Low Green Mountain Reservoir reveals long-lost vehicles, giving Colorado crews rare chance to clean up

As drought continues to drain reservoirs across Colorado's high country, the dropping water at Green Mountain Reservoir has uncovered something unexpected: decades-old vehicles that have been sitting beneath the surface for years.

The unusually low water levels have created a rare opportunity for the U.S. Forest Service and the Summit County Sheriff's Office and Summit County Water Rescue Team members to remove debris that normally sits under 30 to 40 feet of water.

Among the discoveries are an ATV that fell through the ice around 2018 and a snowmobile that appears to date back to the 1990s.

"We're not sure when the snowmobile fell through the ice, but we know that the ATV fell in the ice around 2018. And now we have the perfect opportunity to recover it," Daniel Morris, recreation staff officer for the U.S. Forest Service's Dillon Ranger District said.

Crews floated the ATV through the remaining water using inflatable flotation devices before towing it across the shoreline. While the vehicle appeared close to dry land, thick mud made the recovery far more difficult than it looked.

The cleanup effort is about more than removing abandoned recreational vehicles. Morris said it's also about protecting one of Colorado's water supplies.

"This is drinking water for someone down the line, and it's part of the forest so we try to get out and clean things up as we see them," he said.

The Forest Service has already been contacted by the ATV's owner, who plans to retrieve it, though Morris joked the machine has likely "seen its better days." The snowmobile will also be removed after crews haul it off the exposed shoreline.

The discoveries highlight just how dramatically reservoir levels have fallen this year following one of the driest winters in recent memory.

"It's definitely shocking. I mean, I drive by here every day, and I've been kind of watching it as it goes down and every day, you know, it just keeps creeping down," Morris said.

In a typical year, the area where Your Reporter in the mountains Spencer Wilson hosted the interview with Morris would have been very wet.

"We'd probably be under 30 or 40 feet of water," Morris said.

And as the reservoir continues to recede, officials expect there could be more surprises waiting beneath the surface.

"We really don't know what's under there, because I don't think the water has been this low since the '60s, so there's really no telling what could emerge at some point from the depths," Morris said. "We might be doing this again in a couple of weeks if something pops up."

While the recovered ATV and snowmobile may be unusual finds, Morris said they're also a reminder of the broader impacts of Colorado's ongoing drought.

"It absolutely highlights the importance of water in the West," he said. "We all noticed it this winter when we didn't get the winter that we typically have, and we've seen that in the levels of the reservoirs and some of those rivers that are usually running right now that you could raft that are not usable at the moment."