Pineview and Causey, the Ogden River's two reservoirs.

2026 is not a normal year at Pineview, and the honest page says so first. Ogden City is replacing the 36 inch drinking water pipeline that runs from its wellfield under the reservoir and down the canyon, 6.4 miles and roughly 100 million dollars of it, and it moved the reservoir crossing forward a year because Utah's 2025 to 2026 water year produced the lowest statewide snowpack on modern record and the water was already going to be low. The city is explicit that the reservoir is not being fully drained: crews lower the level, lay the new pipe beside the old inside the existing federal corridor, keep the old line in service, and keep it afterward as backup. Reclamation's own gauge told the story plainly in August 2026: about 25,000 acre feet in the pool and falling by the day, roughly a quarter of capacity and headed lower before the in-water work begins.

What that means on the ground, all dated: Anderson Cove's boat launch closed July 20, 2026 for low water, with the campground and day use staying open; Middle Inlet closed outright on August 19; Cemetery Point's ramp was still open in late August with the Forest Service watching the level; and Port Ramp and Windsurfer Beach have been fully closed since November 2025 anyway, for a ground-up reconstruction that includes a new day use site called New Point, with no published opening date. The city says refill begins by January 2027 and that an average snow season fills the reservoir back up. Fishing rules even bent to match: the wildlife division issued emergency 2026 limits so fish are used rather than wasted, through December 31 only.

Anderson Cove on the south shore is the reservoir's full-service address: a paved campground of 80 single sites, 18 tent sites, 9 doubles, 9 glamping units and 4 group sites for a hundred people each, with a store, a dump station, security lighting, a locked gate at 10 pm and a buoyed swimming cove on the beach. The 2026 prices, as booked through Recreation.gov: 38 dollars a night for a single site, 29 for tent-only, 119 for glamping, 23 dollars for day use and 25 to launch, each including a 3 dollar surcharge collected for Weber County and Huntsville Town. The season pass covering Pineview's fee sites runs 197 dollars.

The fine print is where trips are saved. Senior and Access interagency passes do not cover day use or launching here, an exclusion the fee pages state outright. Dogs are welcome in the campground, two per site on leash, and barred entirely from the day use area, the beach and the water. Weekends carry two night minimums, holidays three. And the summer season runs late April through late October with winter camping after, at lower winter rates, which quietly makes Anderson Cove the reservoir's year-round door.

The east shore is the beach side. Cemetery Point, at the end of the road through Huntsville, is a peninsula with a simple marina, a picnic ground under real shade, a buoyed swim cove and a ramp that was still open in late August 2026 with the Forest Service monitoring the falling water. It is day use only, first come, gates locked overnight, no dogs on the beach, no glass, no alcohol at the day use areas, and its name is a piece of straight history: the Huntsville Cemetery stands behind it, and Reclamation riprapped the shoreline to protect it when the pool was enlarged in 1957.

Two miles north, Middle Inlet is the reservable group site, a pavilion for 75 with grills and a dutch oven surface and its own swim cove, and in 2026 it is the drawdown's plainest casualty: the Forest Service closed it for low water on August 19, one day before this page's research date. When open it books at 300 dollars a day through Recreation.gov, brings no drinking water of its own, and allows no pets at all. Both sites share the practical east shore truth: you arrive through Huntsville's streets, the town enforces its parking, and the least impactful detour routes the town itself recommends are 7100 East and 6800 East.

Pineview keeps a free, quiet version of itself for anyone who does not need a ramp or a lawn. Quist Beach, also signed Pelican Beach, is a no-fee shoreline with vault toilets and no drinking water on the northeast side. The North Arm trailhead anchors the reservoir's calm end, where Utah's boating restricted area rule allows nothing stronger than an electric trolling motor in the designated North Arm, North Geertsen Bay and the Middle Fork arm, which makes the north end the paddler's water on the big reservoir by law rather than by luck. UDOT lists North Arm and Spring Creek as free access points, both with vault restrooms.

