‘Nick From Home’ Livestream #38 - Columbia River Gorge

well good evening everybody welcome to Ellensburg Washington USA the local time is 5:40 7 p.m. and we'll begin a program at 6 o'clock the top of the hour it's about 12 minutes from now tonight the topic is the Columbia River Gorge plenty of stuff no shortage of stuff to talk about in the Columbia River Gorge hello everybody good I'm glad to see we've got some comments coming in if you're waiting for the program you can go ahead and skip ahead 12 minutes but for those of us who are live we take a moment to make sure that things are working properly for us and I hope that's the case again tonight looking and sounding good that's great 5x5 Frederic hello perfect I like to see that a bunch of stuff scrolled by there and didn't get a chance to see it oh I should get my laptop functional hang on just a second yeah good if you've been with us this week you remember that a couple nights ago we were here in the front porch talking about glacial lake Missoula that one's available as all of these are to watch after the fact does a replay if you're interested you can even see the live comments in replay forum ice age erratics was last night and the Columbia River Gorge is tonight I'm not going to see it tomorrow night but Saturday morning and Sunday morning I got some homework to do especially with the mime amounts I've never presented anything on the mime amounts but we're doing it Saturday morning it is a beautiful evening here I mean it could not be better outside 68 degrees very low wind beautiful Sun and yet we're in the front porch because the backyard is full of ladders the guys have begun to paint so they've got gallons of paint everywhere they've got drop cloths they've got the spray gun thing and they quit about a half an hour ago and I just didn't want to say hey you know can you clear all that stuff out of here I want to set up my chalkboard so I mean they they got there but they work awfully hard in fact they didn't ask me to do this fact they don't think they're even that interested in what I'm doing with all those rocks and chalkboards they haven't even really asked but if you're in Central Washington and you're looking for a good painter we have been extremely pleased with Alex Casablanca printing and the guy who worked on the shed for us lives in Ellensburg Clayton cornerstone general contracting very pleased with both of them first time we've worked with either one of them and by worked I mean we I sit in a lawn chair and watch them do their thing not really hello Patrick Patrick you can't wait to see the paint on my house our house that reminds me Patrick now if you're a long time attendee of these live streams you know what this is had a viewer suggest that I purchased one of these gizmos and I just hit the link and ordered it didn't even look into it and I used it once I think three weeks ago with the Yakima River Canyon session and we went for a walk after the session and I truly haven't even turned it on since then I really honestly forgot that I had it and I powered it up a couple hours ago I think I can remember how to function I use it so I think we should take a walk after the session tonight if you're interested now if you're on a tight schedule I understand but this one will probably go long because there's so much great stuff and I want to go in the cozy for it in a few extra minutes tonight but even if we run long what the heck if I can get this to work and remember what I'm doing we'll take a little walk time to say hi to some more viewers here especially if you're kids or maybe you're first-time visitors to us really anybody Justin your familiar face name at least Helen many of you are familiar oil people Warhawk me as the guy who got me rolling on the gizmo Thank You Warhawk me I had to look up your email from three weeks ago to figure out how to zoom I haven't even tried it but I saw the video you sent so trigger and joystick at the same time so if we get that far maybe I can zoom grandpa Karl huh so have you gotten boxes like these will you need to sign it's like I'm 57 yeah you got to sign you got to sign you got to sign there's alcohol in this box so Karl from Granger thank you very much and Karl's with us tonight I just saw his name so this is a note in the box from I think the owner of code in winery guess that's the winery hang on now Ross camp vineyard block to Snipes Mountain this is south of Yakima it's about a little about an hour drive south of Ellensburg hi Nick Karl sends these wines which are grown in snipes Mountain conglomerate soils just east of the Luther gravel pit if you interested I can send you a Google Earth view Lee PS love your videos so in the back I've got two bottles of this from karna so thanks again Karl Washington State dedicated to making wines worthy of Washington's world-class vineyards grown in ancestral Columbia River gravel soils uplifted atop a sharp south-facing ridge top this Phelps clone Syrah is well structured and aromatic a aged for 20 months in neutral French oak ooh la la Oh Karl I don't think I'm worthy of something of this high quality in fact I'm not worthy of most of these gifts but here's to you and thank you for your generosity Karl in Granger Washington I already snuck a sip up and sipping it's delightful stuff thank you here's the other bottle that I opened up I got my my new corks from the Coupe Ville Whidbey Island folks last night and while we're at it this is an embarrassment of riches again I feel I have mixed emotions about this I'm so grateful for the generosity also feel embarrassed but this arrived on the doorstep didn't need to sign for this one an hour ago and the note inside is from Mount Vernon Washington that's up by Bellingham Skagit River Valley other side of the Cascades neck this sign is a show of support and gratitude for your generosity in the field of geology my son Mike made this in our shop on our new CNC router Eastern Washington has always been a favorite place to travel and camp for our family now it's even more fascinating thanks to your educational videos thanks for sharing our state with the world Paul so Paul and son Mike in Mount Vernon thank you look at this a beautiful piece so I don't know what to say I'm almost gonna cry here so I'm not better not say anything I don't know I'll figure out how to use it and sign and hang it somewhere maybe right here huh all right so thank you Paul and Mike yeah I got sidetracked let me say hi to a couple other folks here and and I got two minutes I gotta get rolling here hello Aloha Milton New Zealand hey Rob boy you are regular now I got to thinking seriously about some of you in Europe in particular who are literally watching at 2:00 in the morning I know that we're all kind of screwed up with our sleeping schedules with this holding pattern we've been in but I mean if you're if you're setting an alarm to get up to watch it two or three in the morning I mean I need to send you some presents just for your dedication but I didn't really think carefully about that like your Wow so the weekend will be back to our 9:00 a.m. Pacific time which hopefully is a reasonable hour for some of you where these weeknights are not hello Justin age 13 great to see you yeah Jackie aged 13 we got some 13 year olds 13 1975 Carol karma let go mm okay all right I got a minute thank you for joining us I need to concentrate for a second well a-plus a good evening to you all from Mill hums burg Washington USA welcome to my home our home our front porch for the third night in a row this week Tuesday Wednesday Thursday night 6:00 p.m. local time here we are tonight's topic is the Columbia River Gorge and it is a magical place for many of us even if you have no interest in geology you remember the Columbia River Gorge and for those that are watching in other distant places around the world we'll make sure you know where we're talking about tonight we'll make sure that we see some video clips in the cozy fort tonight so that you can experience some of that scenery because it's just wonderful scenery forget about the geology it's just great scenery I mean you're driving through that gorge and you're experiencing in a very profound way the rainshadow effect we're at during an 85 mile drive you're going from a hundred inches of precipitation to less than ten Cascade Locks to The Dalles I mean it is crazy the vegetation changes you're like going from one country to the next at least it feels like that and as I was thinking about how I wanted to do this tonight I first of all want to talk about why that gorge is there and possibly bust a myth or two that might be in your mind maybe you heard it maybe you've even told it to people in your in your car as you're driving through the gorge but I also want to make sure that we get to this list in no particular order now we did have a full livestream on the bridge of the gods and I'll say a few things about it tonight but we've already covered that in gory detail whatever lime stream that was that's the one where I lost the live stream and I actually had a part two to actually finish the show because I I don't know what happened there I'm more experienced now as a iPhone user I guess but there's something called beacon Rock will visit Solano Falls Lewis and Clark the famous explorers went through the gorge at a particular time the Oregon Trail a few decades later Multnomah Falls a popular place to stop parking lots all we jam-packed and something called the Columbia River Highway which is a favorite of mine and maybe I can motivate you to get on the Columbia River Highway in pieces if you're not sure what I'm talking about but much of that will go to in the cozy fort and kind of flesh things out I think we need a lot of visuals tonight that's my call we need a lot of good visuals and Tom Foster who I've been talking about a lot recently has magnificent photographs and video from the gorge but for the uninitiated that word uninitiated for the folks who don't know about the gorge let's get our bearings he goes to the white board so wrong white board that's good wine Karl all right so here's my best attempt to not only locate ourselves with the Columbia Gorge but also use some concepts we've been