Umatilla Rock, a remnant formation in the Dry Falls Cataract formation.
Last Sunday I was fortunate enough to accompany a number of "Flood Nuts" on a hike around Umatilla Rock on the floor of Dry Falls cataract. Our guide was Gene Kiver, one of the most knowledgeable Ice Age Floods experts alive. He is also co:author, with Bruce Bjornstadt, of On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods.
At the north end of Umatilla Rock and entering the "floor" of Dry Falls - splash pool and main rim photo-left. It was a wonderful outing, and has helped me gain a better sense for some of the main points of Bretz's many papers on the subject of the Ice Age floods. Thanks, Gene!
Later in the day I hiked alone, finding a comfortable perch on an outcropping just a mile or two south of Steamboat Rock.
Looking north towards Steamboat Rock and the head of Grand Coulee.
Unparalleled in the whole wide world, scarcely even approached by any other landscape of similar origin, are the Channeled Scablands on the Columbia Plateau in eastern Washington.
So wrote J Harlen Bretz in his 1959 paper, Washington's Channeled Scabland. It was his last paper on the subject, and was intended to put an end to the few arguments still standing against his "outrageous hypothesis." His method was simple and direct: Multiple sites around the Scablands were selected, against which four theories would be tested to see which, if any, could adequately explain how the unique landforms in these areas had been formed. Competing with Bretz's flood hypothesis were the more traditional theories from R. F. Flint, I. S. Allison; and R. W. Hobbs.
The sites included some of the most spectacular terrain in the entire Scablands - Pot Holes Cataracts in the Quincy Basin; Drumheller Channels and other channeling in the Othello area; and the great gravel bars in the Pasco Basin. But the most spectacular site of all was Grand Coulee, and its complex of giant cataracts at Dry Falls. As Bretz explains:
(It is) the longest and deepest of all Scablands canyons, with the lowest floor at the head and the widest and highest dry falls cliff in midlength...It has the longest gorge made by cataract recession; a record of a former cataract twice as high as its existing dry falls (400ft. high today); the largest lake (Lenore) and the most saline (Soap); the most elaborate distributary system; the greatest accumulation of pebble and cobble gravel; the largest stream-rolled boulders; and it functioned from the beginning of Scablands history to become at last the only surviving flood discharge way. It merits its name, Grand Coulee.
Later that same afternoon, I capped off the day by grabbing a shot near the lower end of the Coulee, not far from Soap Lake. This formation has always impressed me, but I never took the time to study it with a camera until this trip.
Still haven't done it justice, but maybe on another trip I'll be able to get closer to portraying its immensity. What a great hunk of rock.