Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Disappearing Dirty Dancing Lake

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

The lake from one of the all-time great movies (search your feelings, you’ll find that it’s true) is turning into a dried up mudhole. Turns out it has some unusual features. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, Jerry's over there. This is short stuff, giddy up.

Now I've had the time of our life. That's pretty good. I can't even sing that without thinking of the great Simpsons joke. Yep, same here. The half time of our life. Yep, that was so great. With Dolly Parton and Snoopy.

Oh, that's right. Yeah, that was a good one. So we're talking about dirty dancing, and specifically Mountain Lake, outside of Blacksburg, Virginia, where that was the location of Kellerman's Lodge, Mountain Lake Lodge, doubled as Kellerman's, for the 87 classic film, Dirty Dancing.

It did, and that Lake actually was a character in the film because they practiced in a little bit of foreshadowing, Johnny Castle and Baby, practiced their dance move where he lifts her up over his head, which is basically the thing that brings the whole house down in the movie. It's like the climax of the movie is this dance move, and they practice it in the lake.

That's right, quick shout out. Jennifer Gray is still around and great. She was in that TV show that I binged, Red Oaks, that is so fantastic that our buddy John Hodgman is in. She plays the mom and she's wonderful. That's great. I gotta check that show out. Patrick Swayze has left us RIP.

Yeah, he was wonderful, man. Hell of a dancer, great fighter, pretty good actor, great singer. She's like the wind. Okay. I thought it was a good song. I get chills every time I hear it still. Well, I say, I know this is short stuff,

but I'll rank it as dancer, fighter, actor, singer in order of his best, you know, his talents. I won't dispute that order, but it's just a spectrum of greatness. Okay. Loved him, man. He's great. So that's what I say.

So the actual name of that lake, like you said, is Mountain Lake, and the actual name of the resort that was supposedly Kellerman's Resort, which I think it was supposed to be in like the Poconos, wasn't it? Yeah. Not Virginia, but there's the resort

is actually in reality called Mountain Lake Lodge. And the people who own Mountain Lake Lodge and the people who are investors in Mountain Lake Lodge, they're not very happy about things these days because Mountain Lake keeps draining and it keeps draining. And what was once a lodge and a resort that was based on fun and the sun on this lake in Virginia

is now turning to things like archery and horseback rides and telling guests exactly why the lake is about at 35% of its normal capacity. Yeah. If you just Google dirty dancing lake today or gazebo or boardwalk, and you will see that that gazebo and dock boardwalk are in the middle of a field. Yeah. It's really creepy.

Yeah. It's very weird. And we're going to tell you why. Right now, Mountain Lake is one of two, only two natural lakes in Virginia. Georgia has zero. They have two in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. And over the years, and we're talking every few hundred years, this lake empties and fills back up again, naturally.

Yeah. Which is kind of weird. And over the course of the 6,000 years that this lake has been around, which I just find that so fascinating. Don't you that a lake has only been around for 6,000 years? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. But anyway, the 6,000 years it's been around, it's actually emptied three different times,

Chuck Lake, completely emptied. Yeah. So there's two guys that figure heavily in sort of why this Mountain Lake is like it is. There's this one guy, what's his name? Chester Watts? Chester Skip Watts. Right. Because Skip is derivative of Chester, obviously. So he's a geologist and he knows a lot about it. And there's this other guy, John Cowley, C-A-W-L-E-Y

that wrote his doctoral thesis on Mountain Lake in 1999. And they have explained that Mountain Lake has holes. That has little holes on the bottom. A lot of them that continually drain this water out. And they've done dye test, I think Watts did the dye test and found that this water's coming out about a mile from here. And it's been doing this for 6,000 years.

They literally got to the bottom of it. So that's it. I mean, that's the mystery, holes. But the thing is, is the people over at Mountain Lake Lodge wanna know why is it getting worse? Like why would this, if these holes have been here for all 6,000 years, first of all, why didn't we start to notice this until like 2002?

And secondly, like why isn't it filling back up? Why does it just keep going down and down and down? And so how I think, was it Cowley who explained it as a water budget? Yeah, he said, if you think of it like a bank account, you got money coming in, you got money coming out, you want more money coming in so that bank account gets bigger.

