Ancient Rivers of the Pacific Northwest

[Music] ancient rivers of the pacific northwest that's the title of the talk let's start by saying this about 10 years ago i had a couple from sunnyside come up after a lecture and after the lecture they said is it true that the columbia river used to flow through sunnyside and i kind of had a blank look on my face and i'm like i've never heard don't you mean the yakima river and they're like no the the columbia river did we stutter like it's like i said i have no idea what you're talking about sounds interesting but i've never heard that i'll look into it three years later i'm up on saddle mountains know where those are we're south of vantage we're north of mattawa i'm in a pickup truck with a couple of guys from yakima they're in the rock club there and they've offered to take me out and show me where they find petrified logs up on the top of saddle mountains so we're bouncing along in this truck we're going climbing up the south flank of saddle mountains we're getting close to the top and the columbia river is down below us more than a thousand feet below us desert ridge sagebrush and the guy just stops throws the truck into park kills the engine he says i want to show you something so we go out and walk and i figure we're gonna go find some petrified wood and i quickly realized there's a bunch of river rocks at the top of the saddle mountains more than a thousand feet above the columbia river they're beautiful rounded river rocks laying loose on the ground and this guy turns to me and says how'd these rocks get up here [Laughter] i said i have no idea how those rocks got up here so he turns and says hey jim it's a good thing we got the professor with us the following spring i'm up on wallula gap now we're in southern washington it's a spring day the wind is howling and i'm hiking with tom foster and we're up on top of wallula gap it's one of those days where it's icy cold wind it's green but you can't even hear the guy and he's standing right next to you you know it's that loud and we're shouting back and forth and we're talking about the ice age floods and that sort of thing we get to the top of the willa gap we're looking down on columbia river now we're about 800 feet above the columbia river tom just stands there silently and starts snapping his photos and i look down and i see a bunch of river rocks on top of walula gap and i say hey river rocks huh he goes yep i said wow the columbia river like was up here or something else he's like salmon river and i'm like no that's the columbia river he's no no those rivers those river rocks were brought here by the salmon river that's what i read and i'm like the salmon river is in idaho and he says not back then okay so let's finally get into this let's do some geography first of all this is the northwest of course and these fat lines are rivers and these are the rivers we're going to talk about tonight the star of the show is the columbia river coming out of canada coming out of bc crossing the border kettle falls getting down to lincoln you're going to have to google that one getting down to lincoln washington a big kick to the west and we go coulee dam bridgeport chelan wenatchee vantage right the columbia river down to the tri-cities continue on the dalles hood river portland kelso longview out to the ocean that's the columbia river as it is today if you haven't guessed yet ancient rivers are these rivers but where they were in different locations and it's an amazing set of field evidence that all tell this story but we've got to know where the rivers are today before we can be impressed about where they used to be so that's the columbia what's this this is the snake river the snake river starts in yellowstone national park in wyoming the snake flows south along the base of the tetons in jackson hall over to idaho idaho falls pocatello twin falls good evening dale boise ontario oregon through hell's canyon right making the state line between oregon and idaho up to lewiston idaho and the snake river dumps into the columbia two more rivers here two more rivers we've got the salmon river headwaters in central idaho the sawtooth in the stanley basin good evening nice to have you with us the salmon river flowing north and eventually turning to reagan's idaho and then dumping into the snake finally the yakima river we're including that because that's our river in this valley starting in the cascades working its way ellensburg sunnyside that's the yakima river now and dumping into the columbia those are the four rivers we're talking about tonight i know there are many other rivers but we're not talking about them tonight we're just focusing on these four the columbia the snake the salmon and the yakima 20 million years worth of time for this story 20 million years and the first message to you tonight is that the rivers on this map are the oldest features on the map the rivers are the oldest features on the map the rivers are older than the lavas the rivers are older than the ridges the rivers are older than the ice age they haven't always been here but the rivers have been flowing for 20 million years they are continuum through this whole story these rivers i'll show you the evidence in short order have you ever noticed that the columbia river let's get rid of these other guys now let's just let's just focus on the columbia we don't want too messy of a map okay so now we've just got the columbia we good have you ever noticed the columbia comes down kettle falls lincoln and does this major kick to the