The west shore ties together on the Pineview West Trail, an easy 3.16 mile gravel path running the shoreline between the Pineview Trailhead at the south and North Arm at the north, with parking off SR-158. In 2026 its southern 0.92 miles are closed inside the Port Ramp construction area, along with Windsurfer Beach, while the Forest Service rebuilds the whole west shore complex: a reconstructed trailhead, a new parking lot, restrooms, picnic sites, an invasive species inspection area at the rebuilt ramp, and a brand new day use site named New Point, all driven by facilities that date to 1959 and a traffic pattern that empties onto a state highway. No opening date is published, and this page will not invent one.

Pineview runs on two layers of law worth knowing before the first launch. The Forest Service's standing order, in force through mid 2027, bans alcohol everywhere outside the developed campground, marina and ramp areas including on the water, bans glass except on four named lawns, bans fires outside constructed rings, closes the swim coves to all vessels, requires wakeless speed in designated zones, forbids anchoring within 20 feet of shore overnight, and prohibits swimming or fishing within 50 feet of the docks. The state adds its boating code, the electric-only arms, and the life jacket floor: one wearable Coast Guard approved jacket per person aboard, worn at all times by anyone twelve or younger while under way.

The requirement most often missed sits upstream of the lake entirely: every person who launches any watercraft in Utah, paddleboards and kayaks included, must complete the state's annual mussel aware boater course, and motorized boats also pay the annual invasive species enrollment fee of 20 dollars for residents. Drain plugs come out for every transport. In 2026 there is a sharper wrinkle: inspections run at Anderson Cove and Cemetery Point, but no decontamination service operates anywhere at Pineview during construction, so a boat coming off Lake Powell decontaminates at the South Ogden DNR office or a nearby state park first, or does not launch. The wildlife division has already announced the rules change January 1, 2027, which is exactly why this paragraph carries its date.

Eleven miles upstream of Pineview on the South Fork, Causey is the other reservoir and the opposite water. The arithmetic tells the whole story: 7,870 acre feet across 136 surface acres behind a dam 217.5 feet tall, against Pineview's 110,150 acre feet across 2,874 acres behind a dam of 137. A fourteenth of the storage, a twentieth of the surface, a dam eighty feet taller: deep, narrow, cold and steep sided, where Pineview is broad and open. It went up from 1962 to 1966 as part of the Weber Basin Project, it is operated by the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District rather than Pineview's operator, and it is named for Thomas Causey, who ran a sawmill on this creek.

The rule that defines it is speed, precisely stated: the state's watercraft restrictions list holds Causey to wakeless speed, the Forest Service's own order says the same, and neither actually bans a motor as such, so this page will not either. In practice it is paddle water anyway: there is no ramp for trailered boats, the new ramp being built at Skull Crack is explicitly restricted to pedestrians, non-motorized craft and search and rescue, and the classic Causey trip is a kayak or a paddleboard up the narrow arms under the cliffs. Alcohol is banned in or on the water outright, no campground exception, and the life jacket requirement here is written into county code. It was fee free per the Forest Service's May 2026 page, while UDOT says fees begin when the improvement work finishes; both statements are printed here because both are current.

The road to Causey is its own destination. East of Huntsville, SR-39 follows the South Fork past a chain of Forest Service campgrounds, Botts, Magpie, Lower and Upper Meadows, Perception Park, South Fork and Willows, riverside sites in the 5,200 to 6,000 foot band that hold the corridor's developed camping, because Causey itself has none. South Fork Campground, seven miles from Huntsville, books singles at 31 dollars on the 2026 schedule. There is no developed campground on Causey's water, and the only camping at the reservoir is one small dispersed site at the far end of a trail; anyone promising a Causey campground is describing a place that does not exist.

Two trails hang off the reservoir's ends. The Skullcrack Trail runs 2.43 miles from the parking at the south end, across the dam side, a narrow foot and bike route above the water whose far end is otherwise reachable only by canoe, which is the best one-line portrait of Causey anywhere in the federal record. The Wheat Grass Trail leaves the Boy Scout Camp sign at the north end and climbs its narrow year-round creek canyon 9.2 miles, easy for the first three or four and then two thousand rough feet up toward Monte Cristo, a ten mile through-hike with a car placed on top. Deer, elk and the occasional bobcat get named by the district itself.