working on earlier this week and even a couple weeks ago so I'll give you a chance to kind of soak this in you can see Ellensburg you can see the drive up and over the mountains to Seattle so the red or the Cascade volcanoes in the Cascade Mountains and it is a formidable mountain range it's tough to get over the Cascades and you can do it at Snoqualmie Pass or Stevens Pass or Washington Pass Rainy Pass you can go down to White Pass or Chinook Pass are down into Oregon at some of those passes which I'm less familiar with but there's really only one place you can drive through the Cascades and that's our topic tonight the Columbia River Gorge is the only place you can actually go right through the range you don't do any climbing at all and we have two kids living in Western Oregon currently one in Portland and one down in Eugene the Eugene guys the baby he's the guy that was in Montana on Tuesday now he's currently down at the University of Oregon but the point is when you do that drive whether it's frequently or infrequently you don't really forget it and all the stuff on my list is right here in this little Gorge so it's more than just a regular River Gorge there's all these individual little features that have their own stories to tell but the overriding question I want to ask here maybe you can guess it maybe already ahead of me here my basic question is did the Ice Age floods that we've been talking about the last few nights those were powerful floods we're draining glacial lake Missoula in a hurry and all that water is racing over Eastern Washington what's the myth did the Missoula floods blast a hole through the Cascade Mountains to make the gorge they were powerful floods and they did have a lot of power I guess that's why they're called powerful floods but I'm not going to let that dangle the answer's no absolutely not for sure not the Columbia River Gorge was a thing for millions of years before the Missoula floods and so as soon as we get to talking about Multnomah Falls we have these amazing waterfalls you're like oh yeah those were carved by the Ice Age floods no I don't think so it's more than just me I take my cue from Jim O'Connor who is the leading geologist for the Columbia River Gorge he's my age he's been added a long time and his concept is the floods came through the gorge for sure all the Ice Age floods I don't care if you've got water coming from Montana or British Columbia some of you want a british columbia water less the other night fine even though even the Bonneville flood coming from Salt Lake all of that Ice Age floodwater every drop of Ice Age floodwater came through the Columbia River Gorge but it did not carve the gorge and it didn't even make directly the those steep cliffs on the Oregon side to make the waterfalls instead O'Connor's view based on his evidence he's been able to work with over the years is that the Missoula floods may have undercut some of the slopes and caused landslides to therefore have these steep walls in the gorge but even that simple message of the Ice Age floods scoured and eroded and made these steep cliffs that Multnomah Falls and those other waterfalls are falling over not really the story so before we leave this concept of this big broad area I want to try to give you the evidence that we have that that's true that the Columbia River Gorge is an old feature it existed pretty much in present-day form and then all these floods come through they decorate the gorge they definitely leave a bunch of deposits but they don't actually do the carving itself that was a little more than I wanted to do on the Ice Age floods but now that I've done it I think I want to go to the other whiteboard which I mistakenly went to a second ago here's one piece of evidence to try to convince you that the floods did not do all of this massive carving through the Cascades and this is again this is all stuff I read this is stuff I get email replies from many of these leading geologists and they said look this is an important concept in the gorge and the Columbia Gorge the water is flowing we're talking about an Ice Age floods now okay one of our floods from earlier this week bringing the ice rafted erratics and all that stuff right so here's Lake Lewis tri-cities here's one little gap and the main point is once that water gets through the gap it doesn't just pick up speed that goes 60 miles an hour and races to the ocean which is kind of the impression I probably gave you in previous Ice Age floods have talks here in the front porch of the backyard like once this water which has been waiting patiently to thread through the needle here it picks up speed for sure each of these blue arrows is where we have fast water and where we have fast water the water is cutting it's digging deep potholes it's making scablands in the floor of the Columbia River Gorge and Celilo Falls which we'll visit by visit by video as a classic place where we have some of the Ice Age floodwater digging into the floor of the Columbia River Gorge but my main point is we have these choke points these places where the Columbia River Gorge was narrow then during the Ice Age and it's still narrow there's a place just downstream of The Dalles there's a place at bridge of the gods there's one Lulla gap and there's another one where you're just downstream of Portland and things get narrow again so think of these narrow places as not only where the water is moving fast because it's finally squeezing through and threading the needle through that bottleneck but here's the most important point if you're flood water that's coming through the gorge and you're approaching one of these narrow spots that water's going to stop so if you've heard of Lake condon Lake Condon is just simply another backup of water just like Lake Lewis was it's not really a lake that exists there for centuries it's just water that is spreading out in this next open area because we have another choke point a little bit downstream and another choke point and even this choke point explains why we had so much slack water going all the way down to where Jack Zentner lives in Eugene so I didn't have that concept of narrow and wide choke points and kind of slack water and having us understand why various spots within the gorge look the way they do so when we actually slowed the water and even stopped the water we're laying down gravel bars no let me say that differently where we slowed the water or stopped the water we have some slack water sediments we have some ice raft or attics on the margins and many of these gravel bars are deposited immediately own stream from the chokepoints themselves and with Tom's video you'll see some of those amazing gravel bars so there's kind of an interesting parallel to what we were doing on Tuesday night with the floor of glacial lake Missoula or we're draining all that water quickly and there were choke points do you remember if you were with us on Tuesday there were choke points and places where we had big gravel bars just downstream of the choke points same story even in the Columbia River Gorge so this is not freeway speed water coming all the way through the gorge therefore this is one piece of evidence to say the floods didn't carve the gorge the other more conventional way to try to help people see how the gorge is for sure millions of years older than the Ice Age is to look more carefully at the walls of the Columbia River Gorge itself and from this map you would say oh okay well if I look at the walls of the Columbia Gorge that must be in a bunch of cascade rocks that I can look at a bunch of mud flows a bunch of cascade lavas maybe some andesite sand diorite but it's not true so you know what's kind of rock is in the walls of the Columbia River Gorge can you believe it can you believe it's the German chocolate cake again those flood basalts make up the walls of the columbia gorge so yes there's lava layers in the walls of the Columbia River Gorge between The Dalles in Portland but they're not cascade lavas their lavas that came from Eastern Washington we've seen this many times this is the main phase of the German chocolate cake building where we have these deep cracks in Eastern Washington and these lavas are flowing west and in general we're screwing up the position of the Columbia River we've got these blonde quartzite cobbles just like where the wine is coming from tonight and snipes mountain okay but with some of the individual flows that came late look carefully now here's the priest Rapids lava flow that's coming out of a fissure in Eastern Washington and here's the lava in orange and notice it's getting thinner and thinner and thinner and then it comes down to a very thin worm and that lava is still there I almost want to drop but I don't think I want to take the time to do it this priest Rapids lava is where the Vista house is located today and in other words I'll do it just verbally this lava flow followed the Columbia River Valley filled the Columbia River Valley with lava things eroded on opposite sides of the priest Rapids lava flow and the only thing that's high now is the thing that used to be the open space where the gorge was I don't that works for you or not but the point is we have these lavas that are flowing into some kind of River Valley but look at this here's the ginko lava flow the crack is that Moses Lake and the lava is flowing this is the one that had all the petrified forest trees at the bottom of it you remember I was another live stream we've been at this a while here's the ginko flow pretty wide coming through this area and then please note that these Columbia River lavas in the age of the gingko is actually crossing not only kind of through the Cascades or over the Cascades but also getting to the Oregon coast and so the Coast Range must not have been very big at the time so this is flirting with the idea of the gorge being much older than the Ice Age but I've got something even more specific to help you see the age relation between the giant lavas of the German chocolate cake the Columbia River and the age of the actual gorge one piece of paper 20 minutes ago maybe it'll work for you so let's start with today today here's the gorge we're driving down the river heading to