west why does it do that doesn't it seem like more logical that the columbia river originally doesn't it seem more likely that that columbia river let that person in please we've got this river going straight a straight shot from lincoln down to wallula [Applause] a major assumption and it's difficult to prove because of these lavas that are going to bury everything but a major assumption is that this columbia had a straight shot originally and something caused the columbia river to kick to the west as it does today what do you suppose caused that river to kick to the west some of you know it the answer is the lava flows so starting 16 million years ago there was a very specific window of time between 16 and 15.6 million years ago that's a 400 000 year stretch we had the main phase of the columbia river lavas coming out of cracks that if you were with us last week look like this deep cracks opened up 90 percent of the total volume of this basaltic lava this orange runny lava came out of these cracks and flowed and the outline the outline of these lavas is the reason that our columbia river is kicking to the west this stretch of the columbia river between lincoln washington and wenatchee washington is basically where the columbia river has been pushed and it's still there today this is like a gutter this is like a moat around these flood basalt lavas and when you look at a geologic map south of the river up here it's all basalt and north of the river there's no basalt there's a one to one correlation between the flood basalts main phase and this position of the river and if you're looking for a sexy topic to share with your friends tomorrow at this time the columbia river was pushed so far up against the cascades that during this time let's pick 15.8 if you like if you want a number 15.8 million years ago the columbia river flowed west of ellensburg not east where's the columbia river today 30 miles to the east advantage west it flowed over by clielum we're sure of this i haven't shown you any evidence yet but i'm hoping you can absorb the basic parts of this story so i'm just trying to give you the broad strokes after the main phase of the lavas the lava is cool and there's so much weight with these lavas that they depress the crust they load the crust and cause this portion of washington to sink and so the portion of the columbia river that is south of wenatchee let's put wenatchee on here wenatchee is right here the columbia river south of wenatchee starts to shift starts to shift east of wash up east of ellensburg about whiskey dick starts to go further to the east gets over to vantage but the idea is the river keeps working its way over the next couple of millions of years into the central part of the columbia basin mainly because that's the low spot that's where these lavas have depressed the crust the most this is lava that's in total stack three miles thick in the middle so we're lowering the crust water is going to run to the middle at this time we have our friends the salmon and the snake working their way towards the columbia basin but another major message i have for you tonight is that the snake river doesn't come close to washington until very recently the snake river does not come into washington until recently i'll show you how recently in just a second instead it's the salmon river that is coming basically through the area that we now have the snake that's why foster was saying salmon river on walloola gaps green spring day shouting into the wind now there's a couple other factors here starting about 13 million years ago we have ridges starting to develop we know the ridges here in central washington you go south you have monash ridge on tanum ridge horse heaven hills topping this ridge blah blah blah they're all these uh 1 000 foot high ridges made out of basalt and those ridges formed right through here there's the timing the ridges come after the lavas and the ridges come long after the rivers and so in some cases the yakima river thing for instance the yakima river is stubborn it says i'm not moving you can rise all you want you can knuckle up all you want i'm not moving says the yakima river but the columbia river says i can't hack it these ridges are growing too high i'm going to swing to the east and get out of this ridged area so that's another reason we keep having the columbia river shift progressively to the east my final message with this broad stroke story and then i'll show you the evidence i'm kind of doing it backwards right normally we look at the evidence as scientists and then we draw our conclusions we're doing the opposite we all know what the ice age was it was a cold time you needed a sweater and there was a lot of ice and there was a major ice sheet coming down from canada and that ice sheet did detour the columbia river in places we'll look at a couple maps showing that but the main message is around the ice age time over the last three million years there is dramatically renewed uplift all across the pacific northwest we're still trying to figure out why this is but in the cascades in the blue mountains in the mountains of central oregon everybody is rising rapidly over the last three million years who cares here's why you should care we're going to make hell's canyon in three million years and we are going to have the snake river stop doing its shortcut over the blue mountains now that the blue mountains are rising we're going to have the snake river cut hells canyon one of the deepest gorges in north america in a short amount of time that's worth