I 5 Rock Slide South of Bellingham Covered by Cascadia Weekly

Annie Todd at Cascadiadaily did a write up on the landslide that blocked the north bound lanes of Interstate 5 south of Bellingham. The article includes a very good picture of the slide via a drone shot image by Finn Wendt. Annie alerted me to the slide via email and wanted to know if I had any info; hence, some quotes in the article. 

I have not done any work on this slide, but I am familiar with the site having driven past it many times. I did a quick loot at the DOT site and was fairly sure of the site.  

My very first vist to Bellingham before living there I had to drive around a car sized boulder that had come off the road cut very near where this recent failure took place. The road cut for the interstate is into Chuckanut Formation. The bedrock layers are dipping into the slope, but joints within the sandstone are very susceptible to failures and this cut slope has a long history of rocks breaking off of the slope along the large joint sets. The Department of Transportation cut this slope back substatially in the past and created a slide/rockfall collection zone at the base of the slope and installed bolts on portions of the slope to reduce the scale of the failures. In the image of the article, it appears that most, if not all the rock was contained within the area outside the travel lanes, but the trees on top of the failures extened out into the travel lanes. Given the size of the bedrock blocks, removal and clearing will be a bit tricky from a safety perspective.

On a final note, I greatly appreciate Cascadia Weekly. Local news coverage is critical and they do a good jobe for the northwest corner of Washington. 

Northwest Washington Spring

Winter in northwest Washington is a bit hard to define. It is a transition between fall and spring with periodic short spells of very cold weather. Some years such as this year there are no cold spells of note. The chances of a cold spell this late are pretty remote. Late Monday the weather shifted from chilly wet to mild and wet. No more 32 to 40 degree days with a mix of rain and snow in the lowlands. 

I headed east of the mountains on Tuesday. Rain on the mountain pass and saw 72 degrees on the dashboard while heading down the Yakima Valley. 

Two indicators of Spring on the west side of the mountains are the native skunk cabbage and non native daffodils. Give then a short warm spell in March and they bloom. 

Skunk cabbage in swampy ground near Lamb Creek on the Olympic Penisula

Daffodils on the Skagit delta  

Journey Home, the Trench, Fraser River, West of the Straight Creek-Fraser River Fault

 I previously noted the Rocky Mountain Trench while returning home from a previous trip this past year (rocky-mountain-trench-rivers). With fog in the Trench and the valleys and snow on covering the high ground above tree line the view was enhanced as I flew over the Trench.

Upper Fraser River in front of engine flowing towards the Trench. 

The Fraser flows north along the Trench towards the top of the picture

The Trench with the fog shrouded Canoe River in front of engine.

The Canoe River flows within the Trench south towards the lower left in the image. 

The lower Canoe River is now a lake as a result of the Mica Dam on the Columbia.

The foggy valley past the trench include the Canoe River, but further to the west (left) is the Thompson River. I am crossing Thompson's path again on this trip (crossing-david-thompsons-early-days).

Getting a sense of the scale of the Trench

The Fraser River flows north along the Trench, but then leaves the Trench and turns to the south.

The Freaser River canyon cutting through the BC Coast Range.

The canyon through the Coast Range follows the strike of the Straight Creek-Fraser River Fault. 

The fault is a north-south fault strike slip fault with the area west of the fault offset to the north. The fault cuts through the North Cascades of Washington and the BC Coast Range. The fault was active during the Eocene. 

BC Coast Range west of the fault. Harrison Lake is on the upper left. During a diffrent geologic work era I had numerous ventures into the area and was fun picking out the various valleys and ridges from that time.

After landing, I took the sky train into downtown Vancouver and did a walk about the urban core through the downtown area, Gas Town, the abrupt change to the east with people having a hard life to China Town. 

On the train through Burnaby I observed thousands of crows over several miles flocking towards their night roosts. They are Commuter Crows.

Crows just west of Burnaby

Crossing the Fraser at New Westminster with a view of the sky train bridge

The train stops at the border at Blaine for inspection.

Crossing David Thompson's early days

 

Traveling to see family, we had a stop over for a few days in London. During a walk about I spotted this plaque noting that David Thompson had attended this school. Thompson followed the upper drainages of the Coulmbia River down to the Paficic Ocean. By every account I have read of him he was a very fine fellow. I am sure the school and the neighborhood has changed a bit since the late 1700s, but it was a pleasant surprise to walk another part of his life path.

I am enjoying the snow while away from home

Hike to Cape Alava

Last week I had a couple of work adventures on the Olympic Peninsula. I was very prepared to get wet, but rain shadowing resulted in the first day being just light rain. The second day was outside the path of most of the rain. When I finished up I had just enough time to get over to Lake Ozette and take a hike to the ocean at Cape Alava.  

