Given our first 70 degree beautiful weather of the year, I ventured over to Idaho chasing rumors of a undeveloped "secret" bouldering area somewhere between Tetonia & Rexburg. We found the spot and, indeed, there were boulders. After spending a few hours in this oddly shaped river basin, it was obvious something crazy had transpired that exposed these unlikely boulders, ripped apart the valley and left trees on top of rocks and wild erosion 200ft up on the sides of the canyon.

Returning home satisfied after a good afternoon pebble pinching in the sun, I checked out what could have happened. As it turned out, a dam broke at that very spot 34 years ago... In 1975 the Federal Bureau of Reclamation built a damn at that spot to help farmers with irrigation. On Saturday, June 5, 1976, at 7:30 a.m., a muddy leak appeared at the base of the dam, but engineers didn't think it was serious. By 9:30 a.m., the downstream face of the dam had developed a wet spot spurting water at 20 to 30 cubic feet per second and bulldozers were sent in to patch it. Within the hour, the hole literally swallowed the bulldozers—and left totally helpless—an evacuation was ordered.

Just before noon, the crest of the dam sagged and collapsed into the reservoir; two minutes later the remainder of the right-bank third of the main dam wall disintegrated. Over 2,000,000 cubic feet per second of sediment filled water emptied out of the reservoir. By 8:00 p.m. that evening, the reservoir was empty, 11 people and 13,000 head of cattle had died and the local agricultural communities of Wilford and Sugar City had been literally wiped from the river bank.

Check out the craziness...