Sticky Wicket Traditional Cache
Touchstone: Thanks for all the great logs. Time to put this one out to memory lane.
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Located conveniently off of Hwy 152, this should be a relatively easy grab and also an opportunity for a rest stop. The nearby Visitor's Center offers some very interesting information about the Reservoir and the California Aquaduct system. This is a sign only micro and bring your own pen.
At the coordinates on the cache page you'll find what is called a "wicket". Wicket's are basically devices which large hydroelectric turbin generators use to channel the flow of water to the large blades inside that turn the generator. Presumeably this wicket was damaged and was unuseable at the nearby power generating plant, so now it's here as a piece of industrial sculpture to look at and play on.
San Luis Dam is a dam that creates San Luis Reservoir, which serves as an off-stream reservoir for the California State Water Project. It is also known as the B.F. Sisk Dam, after Bernie Sisk. The earth-fill gravity dam is 305 feet (93 m) tall and was completed in 1967. It is located between Los Banos, California and Gilroy, California along Pacheco Pass. San Luis Reservoir is the largest off-stream reservoir in the United States, with a capacity of 2,041,000 acre-feet (2.52 km³). San Luis Creek is a small stream that flows through the area and it is sometimes listed as the dam's watershed, even though it is an off-stream reservoir. The dam is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, but is operated by the California Department of Water Resources to store water for its State Water Project.
San Luis Reservoir and Gianelli Forebay serve as the upper and lower reservoirs for the Gianelli pumped storage hydroelectric plant. The plants eight Francis turbines produce a combined 424 MW. The sale of peak electricity lowers the overall cost of operating the State Water Project, particularly the California Aqueduct. A short 230 kV power line heads eastward to deliver this electricity to Northern California's electricity backbone, Path 15.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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