a whole separate lecture and i don't have much of that figured out but my main message is the hell's canyon is deep but it's not old the hell's canyon is younger by far than the yakima river canyon but it's just a case of massive uplift of the blue mountains lifting those lavas uh more than 9000 feet above sea level and cutting this as well so this is getting our modern scene of the snake river coming into washington really for the first time starting roughly three million years ago okay i don't know how you're feeling about any of this if you're like i knew all this or i have no i don't even know these rivers i know what you're talking about i just came because my wife said we should come i don't know i don't care why you're here you're here i promised the evidence and if you want to tell a major story like this and i have beautiful custom-made maps made for you tonight specifically for this lecture those doors are working overtime tonight good lord all right i promised the evidence and if you want to tell a good story and convince a lot of people that this is actually true you better have more than one kind of evidence ideally you have at least three different kinds of evidence all pointing to the same conclusion we've got that here i hope you like this field evidence let's make a list and let's plot it on the map even if you didn't follow all the geographic details i know some of us are not map lovers you don't think map wise some of us do of course let's just look at the evidence the first piece of evidence is something called a river cobble a river cobble plural jim briggs brought in some river cobbles from a field trip that we did in november this is what river rocks look like in our neck of the woods right our rivers are beautiful they're clear they run fast and if you reach down to the bottom of a river and you pull up rocks they look like this right they're about the size and shape of baked potatoes they're beautiful and they're polished and they're evidence that a river was there why because you go right into the river you pick these things out these are rocks that were originally angular and they got tumbled their corners got knocked off and they got smoothed and polished the farther they traveled okay fine you probably figured we were going to deal with some river cobbles here here's the cool part let's call these river rocks um potatoes my wife is from idaho they call them spuds in idaho so let's call them we mentioned spuds we're talking about these river rocks i got one more food analogy trail of breadcrumbs let me show you what i mean eastern washington is a desert you can see the geology without having to fight through a bunch of grass and trees and over overpasses and everything else houses subdivisions it's right out there for you to look at and there are trails of breadcrumbs if you're thoroughly wide awake and you are looking on the ground like those first three stories i talked about they're right there on the ground these river rocks these potatoes these spuds this trail of breadcrumbs of spuds are typically river rocks that are dark colored this trail of breadcrumbs are river rocks spuds that are golden color a beautiful golden color these river rocks are a distinct maroon or a deep red color how are we going to do this how are we going to use this how can we make any comment about colors of river rocks this sounds like a first grade project here's how it works the gold river rocks are quartzite quartzite pre-cambrian super old quartzite where do you find quartzite in the ground where do you find bedrock of quartzite you don't find it in the cascades there's no quartzite in the cascades there's no quartzite in southern washington it's all lava rock the main place you find quartzite in the mountains in the ridges this beautiful gold court side it's called the addy court side is in northeast washington go up to colville or chihula hell you go to chihuila they got the quartzite brewing company right in town there's quartzite mountain right up above chihula that's ground zero for the source of this gold quartzite the beautiful part is the columbia river if you haven't figured this out already are you a couple steps ahead of me i hope you are the columbia river is coming through this area picking up quartzite blocks rounding them and then dropping them down like a string of string of pearls that would be another one we could put here trail of bread crumbs string of pearls baked potatoes you got it the rivers are gone the water is gone but these river rocks are laid out in this beautiful trail and you want to follow them to document that the columbia river used to be there and you go that sounds kind of weak just a bunch of quartzite cobbles well again you can't find quartzite any place in the northwest except from where the columbia river is coming from let me give you another example less impressive the yakima river's rocks are dark colored they're not as good looking they're not those beautiful golds they're dark volcanic rocks and metamorphic rocks and they're coming from the cascades so the dark rocks as i'll show you with the video clips in the photos are from the cascades they say yakima river where i was with foster up on walloola gap those were a beautiful red those spuds were a beautiful red and you'd follow the breadcrumbs of red river rocks and you're going into a different area and you're going into the seven devils mountains of idaho just on the idaho side of hell's canyon it's a distinctive rhyolite it's a fingerprint for that river to review you want to