Twin Lakes — Field Notes

Twin Lakes seen from the air, a turquoise channel running between sandbars toward the lake, mountains beyond

colorado
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A wooded sandbar dividing two arms of Twin Lakes, pale sand curving between turquoise water — Licensed through Amazing Aerial Agency

Shallow turquoise water over a rippled sand shelf at the edge of Twin Lakes — Licensed through Amazing Aerial Agency

Twin Lakes sits at about 9,200 feet in Lake County, at the eastern foot of Independence Pass. The lakes are glacial; dams later turned them into working storage for the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, and a tunnel carries part of that water under the divide to the Front Range.

So the pale flats in these frames are the reservoir doing its job, not a lake disappearing. Storage fills on snowmelt and draws down through the summer as water goes downstream. In mid-August 2026 Twin Lakes held about 92,000 acre-feet — roughly 91% of normal for the date. A little dry. Not a story.

What the low water leaves behind is the reason to fly it: a sandbar splitting two arms of the lake, a channel running turquoise between them, and a shelf of rippled sand you only see from above.

The shoreline moves every year