[00:21:23]Look at all that flow.

[00:21:28]Well, time to grab camera number two out of the tree with its bendy tripod. I actually got that tripod for free years ago with some other piece of equipment. I'm not sure what exactly.

[00:21:44]Look at all this.

[00:21:47]Look at all that good flow pushing over the grass. You can tell it hasn't flowed like this in a while. You see how small the creek bed is in the middle of that grass.

[00:21:56]Let's take a look inside.

[00:21:59]Wow. We're going to zoom on into where that dam was.

[00:22:03]Completely gone. Here's what it looked like before.

[00:22:09]And here's what it looks like now.

[00:22:11]Really, really big difference.

[00:22:14]We got it completely open.

[00:22:17]Going good. I'm sure it's quickly dropping now as it runs out of water pressure.

[00:22:23]That's why I try to do these very, very quickly cuz that water pressure really helps erode the mud.

[00:22:31]And then the sticks have no structure without the mud.

[00:22:36]The mud is a sealer, a gasket.

[00:22:39]The sticks are the structure of the dam.

[00:22:46]Well, we'll leave this as a shorter video.

[00:22:50]Oh, it looks like some of that debris is slowly creeping its way over because as it gets lower, you'll have more currents coming out of the corners.

[00:23:01]Just think of a pond like a bowl.

[00:23:04]It looks like it it feels like it's draining faster towards you get to the tapered bottom.

[00:23:08]So, yeah, I'm going to stick around.

[00:23:10]Watch some of those sticks come on over.

[00:23:12]Make sure they pass cleanly without clogging us up.

[00:23:15]Yep, they're slowly coming back over cuz there's a breeze, a wind coming over, and that's what forced it into that corner. But, now it appears the water current is now stronger than the wind, so it's slowly drifting itself back over, but I'll wait for it.

[00:23:28]All right, yep, the piles are finally coming over in the current. So, that'll be fun to watch.

[00:23:34]We've already dropped about half a foot on the pond. We'll probably drop nearly 3 ft by the end of it.

[00:23:39]And going to have something to drink.

[00:23:44]This is our second unclogging of the day.

[00:23:47]Biggest one of the day.

[00:23:50]We have five more on the list to check out today. Of those five, I'm very confident with two of them.

[00:23:57]The rest of them I don't know about it.

[00:24:00]We'll probably just inspect and put up ribbons accordingly. Whether they pass inspection or not. They're all going to fail because of the blockage if we can't get them. But, this one beaver trapper already got rid of the beaver. It's possible there's muskrats, but no need to hang up any ribbon here cuz this pipe's in perfect condition and we just unclogged it.

[00:24:20]But, we're about to watch a bunch of debris come in here now.

[00:24:30]Here it comes.

[00:24:34]It's still fighting that wind.

[00:24:37]If there was no wind, it would be coming over a little bit straighter.

[00:24:44]Come on, logs.

[00:24:52]I paused it for a minute, but here we go.

[00:24:56]Here it comes.

[00:24:58]You can see the random gas bubbles coming up as we lose pressure.

[00:25:03]I don't see a single thing here that's going to get stuck.

[00:25:06]Nothing here is long enough to cross over that pipe by the looks of it.

[00:25:10]Especially coming in at that angle.

[00:25:13]Here it comes.

[00:25:19]This is a satisfying break time.

[00:25:23]That one was not that hard to pull apart, but some beaver dams are back-breaking. The stuff you have to pull out of there.

[00:25:29]But the thing is many of those sticks go through the entire dam. So, as you're pulling sticks out, you now created a leak, which quickly starts eroding the mud, and that hole gets bigger and bigger.

[00:25:42]It looks like everything's going to nicely pass through now.

[00:25:47]The stuff would really only get stuck when the water's gone and there's no pressure. You saw how there was really no water coming out when we arrived. Oh, there's a leech attached to that one.

[00:25:56]There he goes.

[00:26:01]Yeah, if this stuff doesn't make it over to the pipe when there's just inches of water, it might get stuck at something.

[00:26:08]But it's now got 100% of usable capacity.

[00:26:20]I think I'll hang out for a little bit longer and watch these blobs come in.