Ozette Island from the end of the trail at the beach

Tskawahyah Island

Cape Alava is named for Jose Manuel de Alava. He was supportive of early Spanish exploration of the Northwest coast; hence, the many Spanish names along the Northwest coast. He was also a commisioner for Spain on negotiations to resolve the Nootka Sound Controversy involving trading conflicts between the Spanish and other non Indian traders on the Pacific Northwest Coast in particular with Great Britain due to Spansh capturing ships from Great Britain and America. War between Spain and Great Britain was avoided when Spain agreed to leave the Nootka area including the coast of what is now Washington.

A Makah village was located just north of Cape Alava. A landslide at the village preserved pre European structures and artifacts. Archeology studies of the village have been important in establishing treaty rights of the Makah. The site demonstrated that the Makah possessed metal prior to the arrival of European, Russian and American traders. Periodically boats from Japan drifted across the ocean and washed ashore at this area and thus the acquisition of metal prior to European arrival. In 1834 a boat with three surviving Japanese sailors landed on the Makah coast hhistorylink.org/File/9065.

With the wet weather and rather dire rain predictions that in fact did take place, I was the only biped on the trail and beach. I did see some signs of other visitors but they did not show themselves.   

Blue River and Rare Earths in British Columbia

Flying back to home I recognized the small British Columbia town of Blue River through a break in the clouds. 

Blue River (town) and Mud Lake

I recognized this location because of some recent literature research I was doing on carbonatites combined with a bit of Google Earth viewing to find the locations of carbonatite claims so I could do some comparative geology. I had looked careful at this area and read numerous reports on the carbonatites found in the area so easily recognized the lake and town through the break in the clouds. Carbonatites are igneous rocks containing predominantly carbonate minerals. Carbonatites have been a focus of exploration in British Columbia and there have been several claims with associated exploration sampling in the Blue River area. The carbonatites occur within an area of alkaline igneous rocks that intrude the Paleozoic strata west of the Rocky Mountains in the eastern part of the Omineca Belt.

The interest in these rocks is that carbonatites can be enriched with rare earth elements. A hot topic in geopolitics. With a long and ongoing mining history as well as mineral processing, BC may be well positioned to exploit these resources if it proves feasible. The thick forest and rugged terrain do present a challenge relative to the well exposed deposits in China. China also has had the advantage of a longer period of figuring out processing the ores - an underappreciated aspect of the minerals industry. 

The Canadian federal government has been supporting some of the exploration as well as mineral processing.  

https://www.canada.ca/en/campaign/critical-minerals-in-canada/federal-support-for-critical-mineral-projects-and-value-chains/critical-minerals-geoscience-and-data-initiative.html

Vivianite Notes

Hurowitz and many others (2025) discuss organic carbon bearing mudstones on Mars that have bluish nodules. The analysis of the reaction fronts on the nodules indicated ferrous iron phosphate and sulfide minerals with the blue possibly being vivianite. Vivianite nodules are known to form in fresh water and marine settings as a by-product of low-temperature microbially mediated Fe-reduction reactions. Hence, these nodules on Mars have generated intense interest. Hurowitz and many others (2025) do note that there are alternative explanations, but the biotic explanation is intriguing. Kawahara and others (2022) note that there are non biological processes for similar appearing nodules. So at that this point nothing definitive -- such is science. At some future date this rocks may be subject to more sophisticated analyses. 

 

My first encounter with the mineral was in regards to phosphorus removal from waste water or stormwater. There were some clever chemists trying to come up with solutions to minimize nutrient loading in lakes fro waste water. 

A while back I did some research based on coincidental inquiries about sources of blue coloration. One inquiry was regarding possible sources of blue coloration used on canoes by Salish Sea peoples prior to European contact. I was asked if I knew of any vivianite depsoits in the area. The other inquiry was similar but came from an art supplier who thought I might have some insight regarding vivianite sources. I did find some references of pre European trading associated with a site in Alaska.

Vivianite Fe(II)3(PO4)2.8H2O shows up around buried organic material. It also shows up in sewage facilities. A local source for the Salish might have been along clay rich tidal sloughs where lots of wood would have been buried. 

Another potential source could be clay rich Bellingham Glacial Marine Drift that has remained saturated and is in close contact with buried organic material. The saturated drift is already blue from the iron and magnesium not being oxidized. The contact with buried wood would provide the phosphate to have added blue color, but I have not observed any vivianite features when excavating or drilling into the local glacial marine drift.

   

It is my understanding that in finishing cedar canoes the wood would be rubbed with wet clay. I do wonder if some vivianite would precipitate during processing of the bluish clay with the organic material of the canoe thus fixing the iron with microscopic vivianite. That is if you took the very wet and very soft blue glacial drift out of a bank and then mixted it with organic material the vivianite would form within the clay mix and stop the oxidation of the iron that is present and instead create the iron/phosphate oxide vivianite and thus "fix" the blue color. Even rubbing the blue clay on the wood might cause the same reaction.