Update on Washaway

With winter high tides combined with very stormy conditions, the Pacific Ocean is taking some more of Washington State along with a few homes at Washaway Beach kirotv.com/videos/news/watch-it-ocean-undercut-home-on-washaway-beach/vCkfR/.

This has been an ongoing erosion problem that I wrote up after a visit in 2010.

cape-shoalwater-or-washaway-beach

more-on-shoalwater.html

HS also has a set of posts http://gravelbeach.blogspot.com/search?q=washaway
 

Egan Chasing Shadows

 

I have accumulated some books on the Washington State Landscape that deserve a write up hence wallula-gap and geology-of-san-juan-islands.

 

Timothy Egan took on Edward Curtis. Curtis moved to Washington State and started a photography business in Seattle. His fame is the photographs he took of First Nations peoples. Curtis' genius was recognizing that we would soon loose multiple cultures unless he captured those cultures before they were gone. He was not the only one to recognize this need, but he may have done more than anyone else capturing the shadows of the cultures that once inhabited our landscapes before they were gone.

 

Egan is one of our own and his perspective is appreciated. And the book manages to capture the capturer of shadows and another time so easily forgotten of the early days of the second nation in the Pacific Northwest and what is now Washington State. I particularly liked learning more about Asahel Curtis, Edward Curtis' brother as I have used his photographs in my own work. A. Curtis captured different images - numerous of geologic and historic importance and some that captured the shaping of our current landscapes.

 

I know that I have been frustrated at the loss of understanding of what once was the Pacific Northwest, but Curtis captured at least a part of that in his images and Egan gives this important work an added perspective. 

Wallula Gap Book

I have had this book for a couple of years. Where the Great River Bends is a compilation of natural and historic essays on Wallula Gap.

I have the personal opinion that the Gap may be the most underappreciated landscape features in Washington State. This book of essays on the geology, plant communities, and history further enhanced my own appreciation of this remarkable landscape. Good geology including how the gap was initially cut, not by the Columbia River, but by the Clearwater River - currently a tributary of the Snake. The river in the gap is slackwater from McNary Dam downstream of the gap. The book does a great job of explaining the secondary consequences of the river no longer have the massive floods through the gap followed by much lower water - not just on the river but on the surrounding uplands. As windy as the area northeast of the gap is, the dust and blowing sand are much diminished from the old days. Pacific Northwest history passed through the gap from Lewis and Clark, Hudson Bay Company traders, naturalist David Douglas and explorer John Thompson.  Today a great deal of commerce passes through the gap via barge and the railroads that line both sides of the gap. This is the route of the recently famous very heavy Powder River coal trains on the way to the coal port in British Columbia.

In a different era I ran and hiked the rim of the west side of the high cliffs above the Columbia River at this water gap accessing the area via back roads from Kennewick. It was one of the pleasures of living in Kennewick to have such a landscape nearby.

 

Old Skagit Channels and a Tributary Alluvial Fan

Before the weather shifted back to wet, I had a venture up the Skagit Valley in an area of old river channels, old river terraces and a dissected alluvial fan. One of the old river channels on what is now a terrace above the river flood plain was ice covered.

 

The lower end of the channel showed that water had been flowing out of the channel prior to full freeze up. The valley in the background is a tributary stream valley to the Skagit.

 

There was lots of water flowing in this old Skagit River channel on the flood plain proper. This water was flowing through an abandoned meander loop that had been abandoned by the river but now was occupied by a tributary stream coming off the valley side. Note that rapid water flow is flowing through trees and with the cold weather this water flowing through tree stands was not the result of high water. This feature suggests the creek had relatively recently changed course.

Stumbling about a forested flood plain with lots of water has its pleasures; the above observations were secondary to my field excursion. To get a better handle on the flood plain, old channels, terraces, and the creek a view of a DEM of the area clarifies understanding of the landscape.

DEM of Skagit Valley

Red line roughly marks the outline of the alluvial fan of the creek and blue marks the creek route.

Skagit River is on the north side of the valley on this river reach

The wide meanders and old channels of the Skagit are readily visible. What is also apparent is that the Skagit River took a few bites out of the northern, distal part of the creek's alluvial fan. A small secondary fan has formed where the creek encounters the old river channel. A stream course change on this secondary fan has directed the creek into a slightly different route now through the trees shown in the image above.

I did not mark the Skagit flood plain the above image. Most of the meander bends and old channel traces on the south half of the valley are now well above the flood plain level and are level terrace areas bound by flood plain abandoned channels or in places the river itself. This indicates that though the river has a meander component in this reach, it has still been down cutting. This reach of the Skagit is a broad section of the valley that continues downstream to the Sauk River. Below the Sauk the river enters a much narrower reach where it is incised down through a thick section of glacial sediments including a high terrace with kettles.

DEM of Skagit - Sauk confluence

The narrow reach to the west cuts through glacial sediments

 

Upon my return from exploration of the flood plain my new friends on the terrace above the flood plain came over to greet me.

Failed Canal Project Through Beacon Hill

David Williams has a bit on a failed canal project in Seattle's past south-canal-beacon-hill. David points out that the project got started and bit into the side of Beacon Hill where Columbia Way now traverses up Beacon Hill from Spokane Street and Interstate 5.

Here is what the LiDAR looks like:

 

Ode to Past Explorers and Future Explorers: Wander and Wonder

 Ah, I can be a romantic at times. This video was a labor of love by Erik Wernquist that built on the words of Carl Sagan describing the inherent desire to explore and wander. Let us understand our own planet and reach out to our own wondrous solar system and then beyond. We should wander and wonder. And it is a team effort beyond any one human.

Geology of the San Juan Islands

 

http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-to-get-geolgy-of-san-juan-islands.html

Ned Brown has provided geologists and anyone else interested in the geology of northwest Washington State an up to date book on the geology of the San Juan Islands (and non San Juan Islands Fidalgo Island). And if your interested in deciphering accretion tectonics anywhere, this book should be in your library. Ned has put together a clear compilation of the San Juan Island bedrock geology as it is currently understood. He also provides a good overview of how geologists extract stories out of rocks from microscopic study of minerals to zapping zircons with lasers. The book is full of excellent graphics and ends with some guidance to good outcrop sites.

I do a fair bit of geology work in the San Juans. For many years I have been heavily relying on 1975 maps of the San Juan Islands produced by Joe Vance and John Whetten published in Geology and Water Resources of the San Juan Islands (Russel, editor, 1975). My copy of that work is very dog eared.

I anticipate that my copy of Ned's book will become dog eared as well. The book already answered a question I had about an outcrop at the Lopez Island ferry landing and another outcrop at the north end of Blakely.