prove that the columbia river flowed through your county look for gold river rocks how about the salmon river look for red river rocks how about the yakima look for dark river rocks now that's pretty compelling and i'll show you the visuals that will make this work but i got two more pieces of evidence for you by the way i hope it's clear i'm a teacher i haven't done any of this research i always say this with every one of these talks this is more than a hundred years of old-fashioned geology on foot and maps and reports and maps and reports and they're stuck on a shelf and nobody sees them so if i have the time i sit down and read all those things and i try to put a story together and this is one of those stories none of my work we'll make sure we get credit to the people who need the credit if that works for you great but let's add to it how can we prove that these rivers used to be in certain places so river cobbles are one how about lava filled valleys uh here's the idea i'm running out of room ah you've you've got this right it's going away you've all got it in your notes it'll be quizzed on next week of course not when you look at some of these uh waning phase eruptions in other words after the main lavas flooded out there were smaller lava flows and if we have oh i can do this on here i'll do this here sorry uh let's say we have a relatively small eruption maybe it's 10.5 million years ago or 11.5 million years ago those are specific eruptions of the elephant mountain lava flow or the pomona lava flow so the idea on a map the orange lava and we'll look at these professional maps in a second the orange lava looks like this at the cracks the lava is coming up and pooling but eventually that orange lava funnels down to this little narrow orange worm why does it do that that lava is so fluid it's acting like water it's trying to find an easy place to flow it finds a river valley that's what we want right the lava is going to flow right down a river valley and fill it in cross-section let's do this let's make this be the columbia river i'm going to quiz you you ready this is a columbia river valley long ago it's a sunny day this is a cross-section it's a v-shaped valley the columbia river is down here flowing in the bottom of this valley what color are the spuds gold thank you you pass here's the columbia river flowing away from us down this valley and at the bottom of the columbia river are these gold pebbles we know why we know they're coming from the quartzite town good now this lava flow is going to flow over central washington it's going to find our river valley and the lava flow in cross section is going to fill that valley the river water's gone it flashes to steam it's out of there we're gonna bury our gold spuds underneath this basalt river and eventually this is gonna harden to basalt rock confined to this valley lava filled valley you got it now here's the really cool part wait a few million years have erosion start working on this area commonly the lava-filled valley is more resistant to erosion than the areas nearby so maybe this is north and maybe this is south and maybe this is the columbia river today and maybe this is oh i don't know interstate 84 driving to portland down the columbia river gorge can you picture this you're on the freeway you're on the oregon side you're driving west north is on your right you got it there's the columbia river today where was the columbia river the age of this lava is 14.8 million years old where was the columbia river 14.8 million years ago it was right here you're like what a no the river wasn't flowing on top of the ridge 14.8 million years ago this was the valley everything else was higher but now we've inverted the topography what was the valley is now the ridge and what was the ridge is now the valley do you see how this works now by the way if you visit the vista house overlooking the columbia river that's the precise situation the vista house overlooking the columbia river is built on one of our lava-filled valleys so that's a completely different peel-to-feet piece of field evidence isn't it say that again now we got two pieces of field evidence the baked potatoes strung out in a line and valleys that are filled with lava i got one more for you and then we'll go to all these visuals perfect timing great uh gaps in ridges again what are we trying to do we're trying to convince whoever wants to listen and that's not many people that we're sure that a river used to flow through an area even though the river's gone and we're using the river rocks and the canyons that are filled with lava to do that this is the third way this is going away too all right so take your favorite ridge take me tash take topping this ridge i don't care any one of those ridges this is a sunny day any one of those ridges might have a gap it might have a hole in it might have a piece where the ridge is missing monastash ridge there's a hole why is there a hole there why is there a gap there that's where the yakima river right here is flowing away from us this is called a water gap it's a ridge with a gap in it and we call that gap a water gap why it's just like it sounds there's water flowing through the gap there's water that's cutting through this ridge and we know because the rivers are the oldest of all these things that the river was there first and this ridge has been uplifting since 13 million years ago roughly but let's qualify that for a water gap to form we need the rate of uplift to basically be equal to the rate of river cutting let me say that again