KANE COUNTY, Utah — Marc Millecam is one of the last boaters to have walked the docks at Bullfrog Marina.
Millecam has a cabin cruiser here, and after spending the night in the boat anchored on Lake Powell, he put the vessel back in its Bullfrog slip for the final time.
Crews are towing Bullfrog Marina — and the boats tied to its docks — 3 miles up the lake this week. The docks will be reassembled as part of Halls Crossing Marina.
“I think it’s going to be OK,” Millecam said minutes after walking up the ramp to the Bullfrog parking lot. “It’s going to be better.”
The water level at Lake Powell has dropped about 30 feet in a year. The National Park Service, which manages the lake as part of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, is concerned that Bullfrog Marina will soon be too shallow to move boats in and out.
Aramark, the Park Service’s main vendor at Lake Powell, is disassembling and moving Bullfrog Marina. The move is expected to take all week.
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Monday, Aramark workers put gates up across the docks to keep any boater from walking onto them. Other workers were disconnecting the electricity and making other preparations.
Boat owners like Jay and Anastasia Slezak made their final preparations, too. The couple, from Holladay, said they fastened extra ties to secure their cabin cruiser to its Bullfrog slip.
The Slezaks are also preparing to drive more.
“If we have to drive to Halls, it’s going to be maybe another hour and a half — give or take,” Jay Slezak said.
There are still hundreds of feet of water in the lake’s main channels.
“I have people ask me all the time, ‘Well, isn’t the water getting low?’” Anastasia Slezak said. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s getting low, but there’s still plenty of lake to go play on.’
“Not everything is still open anymore because things have gotten so low.”
Millecam, of West Haven, said this is his fourth year with a boat on Lake Powell. While hitting outcroppings and other hazards have always been a concern here, he said the lowering water has made matters worse. That’s one reason he is all right with moving Bullfrog Marina rather than a temporary closure.
“Probably the best thing to relocate it into deeper water so they don’t have to do this all over again,” Millecam.
