A Break from the CRBG - Violent Ellensburg Formation

A recent day of field work which mostly entailed navigating complex topography to get to where I needed go had lots of basalt outcrops of the Grande Ronde basalt member of the Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG). The Grande Ronde is the most massive of the lava flows that make up the CRBG. The two flow sections I was navigating through west of the Kittitas Valley are interpreted by Tabor and others (1982) on the Wenatchee 1:100,000 geology map as two upper flows of the Grande Ronde based on stratigraphic position and polarity of the iron minerals in the flow. These are the same flows that are exposed in the bottom off the Grande Ronde River Canyon in the southeast corner of the state grande-ronde-basalts-at-grand-ronde.  

Cliffs of basalt 

Top of cliff

Scree of weathered basalt

My entire day was occupied looking at rather uniform basalt cliffs, scree slopes and thin soils full of fractured basalt. But at the very end of the day I came across something new - an exposure of welded hard volcanic material full of bits of rock fragments firmly embedded within a finer matrix. My initial though before taking a closer look was it was glacial till.

The Tabor and others (1982) map indicates Ellensburg Formation volcanics about a mile to the east. This exposure fits the Ellensburg Formation from the area. The Ellensburg Formation does interfinger with CRBG meaning that when the early massive CRBG flood basalts flowed across southern Washington approximatley 16 million years ago there was also a rather violent separate volcanic field in the area with explosive eruptions. Some of the explosive eruptions can be viewed along Highway 10 northwest of Ellensburg ellensburg-formation-side-trip  

Some Gold in the Fall: Cottonwood and Western Larch

I met some trees with character the last few days, and a few were presenting golden colors that enhanced their presence. 

This large cottonwood along with a few smaller mates occupies a small unnamed canyon in the deeply eroded table lands west of Ellensburg. Its gold color and fluttering leaves were an attractive site. It was a hot day for October and the cool of the canyon stream was appealing, but I had some ground I needed to cover so I stayed up high and took a route around the upper canyon versus the steep cliffy slopes.

This western larch stood along in a rubble field of fractured hard basalt. This particular larch had turned color ahead of the other larch in the area. Larch are conifers hat loose their needles in the fall.

Larch are the predominant tree in parts of the drier and higher parts of the North Cascade crest, but also show up in stands on the colder parts of the east slopes of the Cascades such as this one on the upper Manastash Canyon west of Ellensburg. This particular site is at elevation 4,000 feet. Larch also cover large tracts of the high mountains in north central Washington such as along Highway 20 east of Republic in the Kettle Range.

Semi Dry Tomatoes

The warm summer and continued warm fall has led to perhaps our biggest bumper crop of tomatoes. I have a good spot to grow them above the rock retaining wall above the alley. Growing tomatoes in the cool of western Washington is a challenge, and a bit extra so in Bellingham - a bit cooler than most other locales. Some of the plants are completely done, but we have a few that continue to produce well until it really gets to cold and dark. So when home I do a simple process to preserve them.

I cut them up and lay them out on trays with a light coating of olive oil (sometimes I use the left over oil from Lisa's preserved of zucchini jars). Slide the trays into the oven and heat to 220 F for 3 hours. Turn the oven off and in the morning slide the slightly dried tomatoes into baggies and freeze. The concentrated flavor and loss of excess water makes them just right for an instant sauce. A fast method versus making sauce and a great way to deal with a few pounds at a time.

Ready to bag after partial dry

Voices of the Oso Landslide: Anatomy of a Landslide

Dave Montgomery discusses the Oso/Hazel landslide and GEER. The GEER report http://www.geerassociation.org/GEER_Post%20EQ%20Reports/Oso_WA_2014/index.html

Oso/Hazel Follow up by KUOW and Dan Miller Visits my Old Field Area

KUOW has been doing a series of stories on the Oso slide. One with a bit by Dan Miller is HERE. And the video associated with it:



Miller wrote and published reports as well as a paper on the Hazel (later Oso) landslide. The work was important in that he and his coauthors developed an approach to assessing ground water recharge to deep-seated glacial related landslides. That work as well as the fact the slide blocked the Stillaguamish River in 2006, was why many geologists were well aware of the potential risk of the Hazel landslide. I assessed groundwater recharge to landslide areas on other projects and have generally followed the policy struggles on how to deal with ground water recharge to deep-seated landslide in terms of forestry, and hence, am familiar with Miller's work.

An interesting bit about the video is that it is it was filmed in my graduate research area. I was not paying much attention to slope issues and debris flows as Miller is doing - my work was on the granite rock he is filmed walking around on. The area is below a glacial area and the glaciers have retreated exposing bare rock and leaving behind piles of glacial moraine material. The area in the video is also subject to avalanche - the knocked down trees of various ages shown in the clip. Between my first and second field seasons a particularly large avalanche tore down the slope splintering old growth cedar forest.

Avalanche deposit at Cascade River Road

 The road to the Cascade Pass trail head below this area has been a challenge to keep open.

     

Notes on Turtleback Complex and an Old Oak

Turtleback Complex

This bit of Turtleback Complex is from the southwest of Orcas Island. The Geologic Map of the Washington Portion of the Roche Harbor 1:100,000 Quadrangle, Washington (Logan, 2003) indicates the bedrock where this sample was picked up is pre Devonian intrusive rocks of the Turtleback Complex. Much of the Logan (2003) map in the vicinity of the property is derived from mapping and rock descriptions of Vance (1975). Logan notes a lead/uranium date from a tonalite rock sample collected near Steep Point on the southwest of Orcas yielded an age of 405 million years, but dates as old as 554 million were reported by Whetten and others (1978). There is a fair bit of variety of igneous intrusive rock types within the complex. The age date range and variety of igneous rock types suggests the complex is an ancient and long lived root of a volcanic center.