visit the kids in Portland OR or Eugene and in Eastern Washington so this is Eastern Washington and Western in Washington did you notice on our map Outsiders this gorge is actually on the state line so this is all Washington north and this is all Oregon down here so this Columbia River Gorge and the Columbia River in this location actually makes the state boundary but I'm choosing to pick Washington because I'm a Washington guy so here we go we're driving on the the scenic state route 14 I think it is on the Washington side that's my preference instead of being on the Oregon side with the fast traffic and so we're going through these little dinky towns and we're going downriver and when we start the drive in Eastern Washington if we look carefully and you'll see some beautiful photos in a second we have our massive giant lava flows three of the many many lava flows of the German chocolate cake here's the observation that's important those cutlasses picked these three these three giant lava flows which are Grand round an age 16 million years old maintain their thickness up and over this massive anticline so the Cascades are a big old geologic fold and we have even older layers than the lavas called the Eagle Creek Formation that are exposed in the core of this of the Cascades but my point is these layers are just as thick here as they are in the Cascades as they are over here so that tells us that the Cascades were not present when these lava flows came into the area in fact geologically because of that maintaining that thickness said these massive lava flows we go back 16 million years in our mind and say okay well the only way to make sense for these lava flows to maintain their thickness all the way to the Oregon coast is to have it be a flat trip otherwise those giant lava flows would pinch out to nothing wouldn't they they'd pond up against the mountain range so in case I'm losing you here's the idea massive lava flows sixteen million years ago no Cascades at least in this area it's a broad open valley that we can cross through maybe it's 60 miles wide instead of the narrow Columbia River Gorge that we have today then we do what we have the Columbia River get established and then we fold the rock layers the river is older than the cascade uplift and that's true as well for the ridges that are especially on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge many of you have noticed I'm sure these layers that are all beautifully tilted on the Washington side you've done that drive I don't care if you're going east or you're going west it's probably more visible if you're going east actually you're driving upriver and you look on your left on the Washington side you've got these crazy bedrock layers like it asked about it all the time people who wouldn't have a geologic thought if it if it was required of them at gunpoint they even notice these massive flat irons on the Washington side well the river was there first and those tilted layers tilted after the river got established not as that sound familiar that's the story with the Yakima River Canyon that's the story with many of the river canyons in the Pacific Northwest the river gets established first and then the ridges grow after that so if you want to put a fine point on it and I guess I do right now the Cascades existed but in kind of a low form going back tens of millions of years but the fact that these lavas these giant lavas are and over the Cascades tell us that the high cascades that we have now these crazy uplifted anticlines in the Cascades that massive uplift to form the Cascades as we know them today that's recent and the general rule I use in my teaching maybe it's a slight exaggeration I think it's close though 3,000 feet of uplift in three million years there's a very aggressive intense uplift of the rocks and the Cascades including these rock layers here a massive intense uplift of the Cascades in the last three million years and we lifted those originally flat uniform thickness lava flows 3,000 feet in the core of the Cascade okay so hopefully that feels comfortable to you basic relations and we have evidence now both from the choke points and from the bedrock in the walls of the Columbia River Gorge none of us are saying are we now that the Cascades were you know beautiful big mountain range for millions and millions of years and then here comes the Ice Age floods and they just punch a hole right through there's no evidence for that all the evidence suggests the opposite of that story okay how we doing we feeling okay 825 people okay the other thing I want to do with you and it might be a surprise to you is talk about J Harlen Bretz so we found a live stream called J Harlen Bretz that was a couple weeks ago in the backyard we had another one the next night on Grand Coulee so yeah Grand Coulee but it was mostly just talking more about J Harlen Bretz so Brett's is famous around the world in geology at least probably abroad sciences he's famous for being a very complete field geologist who was not accepted among other geologists until his ninth decade on this planet finally in his 80s and his now he was embraced as a savant essentially as a field mapper in the 1920s so why are we talking about him tonight because many people are not aware and I only had a faint idea until recently that Jay Harlen Bretz was teaching graduate students in the Columbia River Gorge before he ever set foot in Eastern Washington to do his most famous work and what he was able to find with his students in the gorge we were just talking about got him properly teased enough to work his way east and then by the time he started doing field work for real out in Eastern Washington the table was set he was ready to go so he didn't just you know get off the train in Spokane in 1922 blindfolded and just what had folded off he's like well all we have here he had all these clues from downstream in the Columbia Gorge years prior and he had some help by the Spokane High School teachers which I've talked about probably too much so let me give you some articles photos concepts to help you see that Brett's has his fingerprints all over the Columbia River Gorge starting in 1914 solve for those unaware here's what J Harlan he was born Harley Bret's he made up the J he made up the Harlan so here's here's Harley Albion college graduation back in Michigan here he is working at the University of Chicago here he is in retirement finally embraced as the hero that he that he is if you know about the Missoula floods you know a map that looks like this glacial lake Missoula glacial lake Columbia blah blah blah blah blah we've been doing it for a long time now in these live streams here's all the water here's all the kitchen flour here's all the redeposited silt and making link Lewis here's the water draining down into the Columbia River Gorge here's a bunch of that slack water going down to your gene and there's the water getting out to the ocean we're talking about this portion of the story tonight and in case you didn't hear me a second ago here's the story again Brett's mapped here for at least three field seasons basically during the years of World War one he was with two or three University of Chicago grad students that took the train out for a summer field season he had his five or six weeks that he was teaching students but they were mapping together they were walking it's 1913 1914 1915 1916 etc they're jumping onto trains they're going up to the next station they're getting off they're walking and mapping and camping and they have a cook and their little party and Brett's was able to find all sorts of weird stuff in the gorge to get him like what is going on upstream okay well what was he finding this is flashing forward a little bit later this is an early map of Brett's by Brett's in 1925 so this is after a couple of field seasons in the channeled scablands but notice he doesn't have any connection to Montana all he's doing in 1925 is creating maps that show the channeled scablands of Eastern Washington and he's got this stuff mapped from some of his work prior to ever getting up there and I've said that three different times so I won't say it again in from out of all the scientific papers that Brett's published he only regretted one and it's this one from his work in the Columbia River Gorge he was finding so much weird stuff that he had an idea of submerged crust in the Columbia Gorge upstream of the Columbia River Gorge downstream in the Columbia River Gorge it wasn't his idea originally Thomas Condon back in the 1880s had it then I see Russell had it but breath was the first to map wait for it ice rafted erotics and he kept finding these ice rafted erotics and he kept finding them and kept walking to the next one and plotting these location of these ice rafted erratics which led Brett's to publish this report in 1919 after his few seasons in the columbia gorge and he had this publication of a submerged crust meaning he has evidence of hundreds of feet of water but all he's got in his mind is a lake he's like why do I have all this standing water in the gorge upstream and downstream of the gorge and I know I got water because I've got these erratic s-- that are up on these hills slopes we had icebergs that was that was Brett's making call and he got curious enough is that a word curiouser and curiouser I always hear that and think is that really the right way to say that he got very curious and he started walking with his students upstream here's a photo that Brett's took in 1918 at Prosser Washington beautiful erratic just like what we had last night so in other words he found these erratic sin the gorge he found him down by Eugene and he starts marching in incredible distance I don't think this is all one field season but let me just give you a quick roll call I'm searching now well here's so here's his hand-drawn map in 1919 remember now this is a this is four to five years before he ever even starts thinking about the Ice Age floods like he knows nothing about Eastern Washington but yet he's got a map that looks like this it looks very familiar to a map we have today here's the Willamette Valley underwater here's the Columbia Gorge here's all this water but he's