[00:26:23]They should be over soon.

[00:26:26]And I'll show you what the water level looks like right when I leave.

[00:26:29]Cuz this is dropping quickly and it's going to just Well, the water is leaving slower as the water drops.

[00:26:36]But there's less water as it drops. Like I said, a bowl.

[00:26:41]Okay, we just got it all to come over.

[00:26:44]I took the long log, got in the water there. I kept pushing, pushing, push, lift up, push, lift up. Push, lift up.

[00:26:53]To create artificial current, which made everything come over, so I don't have to worry later about the stuff getting stuck.

[00:27:02]It's the wind. Usually, I would push it out there and the current would drag it right back through.

[00:27:09]I think we got it now.

[00:27:13]I don't care about those pieces. I care about the slightly larger ones as the water drops.

[00:27:23]All right, wait a minute.

[00:27:25]We're going to race that this one to the next side, cuz that's recognizable.

[00:27:32]As soon as it enters the pipe, it quickly picks up speed.

[00:27:42]Do we see it?

[00:27:44]Uh yep, there it is.

[00:27:51]Here it comes another big one.

[00:28:01]Thanks for watching, everyone. Have a great day.

[00:28:05]We'll leave it at this.

[00:28:08]All right, everyone.

[00:28:09]See all the trucks a bit crooked? The edge of the road is actually very soft.

[00:28:15]That's what the beavers do when they have the water level that high.

[00:28:18]Now it'll be able to dry out a little bit.

[00:28:22]So that's nice, and those sticks I just showed you are now entering the pipe.

[00:28:29]But, time to head on out to some other locations, and oh, look at this.

[00:28:34]We've already arrived at our next location.

[00:28:37]We're going to try to get this one drained now, too.

[00:28:41]One after another, beavers clogged all the pipes.

[00:28:46]Here it is.

[00:28:49]Next site.

[00:28:53]I'll show it to you, but I'll probably break it into a second video.

[00:28:57]Yep, usually on these logging roads I'll drive hundreds of miles a day, but today we might not even get to drive 12 or 10 because one after another we're either going to get it or we're going to flag it for the road crew, which is working half a mile up the road.

[00:29:15]They are fixing the road as they're inching closer, but the beaver trapper already got it done. So, look at that plunge pool. We got no water really flowing.

[00:29:26]Yep, that's exactly where it is. I don't think it's that deep, honestly. I'm I got to give this one a try.

[00:29:32]But, I'll see you in tomorrow's episode for this one.

[00:30:42]It's mostly mud, that's good.

[00:30:51]It goes in a bit though, so we got to get some current.

[00:30:58]This stuff is way heavier than you might think it is.

[00:31:09]I really don't want to go in this water.

[00:31:31]Finally got to the end of it. We need to make some current so we can start pushing instead of pulling.

[00:31:41]It's difficult to pull out against water pressure.

[00:32:24]Oh, we got THE DAM TO WASH OUT.

[00:32:28]YOU SHOULD SEE THAT ON CAMERA TOO. And camera one just got soaked by accident.

[00:32:48]>> Hey, we're all set.

[00:32:52]All right, everyone. We are back 8 hours later.

[00:32:57]All right, everyone. We are back 8 hours later right before the sun goes down.

[00:33:02]The water level has dropped a ton from the top of this pipe.

[00:33:08]Here's what the water level looked like before we started.

[00:33:15]And here's what it looks like now, all drained back.

[00:33:19]We drained back multiple feet today.

[00:33:22]See all the way down to the bottom, full capacity, but that's the beaver dam foundation you see left over.

[00:33:29]All of that.

[00:33:32]But nice and low.

[00:33:34]Every stick cleared.

[00:33:38]Everything back there is all drained.

[00:33:39]That can dry out.

[00:33:41]See all the trees that died from being flooded out.

[00:33:46]Now downstream, we had it going really, really good earlier.

[00:33:53]Now you'll see all the dried up debris in here.

[00:33:57]Look at that.

[00:33:58]Here's what it looked like at maximum flow.

[00:34:03]And here's what it looks like now.

[00:34:06]Back to normal.

[00:34:08]Thanks for watching, everyone.

[00:34:10]Have a great day.