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Up above Thistle there’s a cool spot where I hiked up years ago and climbed over a huge drain pipe and down the other side and hid a cache there.
The drain tunnel was created to drain the lake that was created in 1983 by the landslide, the lake that quickly rose and flooded out the town of Thistle.
Later on I took friends back to help them find the way to finding my geocache.
There was some pretty cool graffiti up there and a huge rattlesnake, see the pictures below.
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Jacob,
The tunnel you are showing was officially called the “Diversion Tunnel” and along with the pumps, it kept the water from flowing over the top of the dam. It could not “drain” the lake since that tunnel was located at the top of the dam, and would need to be at the bottom of the lake in order to drain it. Therefore another tunnel was constructed in order to drain the lake. It was officially called the “Drain Tunnel” and I will try to attach a photo of both tunnels in operation, at the start of the draining, while the “Diversion Tunnel” was still keeping the water from flowing over the top. The Drain Tunnel began operation October 1, 1983 and continued to drain the lake until the lake was “empty” in February 1984, afterwhich all the water from the South side of the dam continued to flow through the “Drain Tunnel”, which continues to this day.