in his paper here this is why he regrets the paper he's like ah I guess the crust was like low and like a bunch of water just like ponded another idea was maybe we had a bunch of water in Lake Lewis they actually called it Lake Lewis at the time before they know about the Ice Age floods maybe Lake Lewis and like Lake condon are there because maybe there was a glacier that was sitting in the heart of the Columbia River Gorge and just blocking the Columbia River for a long time so that was an idea for a while but anyway this is Brett's you know hand drawing this in 1918 and the war is coming to a close and all that but if I can find this this is the fun part for me because he's got a little diary essentially of all these erratic that they found and how much ground they traveled and again you're not driving oh come on where is this hold it hold it yeah oh it was on that same map I don't if the focus is well it's probably easier just to show you it includes Granger by the way Karl so here are the locations that Brett's visited with students he found two radix in every one of these locations carefully marked their elevation carefully logged in his notebook the kind of rock and he correctly deduced that they were ice rafted erratic they didn't know where the glacier came he doesn't know where the glacier was he didn't know while the water was there and of course we now know it's water from Montana and the ice dam was in northern Idaho so just in case that focus was was junk Prosser mab Dan Sunnyside Granger top and his Yakima Brett's on foot ever without ever ever being in the Grand Coulee is up at priest Rapids he's at Burke Quincy Winchester afraid of soap flake Adrienne really amazing stuff I didn't really know that until recently to set us up for the cozy fork and I'm going quickly to the cozy fort as quickly as I can because the video that Tom foster made on the Columbia River Gorge is 22 minutes long and he did it in the same spring that he made that glacial lake Missoula episode that we saw a couple nights ago it's probably not an accident he burnt out on this whole thing after those two crazy long projects but I thought our Missoula show was our best men because of the stuff that my spent on it I thought I was happy with that this Columbia River Gorge show it's all Tom and it's just one priceless photo after another and and homemade animations and some maps that he created so I want to spend more than just a couple minutes with his Columbia River Gorge video 22 minutes long I think it's on an endless loop at the Discovery Center down by The Dalles but something I tried to do quickly with our live stream on the bridge of the gods but I don't think I did it very well here's why you know what I want to do the other one I'm in roadsides geology of oregon by marley and she had a beautiful illustrations talking about why there's waterfalls on the oregon side and not on the Washington side but she wanted to improve it and I won't say why it's better she improved it with the Washington book so what you're looking at are you looking yes you're looking upstream right now so Oregon's on your ship yeah Washington's on your left and Oregon's on your right and the reason that we have all these waterfalls on the Oregon side and not on the Washington side is the dipping of the rock layers and many of these are the Columbia basalt lavas but there's also some sands and some mud layers that are particularly slippery slippery and those same layers are dipping to the south on the Oregon side so here comes some rivers out of the Cascades then suddenly they have a huge wall to fall over because the the layers are going to the south yes there's been some landslides a little bit on this side but for most part it's major landslides on the Washington side including the bridge of the gods landslide otherwise known as the Bonneville landslide on the Washington side what's here it's like a little grab bag of things I want it to dog take this is from a book that Eric Cheney retired UW geology professor put together it's a bunch of scientific papers that are compiled this came out just a few years ago and in this book by Eric Chaney edited by Eric Chaney is another of Stevo Minsky's paintings I was talking about Steph last night but here's Steph giving us a visual of what it may have looked like if you were standing at Crown Point on the Oregon side looking up the river and you're like all blank what's coming down this gorge and the answer is one of the Ice Age floods that Brett's events Lee was able to document a few years that have a few years after making those discoveries in the Columbia River Gorge itself steve-o Minsky helping us visualize details and I gotten a bunch of questions after I guess it was after last night's about Native Americans do we think there were some very tragic moments in the Columbia River Gorge or in the Grand Coulee or any place where these floods were or crashing through and the short answer is yes our oldest archaeological sites and our youngest Ice Age flood deposits are starting to overlap in ages so we have people here we don't yet have one direct town site let's say village site Native American settlement and then Ice Age flood deposits you know running over the camp or something like that but it seems likely that in the next generation or two we will have that evidence to prove that there was tragedy makes me sad just thinking about like this this is I showed you last night when Evelyn asked about will the gap and here's all this backed up Missoula flood water and much of it think of all the water coming through with little the gap itself this is just the top and the icebergs floating as that water is coming down we're filling the entire Columbia River Gorge with water one last tip and then we're going to go to the cozy fort it pays to kind of be a public person these days because you hear from people who don't know you but they have things that they want to share and some of its you know I've got a piece of property you might want to come out and look we've got some really interesting stuff in this case I heard from a guy last fall from Seattle who said I interviewed Jay Harlen Bretz his son I flew down there Jay Harlen Bretz his son was named Rudy and Rudy was working in Los Angeles and they did an interview a video interview with Rudy Bret's and Rudy was talking about memories of his dad and travels out to the Pacific Northwest when they first opened their car in 1925 and that sort of thing anyway Rudy went on not to be a geologist but to be a author of science books for children and was quite successful apparently and so I found this online an original copy how the earth is changing just one of the many books by rudolf Brett's jay Harlen Bretz his son this was from the maple wood school district number six Greeley Colorado but Rudy was not only writing these books but he was illustrating them so there was this interesting kind of passing on of landscapes and interest in history and interest in science but as many cases the the child wants to have their own spin on on what's going on so this exists and on my youtube channel that I guess many of you are subscribed to there's the original long interview with Rudy Brett's that this gentleman gave me a copy and it's it's long and it's out of focus after time and it's it's not that great but you can actually hear hardly Brett's kid if you want to okay be shoes in the house he's done playing outside it's time for the cozy for to watch a couple of things and cozy fort by Steve trademark I'm ready to sweat sweat into the oldies and I hope you enjoy this extended session in the cozy fourth this evening and if you're new to us you're like I don't understand what we're doing but you will soon enough through trial and error okay this first clip is me talking into my laptop and eventually talking to you I published a draft of a new jail Harlen Bretz lecture that i was putting together I was looking for feedback and I gotten a lot of help from authors and geologists and others that new parts of the early Brett story I was interested in basically I was interested in Brett's before he got out to Eastern Washington I wanted to know who was this guy and I'm still hoping to give that lecture live in in downtown so eventually you'll see it on YouTube I hope at some point and that's good wine Carl but I I don't want to show you much of that draft except I want to show you the part about Bret's in the gorge and Eric Lindstrom and Johnson oxen and Brian McDonald have been researching much of what they can this trouble every time I want to make sure the volume is up as high as I can get it so this is maybe five minutes of me talking to you but focusing on Brett's in the gorge with some Tom Foster photos superimposed enjoy there's amazing archival information all of Brett's his notebooks etc at the University of Chicago library and you can piece together the details and there's a gentleman working on a new biography of Brett's in his early days and I'm hoping that this recorded lecture will motivate him to get back to that project Brett's does return to the Pacific Northwest of course because we haven't even gotten to the channeled scablands yet but you know to that undergraduate field mapping course breath decides with three grad students every summer he's going to spend an average of about four weeks out here maybe six weeks out here can you hear that north well I can't give any louder and based on some scientific papers that had come out in the late 1800s by Thomas Condon and a few others Russell he went to the Columbia River Gorge thank you and every summer he would take just a handful of students that come out on the train and they go to Portland and they'd start doing geology and breads would be teaching them geologic mapping and reasoning in the Columbia River Gorge and that was an exciting time now we're into nineteen teens and a brand new highway was being constructed on the Oregon side of the Columbia River the Columbia River Highway and guess who wrote the first road side geology book that I'm aware of it's it's Brett's with IRA Williams Bret's is acknowledged in the acknowledgments but his fingerprints are all over the this this road side geology got a