Some Porter Creek residents are wondering why the water level in their neighbourhood lake has dropped so much in such a short period of time.

Hidden Lake is located behind Porter Creek Secondary School, and is surrounded by walking trails that are popular and well-used by area residents.

The lake level has fallen several feet in the last month or two.

One woman who lives close to the lake estimates the level has gone down by about 10 feet, or three metres.

Not only are locals wondering how it could drop so much, but they’re also wondering where the water is going.

“It’s a very curious thing,” Darlene Griffis told the Star this week.

Griffis has lived in the area for 25 years. Her kids grew up around the lake and she continues to walk her dog there regularly.

Griffis said the level of Hidden Lake has actually gone up in the last four or five years, to the point where its shoreline has expanded and trees along the edge have been drowned out.

It was still high at the beginning of the summer, but since June the lake level has fallen dramatically, she said.

Griffis said with all the rain so far this summer, you’d think it would still be full.

She’s never seen anything like it in her 25 years living in the area.

It’s not just her wondering about it, she said.

Griffis said people are talking about it, and various theories have been thrown out.

The hydrologist for the Yukon government is away from the office this week and unavailable to offer a comment.

Where the top of the lake used to be less than two months ago, there are now several metres of dead trees and brush lining the shoreline.

In her 11 years living in the area, Doris Wurfbaum has not seen anything like it either.

“With all the rain we had, you would think it would be rising, and it is shrinking by the day,” she said in an interview.

After returning home Thursday from a week away, Wurfbaum estimates the lake has gone down by another couple of feet.

She said when she left last week, the beaver lodge on the lake was still partially submerged, but it was completely out of water this morning.

Wurfbaum said in her time living in the area since 2009, beavers only started showing up in 2017.

She wonders if the presence of beavers has somehow had an effect on the lake, perhaps damming Porter Creek that feeds into the lake, but that’s only speculation on her part.

But it still remains ever so curious for her, and others.

“Everybody is commenting on it,” Wurfbaum said. “You run into people they say, ‘God what is going on with the lake?’”

She said she spoke one day to an oldtimer who was sitting on a bench along one of the trails.

He’s been around since the 1970s and he commented Hidden Lake was once much smaller than it is today, she said.

Wurfaum is also wondering what will happen from an ecological point of view if the water level keeps falling.

There are fish in the lake, and people fish there in the summer and in the winter, she said.

Wurfbaum said bald eagles regularly frequent the lake.