Above the banks of Lake Nighthorse, Hunter Frost, a sophomore at Ignacio High School, came upon a plaque noting the Ute Trail – a traditional route between Ignacio and Towaoc – now lies under the reservoir.
“Did you know that? The Ute Trail is under water now,” he told a classmate.
Frost thought about it for a moment.
“Cool,” he said. “We’re fishes.”
Four students from Ignacio High School, along with teacher Lynda Grove D’Wolf, toured Lake Nighthorse and the Animas-La Plata water project on Monday with an eye to the future and an appreciation for the past.
Lake Nighthorse, southwest of Durango, holds 123,000 acre-feet of water, which is about 40 billion gallons.
D’Wolf’s class studies the Ute language, the first class at IHS to do so. Monday’s visit to Lake Nighthorse – a first for the students – was a field trip for the group.
“We wanted to come to the dam to show them what it was and how it came to be,” D’Wolf said.
The class drove to the top of the dam, walked along an underground pipeline that extends into the reservoir and toured areas where the dam takes water in and – someday – will release it to tribes and other water users with a stake in the A-LP.
The Southern Ute Indian Tribe has about 1,600 members, and few grow up hearing the language at home. Only a few dozen people speak the language fluently. D’Wolf’s class, which began in the fall, is part of her effort to preserve the language. She also helped create a Ute language application, and she is the author of a self-published book, The life and times of a Ute woman: Where did it all go?
When it was time to go to the next site, D’Wolf spoke Ute when she told the students to move along.
On Monday, her daughter, Lalena Weasel, accompanied the class. Weasel is a materials engineer for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and has worked on the A-LP since 2003.
One day while driving around with a co-worker, Weasel saw a bald eagle pluck a fingerling from the lake and soar off, then she saw a red wolf with nine pups. After that, she came upon a mountain lion dragging a doe across a road. All in the same night.
Weasel has strong opinions on the battle for water stemming from the A-LP. Her father, Terry Knight, was a tribal chairman in the 1980s who advocated for the project.
“It’s a reality that’s finally honored,” she said. “It is a Ute water treaty. It’s not ‘Everybody jump in and get what you want out of it.’ Most people, they’re greedy, and it’s not right.”
No water has been released to the tribes and water districts that will benefit. That’s about five years away, said John McKay, a plant mechanic who accompanied the class. Although the reservoir is full, the users still need to build substantial infrastructure to put the water to use.
“This is an enormous, wide-scale project, and this is the first step,” he said.
The Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes will be the primary beneficiaries, followed by the San Juan Water Commission, the state of Colorado, the Navajo Nation and the Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District.
The students said they never had seen anything like this dam. They walked 750 feet back into a tunnel that houses the outgoing pipeline, climbing a tall ladder into a small room known as the guard gate chamber. McKay explained they were directly underneath the earthen dam. The pipeline extends another 750 feet into the lake itself.
Frost took the opportunity to sing a deep note in the domed room, letting the sound reverberate around his classmates.
Sophomore Alana Watt emerged from the tunnel impressed.
“It was the coolest thing I’ve ever been in,” she said.