best-seller apparently in 1915 and they had a second reprinting a few years later but Brett's and his students are mapping carefully the Columbia River basalts some fossilized beds deep in the gorge many of other kinds of things here since and hand-drawn cross sections from breads and Williams and that highway is still there by the way in sections and I encourage you next time you drive through the gorge to spend a few extra minutes and find these old beautiful old bridges and these old roadways that must have been tremendously exciting with automobiles coming of age in 1915 and taking their family up that road and learning some geology along the way the Vista house from that era when the road opened in 1915 well I find this chapter interesting of his of Brett's his life because he's know things in the gorge that don't make sense so he's away from his dissertation topic he's now in the Columbia Gorge but he's noticing things that might have some sort of Pleistocene signature for instance why are the walls of the Columbia Gorge so different in the bottom half than the top half it's almost like you could draw a line brett's is saying to himself there's some sort of erosion of the walls in the lower two-thirds let's say instead of half and he starts finding these incredible boulders of granite and other light colored minerals that clearly were moved in but why were they dropped so high on the walls at the chorus why weren't they if they were carried in why why aren't they down in the bottom of the gorge why are they up so high and so surprised to me and maybe to you is that before breads ever set foot in eastern Washington he was in the gorge mapping those boulders and with grad students and they started walking we know that I suppose jumping trains into Eastern Washington apparently I was said sedated that morning so you might have to turn your volume back down maybe or they have so I think the other clip and it's more than five minutes now I really know I'm happy to perspire into my shirt just to make sure you get a chance to see this if you haven't seen this this is Tom Foster at his best and a video just simply called Columbia River Gorge on YouTube and I'm not going to show you all 22 minutes you don't need that but there's a segment in the middle where Tom is using the pace of his visuals and again to me the visuals are the whole thing with this gorge I don't know if you found tonight's topic particularly interesting but if you can take those ideas and then plug them right in to all this beauty and all this variety and all this human history it just brings the whole place to life and it was one of Tom's favorite places to the point where he said don't make it I know you're working with those central guys don't a program on the gorge okay that's that's us I got all these great photos I wanna I want to do it right and so he definitely did it right so strapped in I got it cranked volume wise and do I yes I do I I'm I'm guessing six or seven maybe even eight minutes of this if my arms can hold for that long ready let's do it reverse the thrust they all formed from crustal squeezing warps and cracks in the crust that formed after the Columbia River was established here you want proof the Columbia River makes an abrupt turn at Rowena and cuts right through the Columbia Hills anticline perfect you can't do that unless the river was here first and the ridges came second in the middle of the Dowell syncline a broad down fold volcanic mudflows of The Dalles formation are preserved it's not all basalt around here but here's a key point the yakima folds and faults have made narrow constrictions for the river to flow through well Lulla gap was not the only choke point for the floods on their way to the Pacific many prominent valley constrictions exerting significant control on the ice age flood hydraulics while Lulla gap Rowena camp bingen Gap Crown Point the water accelerated to 60 miles per hour at these bottlenecks but just downstream from each constriction giant flood bars composed of loose rocks that the floods dropped as the water spread and slowed those are the green dots on our map the town of Lisle Washington sits on a flood bar downstream of rowena gap green dots the bar used to extend across the mouth of the Klickitat River the Moser flood bar sits where Ice Age floodwater diverted up a side mount the town of Bingen sits on a huge flood bar downstream of Benjen gap and on an even larger scale much of East Portland sits on a huge eye saij flood bar downstream of Crown Point now for all those questions about specific attractions in the gorge iconic images of Native Americans harvesting and processing salmon at Celilo Falls where could I find those Falls you say before they close the gates on The Dalles Dam in 1956 Celilo Falls was a majestic place when the river was low Celilo had a sheer drop of 18 feet in the reach downstream narrower shoots were separated by large holes in the river bottom holes 130 feet deep drilled by the Ice Age floods that's a hundred feet below sea level the set of Rapids The Dalles of the Columbia dropped the river 80 feet in 12 miles an immense salmon runs fought their way up through the falls and shoots Celilo Falls is no more buried under still water behind the Dalles Dam downstream where the river passes through the center of the cascades there's a very different reason that the river is choked every photo is Tom's Lewis and Clark in 1805 took note of large stands of partially submerged tree stumps except that one a submerged forest of the Columbia trees up to 25 feet tall thousands of drown stumps upriver as far as The Dalles and Lewis and Clark were about to encounter a set of rocky Rapids here the great chute they called the Cascades of the Columbia in this same spot Native Americans spoke of a bridge of the gods a legend of river crossing without getting feet wet and not an ancient legend fathers voyage enough River in their canoes without obstruction as far as The Dalles of the Columbia what happened here you know the answer an enormous landslide thank you the Bonneville landslide part of the Washington side of the gorge slid down and buried the Columbia River channel with 300 feet of loose rock great photo I'd pushed the rip a mile south towards Oregon making a landslide damn three times higher than today's Bonneville Dam you had to hike up and get that slide impressive cliffs they head scarp of the slide where the mountain split upstream of the slide the River rose 40 feet the Lake of the Gods extended tens of miles upstream today's Skamania lodge would have been lakeshore property the lake eventually over topped the rock blockage and drained after cutting a passage through the slide down to its current bed the rapids first made their appearance Lewis and Clark's great shoot Rapids boulders from the toe of the Bonneville landslide rocks too big for the river to flush through the gorge later in the 1800's locks were built to negotiate the rapids the landslide blocks today the rapids as well as most of the Cascades locks and canal are underwater drowned in 1938 by the reservoir behind Bonneville Dam so what's the age of the Bonneville slide it was before Lewis and Clark right before 1805 ok we did that slide was triggered by the great magnitude 9 earthquake I'm gonna skip ahead we talked about in a live stream all the evidence we have for that landslide being between the Year 1425 and 1450 and that's a couple of sent a couple of decades before Lewis and Clark more than a couple decades a couple of centuries before Lewis and Clark I want to show you one more little segment again featuring Tom's outstanding work think of how much time I don't want to do too much on time but it's too late he spent I don't know how many trips down there getting all those photos I think just for his own enjoyment I don't think he was planning on making a video but after you know years and years of hiking and taking photos and going back and taking them again and then finding all this footage online and then putting it all together cast you know I kept saying how amazing he was and and he kind of listened but he was even more embarrassed with that stuff than I am okay one more segment from Tom this time getting into beacon rock and then a little bit of that historic Columbia River Highway that Brett's wrote that roadside geology book for continuing downstream another familiar landmark beacon rock hey is this one of those inter Canyon flows no beacon Rock is an 850 foot high remnant of an eroded volcanic neck that's only 57,000 years old think today's lava Butte in Central Oregon a volcano that formed in the middle of the river lava would dam the river on occasion but the volcano was no match for the river and back in the early 1900s Henry Biddle built steps to the top work your family up the center of a volcano the glorious waterfalls in the gorge moat normal Falls and others why are there so many here they are primarily the result of Ice Age cutting by the Columbia River against the uplift and Cascade Range the gorge cutting prompted landslides from the Washington side to push the river to the south side of the gorge which repeatedly undercut thick stubborn older with Columbia River basalts the Ice Age floods swept through the gorge on occasion to clean up the walls but the waterfalls are really a direct result of tectonic uplift after all of this geologic history and after Lewis and Clark european-based settlers began arriving the Oregon Trail approached the gorge from the east and the old Moody Road was a primary route along the southern edge of the Columbia that's a cool Road if you haven't been on that it's a gravel road on the Oregon side giant obstacle how to proceed the wagon trains decided well are we gonna get wet by following the river or are we gonna stay dry by climbing up and over the Cascades near Mount Hood The Dalles up ahead became a major stop for the Oregon Trail travelers to pas that question decades after the Oregon Trail early steamboats cruised up and down the river and then in 1915 the first successful highway to cross through the Cascade Range the Columbia River Highway was constructed to harmonize with the beauty of the gorge graceful sets of curves separated by a viaduct