Lake Powell Beach Finder

What it does

Lake Powell is at its lowest since 1972 and still falling, so every chart and every trip report is describing a shoreline that no longer exists. This takes the live water level from the Bureau of Reclamation, drops it onto the USGS 1 m topobathymetric model of the lake floor, and works out which ground is beach right now — gentle enough to walk a boat onto, big enough to camp on, with deep enough water off the front to get to it.

How far you can actually get

Range is real navigable distance through the water, routed through the drowned canyons rather than measured straight across the rock. Only two ramps on the whole reservoir still float a motorboat, so the launch point decides the trip before the beach does.

What it is honest about

• Ranking is driven by shape — slope, area, waterfront, approach depth, shelter. That part is checked against Reclamation's own published surface areas and against real buoy mileage.
• Telling sand from rock in a photograph is not solved. Tested against ground truth it could not separate known beaches from known slickrock, so it now counts for very little in the score. Look at the imagery yourself.
• Switch the satellite layer and check the lake level each photo was taken at. A cove that looks drowned may simply be an old picture.

Sources

• USGS / Reclamation Lake Powell topobathymetric DEM, 1 m
• Bureau of Reclamation daily reservoir elevations
• Esri World Imagery; USDA NAIP via Microsoft Planetary Computer
• OpenStreetMap place names