The Sunken iPhone Treasure

As mentioned in our previous post on our favorite accessories, a waterproof phone case is one of the cheapest, yet most valuable accessories you can have.  We discovered the value of these the hard way, thanks to an act of foolishness, or carelessness, or clumsiness, or whatever you want to attribute it to... 

Gross Reservoir: vast, black, DEEP

On a pleasant August day in 2019, we were enjoying a nice afternoon in the central part of Gross Reservoir with the water at full pool.  We had just found a cozy little cove to float in place and listen to music through our Barnacle speaker.  I decided to paddle out a dozen or so yards toward the mouth of the cove to snap some pictures of this idyllic place.  Meanwhile, Kristy was floating in the middle of cove, a perfectly positioned subject between two rocks flanking the cove. I paddled past her, with her phone in her hand scrolling through photos, or a playlist, or who knows what...

The pleasant little cove, labled "Madison" on the map

As I was turning around to take my photos, I heard the music from our speaker abruptly stop and saw Kristy feverishly probing and twisting her paddle blade down into the water.  My immediate, unvocalized reaction was something like "Stop tooling around with your paddle and turn 'Sound of Winter' back on!"--not connecting the dots that the iPhone transmitting the music had just sunk down into the water...

It happened here.  Right where the paddleboard is.

She informed me that the iPhone was in a protective case with a lanyard, so our hope was that  we could poke something down and maybe hook the lanyard.  But this was futile as the water was obviously deeper than our paddles could reach, and looked to be at least 10 feet deep based on the steepness of the banks.  It didn't take long for the reality to set in that we had just lost a four-month-old iPhone X that was uninsured and wasn't anywhere near being paid off yet...

Fast forward a couple months, one of us has the idea that maybe we could recover the phone carcass if we return to the scene of the crime at a lower water level.  Maybe 1% chance?Unfortunately, Gross Reservoir's boating had ended before the water receded anywhere close to where we might be able to reach the iPhone.  But luckily, the cove was accessible-ish from the forest service road that leads to the Winiger Ridge backcountry camping areas.  So we drove our jeep there on a pleasant September day and hiked along the shoreline to the cove...

September colors at Gross Reservoir, the Cove beyond

Our timing to find the water level about 10 feet down was correct.  But our prediction of a 10 foot depth for the phone was way off.  The middle of the cove--where we guessed the phone lay--still had 10 feet of water depth.  Even looking down from the rock outcrops that guard the cove, it was impossible to see more than a few down through the cold, black water.  Fail...

Still underwater...by a LOT

Last chance--it's now November of 2019.  A few moderate snowstorms had come and gone but nothing too heavy yet.  But a major storm was on track to drop feet of snow in the coming days.  Surprisingly, the access road gate at the Forsythe Trailhead was still open and the road, despite some snow in the shady spots, was still navigable.  We made another family trek around the shoreline--this time much chillier and bathtub ring twice as wide.  The cove looked like it would be mostly drained but who knows what we would find when we got there.  I figured we would just see the rocks and dirt of the lakebed.  1% chance of finding it means 99% chance of not finding it...

The water between the two rocks in this September
photo will need to be drained out.

By now, the tiny rock poking of the water in August was a massive outcrop towering over the shoreline.  After 20 minutes of hiking, we were finally about to reach the moment of truth.   I scrambled up to the top of the outcrop, peered over the other side and saw...

Surprise!  Can you find it?  Scroll down for Close-up.

...exactly what I should have:  an iPhone in a plastic protected just chillin on the dirt in the deepest part of the cove!  This was very exciting.  The now new-ish, still mostly unpaid iPhone X might just be a paperweight, but we did manage to re-unite with it.  And most importantly, we were no longer litterbugs!  The case looked vacuum sealed, with all the air pressed out of it...

Close-Up

Once we arrived back to our vehicle, we plugged it in--for kicks--to the semi-functional cigar charger of the 18-year-old jeep.  About five minutes into our return trip:

Since then, we affectionately refer to her as "Madison," inspired by the movie Splash.

The phone case: muddy but intact!

Madison today

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"So you're sayin' there's a chance??!"