bridges tunnels all faced with natural stone worked by European Masons a brand new vista house presided over an amazing landscape subtly accessible by automobile with the grand opening of the highway in 1915 a young geologist jay Harlen Bretz was hired to write a roadside geology guidebook his first taste of deposits and landforms that got him thinking for the first time about huge floods of water from a then unknown source a controversial topic that initially brought him scorn and ridicule but eventually brought him Fame and acceptance worldwide of course the wild Columbia River was tamed in the 20th century to harness the power of the river a continuous string of reservoirs ending at Tidewater at the foot of Bonneville Dam today the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area with the Discovery Center in its hub is famous for its hundreds of hiking trails and gorgeous wildflowers the National Scenic Area designation allows for preserving the scenic quality by regulating land use and development and through property acquisition we just made the video in his home in physiology has forced barges salmon railroads and highways through this narrow slot through the Cascades geologist Jim O'Connor has devoted many years to advancing our understanding of the geology of the Columbia River Gorge and his work is not done by dating various young lavas that came into the gorge at various elevations like the pillows in the freeway road cut just west of Hood River we can improve our grass for the timing of the Cascades uplift and the rivers down cutter more work is also needed on the history of river blockages here so many lava dams and landslide dams through the history of the gorge how did those blockages affect ancient fish populations stay tuned like all branches in the sciences there are always new questions that geologists will work to answer an awe-inspiring place the Columbia River Gorge a beautiful geologic laboratory for all to enjoy [Music] alright thanks for your patience that was more than we normally do but as you heard me say you need to see that place to have extra motivation to learn the geology behind it and it's a special place it's time for your questions let me get the laptop fired up let me get the cozy fort put away liz is out gardening we're losing the Sun back behind the ridge but we still have time for a walk but I definitely want to do some Q&A with you let's do it so glad that so many of you saw so many of you are still with us that didn't run you off that's good okay a fast-paced Q&A he pops up the chat ladies and gentlemen he pops it right out like a boss he just pops it pops it pops it out he Scrolls back to fingers y'all Nick have you ever seen a hole in the wall falls in the gorge holding the wall falls I don't think I have I'm not a huge crowds guy so I don't seem to catch that place when it's relatively sparse with people so it's a cool area with all those waterfalls I don't know that one was Columbia named after someone something or what I don't know the history of that Evelyn age 7 if the Columbia River is so much older why isn't it any why isn't it as curvy as the Yakima Evelyn will you be ready in a scientific paper anytime soon I don't mean just like for school I mean like a professional paper because your questions are absolutely inspiring the Columbia River is curvy in places but certainly not as curvy as the Yakima River and it's difficult to explain that Evelyn my attempt explain it is that there has been a series of uplift events over tens of millions of years where those Cascade Mountains are so the the Columbia wasn't allowed to lazily go back and forth because there was a little more activity there with the crust versus central Washington thank you for the question Evelyn age 7 how high did Lake Condon get did the Missoula floods wash into Goldendale Charlie thanks for the question I don't know the number off the top of my head now the high-water mark for Lake Lewis which was the next Lake upstream from Lake Condon you know what no I don't have a good a good way to find the number easily so Charlie's asking about is this Lake about the same elevation as this Lake and without knowing more than I do I'll just say roughly 1250 elevation and I think now that I say that I'm remembering when we wrote that script I think maybe the high watermark descends a bit as we go downstream and that kind of makes sense but there are some peculiar deposits in the golden Dale area so I think I know where you're headed with your line of questioning and maybe you live in the golden Dale area by the Blue Bird houses there over two Bickleton or whatever it's easy to get confused between ice age deposits which we're talking about right now and river rocks from when the old Columbia River used to come through your area more than 10 million years ago but I don't have a specific number for you sorry Jeff I am moving to White Salmon this month more of a comment really Jeff thank you for sharing are you saying that Columbia was there when the basalt flowed west yes I am Susan I'm saying there's a long history of the Columbia River there's less of a long history for the Cascade Mountains and there's even a more recent history of the Ice Age floods Daniel age 12 how did the Columbia River Gorge form did it form during an ice age how old is it so Daniel I would say that the Columbia River be the Columbia River Gorge began to form as we know it now 3 million years ago and that's kind of at the same time that the Ice Age began but the Gorge did not form because of ice it formed because of intense uplift of the mountains and the river was holding its position against the uplifted Ridge where is that petroglyph it's on the Washington side can I think of it's a state park somebody helped me here is it Columbia Hills State Park it's across the river from The Dalles I think it's Columbia somebody help us with that I think the name of the petroglyph is he who watches or something letting you know that I'm motivated about learning Native American legends mainly because I know almost zero at the at this point almost zero why are there lake Missoula flood gravels on top of the horse heaven hills in Klickitat County that's a similar question I don't think those are Brazil the flood gravels in fact I'm sure they're not they're from an older time with those are those are River gravels that predate the Ice Age we've had Jim O'Connor up there a number of times surveying that and I know there's weird stuff going on in gold Dale it's a really exciting area but there's a high-water mark for that Ice Age water and there's just no evidence for Missoula floods that high I don't know if you know the other guy that asked the question or not are the Cascades still uplifting yes they are of course all these things happen slowly slowly that we don't even know they're happening during five times but we have good GPS evidence that those mountains continue to rise due to plate tectonic motion are there any active faults in the gorge if so are any visible thanks John the easy answer is yes we will talk about the Seattle fault on Sunday and the Seattle fault has many brothers and sisters all through the Pacific Northwest meaning shallow crustal reverse faults and we haven't studied them very much and so they're probably more active than we realize but we don't realize it yet because we haven't catalogued prehistoric earthquakes on each one of those faults yet so if you ask me there's many active faults throughout the Pacific Northwest more active than many people realize but that's easy for me to say I don't have any data for that and the only reason they even say it is because some of the prehistoric earthquakes we've been able to find on a few of those shallow crustal faults are shockingly young and you can think an average of 10,000 years between magnitude 7 earthquakes and many faults through the area including the Columbia River Gorge what's my favorite spot in the Columbia River Gorge depends on my mood I guess I do like that area right across from The Dalles where that petroglyph is and that that place where there's a beautiful view of Mount Hood this time of year it's just perfect it's like bright green carpets and wild flowers is it Columbia Hills I think it is are the flood bars I tend to like the dry side I've grown to love the desert and so I like the Dallas area more than I do the the real heavily vegetated area on the other side of the Cascades this is my personal choice are the flood bars with towns subject to landslides YouTube water 806 I don't think of the flood bars as being prone to landslides because they're big piles of gravels but the grab the piles are kind of broad there's not steep slopes generally with those so even though they're kind of a pile of marbles I don't think there's a lot of sloughing but up higher where you have those tilted beds that's when you either have real bad winters everything's oversaturated or you actually have some earthquakes was the uplift caused by subduction indirectly Northwest geology guy as you have subduction as you have subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath Washington in Oregon you are not only doing this and making earthquakes and making Magma's but you're compressing over the long haul you see my knuckle here this is kind of the Cascades not only the Cascades have volcanoes with Magnus but there also is this kind of broad arching of these major anticlinal structures that Eric Cheney really likes to map so I would think of it that way is the Columbia River Gorge a captive canyon like the yakima canyon a captive canyon are you saying that there was stream capture to create the canyon I'm not sure the Yakima River Canyon has a stream capture story to it not that I'm aware of and I'm not even sure I'm aware of that with the Columbia I don't think I don't naturally put those concepts together if that's what you're saying Elaine a few more because we're going to take our little walk for those that want to walk with us if I can get the thing to work why so much more landslides in the Washington side and not on the Oregon side Cheryl if you have dipping beds not flat but dipping and you have a river of valley over here you basically have these rock