And it's the same with this lake. You have inflow and outflow. And at various times throughout the history of this lake, there's been more outflow than inflow. Right, and so there was a drought that actually started in the 90s that led to this lower inflow, and which meant that there was more outflow,

which explains it partially, but it doesn't fully explain it. We'll really like reveal what's going on with this mystery after these messages. Ooh. Just like the number of stars in the sky, there is so much stuff you should know. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher

and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll be there for you, and so will my husband, Michael, and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. OK, Chuck. So there was a drought, which means that there's more water going out

than is coming in. That's great, because the drought ended. But the people at Mountain Lake Lodge said, well, the drought ended, everybody, and this lake is still not filling up. What is the deal? They actually were so upset about this. They paid Jerry Seinfeld to come get on the phone

and ask what the deal was about it. That was a lot of money, too. But it got everyone's attention. So he said there's a few reasons. He said it's not just one thing. You can't say it's even these two things. It's sort of multifaceted. He said it's three.

It's only three. So you've got the drought, which did not help. You've got when Mountain Lake Lodge was built a conference center above the lake. And to comply with building this thing, they had to construct stormwater management basins. And they said, you know what? What will probably happen is, I don't know if they said that.

But what they assumed, I guess, would happen was that water would still get to the lake as groundwater. But they found out that wasn't happening. It was going to a creek. Yeah. Is that what you say? You call it a creek? No, it's a creek.

Boy, you just threw me off. Some people say creek, though, right? Sure. I think country folk who say wash clothes in the creek. Exactly. So that was kind of a big surprise that that water wasn't going where they thought it would. Because I guess these things are fairly close to the lake.

And since it's above it, they just assumed it trickled down. So that's a big problem, right? And so the geologists are saying, well, I guess one thing you could do is plug the holes if you want. And then hopefully the rainfall will kind of raise the levels. But you want to plug these holes one at a time. And Mountain Lake Lodge said too late, and they plugged them all at once.

And scared the bejesus out of the geologists. Well, and the reason they did this was because they knew that one of the other facets of why it was draining was the sediment cycle. And it's just like if something gets stuck in your sink drain, it's going to drain slower. And at various times throughout the history of this lake, there might be things either stuck in or not stuck in.

So it just happened that after dirty dancing, there was not much stuck. And so it was draining out a lot quicker than it normally might have. Yeah. Jennifer Gray was like, thank God Patrick Swayze wasn't alive to see this shameful thing. So how did they plug these holes?

Well, at first, apparently they were aware. I don't know if they lost memory of it or thought it was an anomaly or thought it would just go away. But in the first half of the 20th century at some point, Mountain Lake Lodge used mattresses to stuff into the holes. How big are these? I tried to find it. I don't know.

I'm not sure how big they are. But from what I understand, there's more there than they thought. Yeah. So one few mattresses isn't going to help. But also, what poor bellhop did they send down there to drag a mattress down to the bottom of a lake and try to stuff it in a hole? OK, sir.

Because you know that's who did it. Of course. So that was their first attempt. And the second attempt was much more technologically advanced. They stuffed dirt and clay into it. Yeah, dirt, clay, is that what the bentonite is? Yeah, it's like expanding clay. Yeah, that makes sense.

They should have got some of that foam stuff that you spray in mouse holes. They basically just sped up the, yeah, great stuff. They basically just sped up the sentiment cycle. But they overdid it because this lake said nature will find a way and just started popping new holes. Yeah, it's crazy. This reminds me of the Exploding Lakes episode way back when.

But yeah, the water level never got to full pond or full pool is what you can call it. Yeah, I like that more. Full pool. And there is water there. There's more than there was in 2008. Like if you look at pictures from 2008, that's when it was literally a field.

There is a little bit of water, but you can't canoe or anything. You can't swim. It's kind of sad, to be honest, to look at it. But there's something to be said for archery and horseback riding. Sure, yeah, especially archery on horseback. Oh, wow. You get some, you can level up.

You do that stuff. Yeah, they comp your room for the night. But Watt said that, you know what, they could redirect water from another local watershed, just gravity feed it down in there. He said that would probably do it, but you got to be really careful. Because like we've seen, like the domino effect when

you start messing with nature like that. But he said that would probably work if they want to explore that. I don't know if they are not, who knows. But we'll see. I don't know. The Mountain Lake Lodge board clearly does not bow before nature. No, it does not.

No. Well, that's it. I guess we'll have to revisit this in a few years to see what happens to Mountain Lake. Hopefully it'll come back. Not just for Mountain Lake Lodge, but for the culture as a whole, the culture that loves dirty dancing. That's right.

That means everybody that's short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.