Last weekend, I hiked with Gregg at Palouse Falls State Park, WA. It was our second date. We had fun.
This striking landscape was formed by hundreds of massive floods during the end of the last Ice Age.
Enormous floods repeatedly scoured Eastern Washington, depositing our topsoil in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, now one of the most fertile growing areas in the world.
The Missoula floods (also known as the Spokane floods or the Bretz floods or Bretz's floods) were cataclysmic glacial lake outburst floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge at the end of the last ice age.
These were the result of periodic sudden ruptures of the ice dam on the Clark Fork River that created Glacial Lake Missoula during the end of the last Ice Age.
After each ice dam rupture, the waters of the lake would rush down the Clark Fork and the Columbia River, flooding much of eastern Washington and the Willamette Valley in western Oregon. After the rupture, the ice would reform, creating Glacial Lake Missoula again.
this the "scab lands" I have heard about?
Yes, it's called "scablands." A Seattle Times newspaper columnist wrote a funny column on April Fools Day skewering different Washington State towns:
"TO WENATCHEE- Denizens of the channeled scablands. We build your roads, hospitals, universities, and schools, and what do we get in return? The Lentil Festival of Ferry County and endless carping about the clam-digging schedule on Puget Sound beaches. You want to secede? Go right ahead. We won't miss you."
Photo: Sunrise in Wenatchee, WA where I live, December 28, 2018.
@LiterateHiker Ok, thanks, it's on my "to visit" list. Lentils? no thanks. And I just enlarged the picture, that's some rugged country, beautiful.
Wonderful story and great photos as always!
Thank you!
Great pics!! How did the date go?
We had fun.