layers that are like playing cards and each playing card is ready to kind of slip off the rest of the slippery deck and especially if those rock layers are basalt but in between the basalts you have slippery clays the phrase that one geologists used long ago and they continue to use it is that it's like Washington side is like a well Green skid board and the bedrock geology is just ready to go and so it's like why doesn't the Oregon side do that and the answer is those same layers are on the Oregon side and those those playing cards are not slipping because the geometry is wrong the hole is over here and we're not going to have layer slip in that way she who watches thank you that's it how much widening of what little gap occurred Bruce brought Bruce B arnstad has probably an excellent answer for that I would wild guess that the Ice Age floods widened will the gap by half like it used to be like this and now it's twice as wide maybe more than that I filmed the video that never saw the light of day and we visited Laluna Gap Sentinel Gap Union Gap and Yakka Oh it's through a Selig app in the Yakima area and the two gaps the two river gaps that didn't have ice age flood waters were pretty narrow and sent to no and will Lula were just so wide it was just so dramatic to go from gap to gap and see that so it's maybe more than half again as wide Horsethief Lake area thank you Bill cluster of earthquakes under mount hood recently should we get earthquake insurance I don't feel comfortable giving advice on what to get insurance on Susan there are regular earthquakes underneath all of our cascade volcanoes and those earthquakes show us when magma is moving a little bit we have experts who are monitoring those magma bodies they're not suppressing data they're sharing all the earthquake data all the regions and there's no cause for alarm and those of us that are particularly anxious see a report of some magma moving and we're ready to lose our minds but there's been that kind of swarm of activity regularly for the decades that we've been monitoring those magma systems has there been any evidence where did it go has there been any evidence of a glacial erratic being moved in more than one flooding event such as being raft into a location in a first flood and then washed to a second location in another event excellent question seems likely doesn't it but I don't know how you would prove that I just I just don't know what you would what kind of field evidence you'd have but seems why not sounds like a good idea to me a couple more why are they reverse faults instead of normal faults as Daniel age 12 I think it's age 12 that part of the Northwest is being squeezed because of Northern California moving north and getting closer and closer to Canada plus we have the Juan de Fuca plate coming at us from the West so we don't have normal faults generally in the Pacific Northwest because we're not relaxed and crust like Nevada we're squeezing the crust and we have earthquakes from both of those situations did the floodwater reach the parking lot of Crown Point thank you Matt I seem to hear both like Crown Point is where that Vista house was you saw that photo of that beautiful 1915 view point it's still a bit and still there there's a nice parking lot and a lot of people stop there and take pictures and I have heard some geologists kind of casually say that the biggest that Missoula flood coming down the gorge the water was up to that parking lot I've heard others say not quite that high so I've never taken the time to really be careful with the numbers maybe there's a geologist here kook who can say something definitively here in the next couple of minutes before we take our walk are you familiar with the mouth of the Columbia was it further north in the past in the Ice Age James the mouth of the Columbia was further west because global sea level was lower and there was more of a continental shelf expose but I think you're asking about that northern term about the Columbia River itself when it goes past Portland it does that big swing to the north I think there's a story there but I don't know the story yet it might involve some strike-slip faults if anybody who knows the details of that I'd like to do something with that much of what I make programs on it is best based on how often people ask the same question that a lot of people ask about that turn north of the Columbia River okay Beacon Rock was a cinder cone volcano I'd like to do a new program on the cinder cones at the Pacific Northwest from Goldendale to East Portland and beyond down to Bend there's just hundreds of these small volcanoes that are made out of cinders like like popcorn just piles a popcorn with kind of a dense volcanic vent inside in the case of Beacon Rock there was a cinder cone volcano that happened to form right in the middle of the Columbia Gorge and it was mostly this cinder there's popcorn Beacon Rock so Beacon Rock used to be taller used to have all this in all the popcorns gone a big Missoula flood came through probably a series of them swept all the popcorn swept all the cinders away and just left that volcanic vent that that Canton volcanic neck that we now call Beacon Rock 57,000 years old I told you man there's a lot of cool stories in that particular area okay it's 7:15 that's enough I think I'm sorry if I missed your question especially if you are a young viewer I appreciate you watching it and I appreciate you typing or having your parents type for you I try my best to get your questions but can always try next time I guess a toast to you but kind of like the sound of this last night so I want to do it again tonight I still got some Milk Duds in there from last night sweet actually I kept finding Milk Duds on the floor out here you know I'd step on one I'd pop it in here's to your health through this trying time for all of us and the health of your extended family and all the friends and hard workers in your community and I hope that you enjoyed tonight and I hope that you'll enjoy us again I hope that you'll join us again sometime speaking of which I won't see you tomorrow night tomorrow night is Friday night I will see you if you want to join us Saturday morning at 9 p.m. Pacific Saturday morning at 9 o'clock a.m. Pacific time here on the west coast of North America mime amounts if you're viewing from a different country and you've never heard of these I think you'll be interested nobody knows how they formed but we'll talk about them anyway Sunday morning 9:00 a.m. we'll go to Seattle specifically talk about the Seattle fault talk about great earthquakes and tsunami deposits in Puget Sound thanks for joining us tonight we'll see you next time I love you still here okay so this will be the test I'm in the house I'm using wireless I'm still looking at you unfortunately you have to look at me a little while longer go get the Birkenstocks sit in the rocker gotta be patient with me now okay all right so I'm gonna swipe you away and try to get on to data and get off the wireless and then I hope I don't kill the live stream okay so I'm going to freeze probably for a second okay are you with us I'm on data 100% yes okay Thank You Cheryl thanks for the wine Cheryl we're still enjoying that wine okay I gotta get you into the gizmo the gizmos on ok all right so before I start yeah okay Dale you're gonna puke so I think that's the done I'm done with all that the last thing I need to do is have you look out the back of my camera but I still want to make sure we're focusing right we're working right now so I'm gonna hold right here until I get some feedback from you are we live can you hear me can you see me even though you don't want to look at me anymore and I don't blame you we're doing okay delay in the comments okay good so there you go okay I'm gonna ask one more time are we functional yes and yes Russell okay good all right I'll just give you a little Patrick wanted to see the house oh I mean sorry so here's our normal area with our chalkboard you can see why we didn't have room to set up our chalkboard but these guys I think just I think that's fresh paint right there and it was pretty nasty before I don't know if you really saw it before anyway it seems like we're working okay have you missed the frogs there's the frogs I'm getting like a hang on no there there we go there we go okay let's take off might be a little bit of a light breeze to get in your earholes a little bit it really does like to track on stuff I keep forgetting about that up thank you all right we'll see if we have a view and you probably want to see something new so I guess we need to figure out what we're gonna do once we get to our viewpoint that's all you've done with us before gizmo seems to be working okay slightly out of focus well Collin you're gonna have to figure that one out on your own you are gonna hurl here at Dale because I keep playing with these buttons oh yeah we got Matt Stewart out no the real test can i zoom once we get up there oh it's a perfect night but things have leafed out quite a bit since your last time up here if you were with us last time all right so the big moment he hits the trigger holds on the trigger and tries to zoom God darn it I still can't do it son I looked at that video tutorial that was real brief that Mike sent you know I could read the manual but that's no fun what the hell wants to read a manual well you can see Stuart better than you could last time we tried this but gosh dad no all right well I'll give you a little up so that's the kid attest County Fairgrounds we have a big rodeo every Labor Day weekend who knows if we'll have it this year in the distance you can see a nice beautiful jagged profile that's the Stewart range that's 93 million year old granite that was created in Mexico believe it or not I'll send you right into the Sun we've still got time before the Sun Goes Down okay I guess we'll walk another couple blocks since I haven't been able to come through for you at the zoom I'll do my home where I promised I thought for sure that was gonna work so this is a regular route we'll have another view from the city park up here that we'll go to and there's some older folks live in the area that I like to go walking