The Turtleback Complex was likely a much more extensive volcanic arc and has been postulated as being related to similar aged and type rocks in the Northwest Cascades, the Yellow Aster Complex, and possibly scattered elsewhere in Oregon and northern California. Those linkages will take some more work to be confident of. The Turtleback is part of one of several tectonic terrains in the Northwest Cascades System-San Juan melange. Units within the melange consist of a wide variety of low-grade to high-grade metamorphic rocks of various ages juxtaposed along now extinct tectonic fault lines, but the Turtleback Complex is part of the oldest. 

An extinct tectonic thrust fault juxtaposing Turtleback Complex with the younger Orcas Chert is located relatively close to this outcrop. 

My typical experience with the Turtleback Complex is that it has been statically metamorphosed with no strong fabric or shear zones present within the bulk of the formation.  The lack of metamorphic fabric is a bit deceptive as many of the minerals have been recrystallized and Vance (1975) describes two separate metamorphic periods.

Just where the Turtleback igneous rocks formed and how they arrived to where they did is a complicated challenge. These igneous rocks did not intrude into the San Juan Islands, but were part of some ancient collision between North America and an off shore terrain. And even after collision, further faulting and movement likely took place with a variety of interpretations. A tough puzzle to solve.

The Turtleback Complex is named from Turtleback Mountain on the north of Orcas turtleback-looks--a-like-turtle.

Besides my rock find I came across the thick skin of a Garry oak on the dry slope. These oaks are not rare on Orcas. But they are scattered and are much less common than the extensive oak forest stands in the south parts of Washington State.

Thick bark of a mature Garry oak

Garry oak trunks and the thin red barked Pacific madrone 

"Usual and accustomed grounds", Coal Terminals - Lummi Message is Clear

Tim Ballew II, chairman of the Lummi Indian Business Council published a clear statement in the Bellingham Herald regarding the Lummi position on the proposed coal terminal at Cherry Point http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2014/09/28/3874993/lummi-concerned-for-environment.html?sp=/99/122/. Besides the position on the proposed terminal, Chairman Ballew is articulating a broader long-term view about the tribal rights of hunting and fishing at the usual and accustomed grounds. It is was well worth the read and contemplate what these rights mean and how they will influence the future of our State. 

Mr. Ballew's article: 

message

Thousands of years ago, canoes hand-carved from cedar trees skimmed across the waters of the Puget Sound and its tributaries, powered by the paddles of fishermen whose skills were passed from generation to generation. Below them swam an abundance of salmon, enough to feed and sustain generations of Lummi people.
Today our people, the Lhaq’temish or People of the Sea, navigate the same waters our ancestors crossed to fish and share the lessons of survival, culture and history. We have worked, struggled and celebrated life on the shores and waters of our homeland for thousands of years. In 1855, our leaders signed the Point Elliott treaty in exchange for ceding lands to the U.S. government. This reserved existing inherent rights to hunt, fish and gather throughout our usual and accustomed grounds, stations, traditional territories and homeland territory, which includes our present-day reservation. Our past leaders, seeing the encroachment on our lands and way of life, had the foresight to fight to preserve the lifeblood of the Lummi people — our right to fish. As the largest native fishing fleet in the nation, with approximately 700 registered fishers, we have exercised these rights and continue to defend and protect them to this day.
The decisions we make ensure that our Schelangen, our way of life, lives well beyond us. It was unimaginable to our ancestors that there would come a time when the salmon runs were not thick and teeming with enough fish to feed the village through every season. Today, the salmon are far fewer and our community is forced to deal with a changing landscape, and new environmental dangers and challenges.
The Lummi Nation, as a self-governing and sovereign nation, is committed to our responsibility to the land, economy and community, both now and for future generations. We believe in a thriving and healthy community for everyone.
That’s why the Lummi Nation opposes a new coal export terminal at Cherry Point in Whatcom County. It poses too great a risk to the salmon so integral to our culture and way of being. Increased vessel traffic will interfere with fishing, and the proposed terminal and increased uses of anchorages will reduce access to fishing grounds. The large volumes of ballast water discharged by Cape-sized ships that would call on the terminal threaten to introduce invasive species that could destroy the fishery. And carbon balance impacts caused by burning coal will contribute to ocean acidification that threatens all North Sound fisheries.
Our sacred duty to protect the salmon and people is also why we are proceeding with great caution in conversations about the right path forward for the clean up of Bellingham Bay. The potential impacts on the ability to fish are not only critical to examine but required. Any activity, construction or changes in our shared waters and shorelines must protect the treaty fishing rights guaranteed us as a sovereign nation.
We are also partners and stewards in ensuring the health of our natural resources. We have created a wetland mitigation bank — an innovative means to ensure no net loss of wetlands or their functions, and to protect shellfish habitat and help restore salmon species. The bank allows individuals, governmental agencies and private companies, both Lummi and non-Lummi, to purchase credits to offset any unavoidable impact to our region’s wetlands.
As Lummi people, we are culturally linked to the waters, land and fish of our home. Our leaders have always created a path forward of subsistence and sustainability. They held sacred their duty to preserve our Schelangen, our way of life, for generations to come, and it’s a duty we continue to hold sacred through all the changes of our modern world.

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2014/09/28/3874993/lummi-concerned-for-environment.html?sp=/99/122/#storylink=cpy