SML Summer 2026: Navigating the Record Lows & Finding Hidden Shoreline Treasures

The water is receding. Five feet of history now sit exposed to the sun. At Smith Mountain Lake, the familiar has become foreign. The shoreline you knew last summer is gone. It has moved. It has retreated. It has revealed the bones of the earth. In June 2026, we are witnessing a landscape in transition. The gauge at the Smith Mountain Project reads 790 feet: a depth we haven't seen in a decade.