with and they tell me stories of the olden days like such-and-such built that house and this is where the edge of town used to be once upon a time and I don't know about you but I love all that kind of stuff good lord I've gained a lot of weight look at my shadow here oh my lord Kovach 19 what the heck can bury me in a piano case I promise I'm not that huge pretty big though I'd like to read your comments while we're walking but I think I'd fall flat on my face if I did that oh here's Mary I'm Mary oh wow they interrupted your walk oh thanks bye so I assume this is looking as stable as I assume too stable for you as it is for me and I have no idea the mechanics of this pretty impressive that's right we'll go up here and look down on the rodeo grounds and that'll be our destination for tonight still have quite a few of you with us I feel like I should be tap dancing at the same time or something but this will have to do sorry for the crazy pants you cut it rookie driver your God and here we go this is a city park that's pretty much like it was in 1947 there's no sidewalks there's no bike paths there's so you're forced to walk and dodge traffic but you don't need editorializing now do you it's a very popular Park and I think you'll see why in a second if you haven't figured it out already and we feel lucky to live in a town like this with nice people generally I hope that you live in a nice town with nice people yeah part of the reason for going on the walk is just the quality of the light you know that getting that like this I'm sure you've had many moments like this where you just catch that golden hour and it feels like you're walking through a movie set even if there's knuckleheads that you encounter and I include myself as a knucklehead quite often no I could not yield to this car and I can make a big scene up here but I guess I don't feel like it they're just up here enjoying the drive and join the view we're gonna give me a little room though aren't you buddy you gotta had that kid class you're probably trying to run me down to the game ah c-plus this is the old Legion building the American Legion go up here and took back a couple miller lights yeah we'll come right down to the fence so I can kind of stabilize myself yeah so it's this is a town that has a tradition of a cowboy culture that may seem strange to many of you but we're approaching the hundredth year of the Ellensburg rodeo and there's a state a County Fair at the same time happening in this area and it's a it's a happen in place and so it's one of the pro rodeo events you know they they do Cheyenne they do Calgary they do Ellensburg you know like we're a dinky town but yet we're we're a big deal in the rodeo world so I think if you're a rodeo fan you know about Ellensburg just for that reason then this is Craig's Hill that you can kind of see that has some interesting River deposits inside of it and some ash and that's an anim anyons straight ahead there's a big notch that you can kind of see I'd love to zoom for you but not to be tonight so that's an interesting canyon Oh what the heck you want to go another five minutes we can see a bunch of teenagers smoking pot Liz and I walk up here and they all give us the eagle eye and then they go oh hi mrs. Abner how are you you know so they kind of melt away because it's their favorite science teacher hello I can smell pot already I'm doing this mainly for those of you who have been trapped in your shoebox apartment for many many weeks and maybe this is a chance to just that's why I'm enjoying it so much and Nora Lee with her travels even though she's not travelling right now it's just it's just a fun way to travel I just miss traveling and maybe you do too so this is a have a road trip for you if things get awkward I just need to say mrs. enter and then things will be fine and then if that doesn't work then you guys got to cover me okay this might get ugly just kidding let's pretend we're looking at stuff [Music] Oh like oh good that gives me an idea oh this phone really wants to just stick with a certain image and it just locks on to it I won't let go like a Rottweiler Oh muffler boy we got muffler dang it come on here that way it doesn't want to look at the water tower I don't know why how's it going so this is where a lot of the muffler boys go because there's muffler girls and just set up here for hours and then drive the circuit then come back up probably think on the cops now remember what the secret word is mrs. Etna how's it going can't remember her name well you know what I just had a crazy idea yeah man how are you oh just you characters up here yeah it's good to see you that wasn't the crazy idea here's your reward if you're still with us we still have almost 600 people didn't occur to me till right now I think there's a chance that I can show you some mount st. helens ash from 1980 and the shocker for you if we can find it is how much loose is on top of mount st. helens ash from 1980 which gives you a sense of how much bliss is in the air even today and when I show you this you're gonna be like are you sure that's Mount st. Helens 1980 it's like absolutely eyewitness accounts so that's how we'll finish this still got Stuart kinda there was some ash in the back of that car yeah that would have been bold I would have said hey you kids you're all turd right now but how about a field trip you want to walk over look at some bounce eight Hills ass huh do you get lost old man so I used to take geology 101 students all the way to the top of this hill we just walk it from campus but we changed it because there's other things that are more exciting than that I hope there's some Sun on it and it's gonna work better if we can get some Sun so I'm I'm on top of this this hill oh here's some here's some dude bro so I'll check this jumping on your dirt bikes wholesome fun one would think have fun all right so they put the railroad in here in the 1880s and to do that they cut into this hill Oh are we gonna have light you know so you see where they put the track in and now they pulled the track back out a hundred years later so it's publicly and now people run on it but it's gravel it's not that fun this is all looks bigger it where I am here this is all less on top of this hill so we get your bearings here so you're still looking north across the tracks as a continuation of the hill but most of the list has been taken away and years since they've been up here but I'll bet we can find it and this is very steep so I promise I'm not going to fall to my death Oh God dang here it is so here's this is all loose this whole hang on to this wire I'm not gonna fall don't be wearing it now so this is an incredible cliff face with nothing but loose when the light is a little bit better make sure let me go over here you can see some old cascade volcanic ashes that are in the bank is this gonna work yeah can you see in the foreground there's kind of a faint white streak it's in the shadow that's an ash that's been collected I think it's I forget the dates like back 13,000 17,000 21,000 years old so that's not st. Helens but st. Helens is gonna be in the shadow here I'm gonna get down on my knees now don't make a joke please because I don't want to fall I'm on one knee baby I can't zoom for you but that's st. helens and I can come down here without falling that's st. helens I'm gonna come down grab some of that I got mostly loose try it again I mean you're you're getting out of the gizmo okay I'm putting the get on pound the gizmo off okay that's off so you're worth it I'm gonna get on my belly and that means I'm not gonna fall down this face and I'm gonna hold the phone with one hand and I'm gonna grab I'm gonna get down and get some of that ash out of the bank with the other but I gotta get on my belly to do it here we go okay daddy's on his belly holding the phone with my left hand so this you can get my hand for scale now so this is easily a foot a foot of Loess that has blown in since May 18 1980 I mean we're coming up on the 40th anniversary of this ash falling out of the sky and I've already shown you Mount st. Helens ash in that little vial but it's still a it's a fine powder it's not the ash that Jim sent us from afraid I which was coarser how's the focus here so this is the stuff that fell out of the sky on Sunday morning May 18th 1980 and then if we swing over and look at the rest of the bank we can maybe you can see that there's some other layers of volcanic ash that fell out of the sky hundreds thousands more than ten thousand years ago all on this Bank so time capsules right here and you're like don't take it you know that's valuable well it's it's a layer that goes all the way you know we go on these trips and the students are like don't take it don't hurt it it's like it's a layer of ash it's not just a stripe here you know so it's like a plane so now we can dig away and there's plenty more where that came from okay don't drop the phone over the edge okay so I want to thank you for joining us tonight on top of Craig's Hill in downtown and Ellensburg Washington I I really appreciate all the generosity just by you being here and being so positive and I know we've had some we've had our fair share of people who show up and are what do you call them BOTS or whatever but yeah I don't want to monitor all that you know if we don't have problems on a regular basis then we'll just we'll just we'll just deal with it I think I saw a couple comments that there was something like that going on tonight but we'll just keep it organic and as simple as possible and we'll kind of run from there okay so I don't have my watch on but I'm sure we're incredibly late and I hope I didn't hold you up from doing something more important but I'm signing off now from Ellensburg Washington I want to thank you for being with us for so many times and we'll see you saturday morning at 9 o'clock mime amounts you gotta love it good bye I love you

Channel: Nick Zentner

Views: 18,036

Rating: 4.9447641 out of 5

Keywords: Nick From Home, Nick Zentner, Columbia River Gorge, Multnomah Falls, Bridge of the Gods, Portland, Lewis and Clark

Id: ctK3PbUsZsw

Length: 118min 53sec (7133 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020