we're going to have this river cut a canyon like we do with the yakima river cane i got an animation to show you in just a second but we need the rate of uplift to be about the same in other words we need slow uplift against slow river cutting and we'll get the water gap this is not the evidence to prove that a river used to be there because the river's still there right but there is something called a wind gap it's a stupid name water gaps are formed by water so you go okay wind gap and form by wind no a wind gap is a failed water gap a wind gap is a failed water gap so we need this ridge to be higher we need the same kind of gap for a wind gap but there's no river in it it's called a wind gap because wind is just kind of funneling through there during our lifetime but how did that wind gap form it was originally a water gap but here's the point the uplift of this ridge was faster this is a faster uplifting ridge that says uplift okay great the point is this ridge has defeated the river the river's trying to cut trying to cut but this thing is lifting too fast and at some point the river says screw this i'm leaving i can't do this i'm river i'm water i'm going to flow a different way i'm going to go to the east into the columbia basin but for a time we can put the river there can't we the wind gap is telling us where the river used to flow this is sunny side gap where the columbia river used to flow through sunnyside this is kind of walk past where the yakima river used to flow across that particular ridge this is sadist pass as you go over 97 and drop into goldendale the columbia used to flow through saturn's past but it's a wind gap now so and have you been keeping score we've got three very different kinds of evidence the spuds the lava-filled valleys and these wind gaps combining at different snapshots in time putting this whole story together to back up the story time that i gave you before and this didn't work very well because the scale is wrong that's my that's my assessment of our first 10 minutes so i want to show you all these beautiful maps that show the details of these snapshots in time and we'll look at the visuals for all this field evidence these are our maps today these are our rivers today should look familiar snake salmon colombia yakima that's today that should look the most familiar of all of these maps and in washington here is our river kettle falls lincoln the kick west we now know why chelan wenatchee vantage and eventually get ourselves down to the tri-cities in woolula gap but remember we are proposing and this is not my idea this is not somebody else's idea this goes back to bailey willis who's a famous geology back in the 1890s who proposed that originally the columbia river perhaps flowed halfway between moses lake and ritzville what's that shrag rest area i guess all right okay so let's burn through these maps each of them carefully made with loving care by jennifer hackett who lives in valley and i'll try to make these maps available to you somehow if you really want to study these carefully we don't have time to pause that long but here's a proposal can't prove it but a proposal for our river pattern 17 million years ago before the ridges before the lava before the ice age columbia river and the yakima and the wenatchee and the chelan river quote unquote coming in now what do we do 15.8 million years ago we kicked the columbia basically up against the foot of the cascades and this is the short window where we have the columbia river coming through indian john rest area we had the columbia river almost making it to cleoelum we have the columbia river on the back side of mount adams we got the columbia river not even getting to hood river angling down this way but pretty quickly after that oh sorry we've got also for the first time the salmon not the snake i know this looks like the snake today doesn't it but this is the path of the sam and the snake is down here doing a shortcut across the blues mountains which don't exist yet now 15.6 which is at the end of this main phase of the lavas the columbia has already shifted over to vantage because why the subsidence has begun the land is sinking and if we're downstream of wenatchee we got this columbia starting to creep its way back to the east this still looks about the same 14.2 oh now the columbia is kicking back west just a bit i wonder why look at this kink in the salmon river here down by pasco i wonder why i'll show you some maps to explain that but we'll just keep rolling through 11.5 million years ago 10.5 million years ago again it's salmon river columbia river dominating the scene still the salmon 8.5 million years ago we still have the salmon coming through wallula gap that's tom foster country when we were up howling in the wind even five million years ago even i know that sounds like a long time ago but for us we're getting close to now we still have the salmon river up here we don't have health canyon we don't have the snake into our state but if we jump to 15 000 years ago very recent geologically now we're late in the ice age let's slow down and take a look now we have the snake river have cut the house canyon now we have the salmon coming in from riggins and look at the columbia there's no columbia at chelan there's no columbia river at wenatchee or even vantage this is ice age time and we have a glacier here that's diverting the columbia river from cooley dam over dry falls i repeat the columbia river coming over dry falls not the ice age floods the columbia river moses lake get to the face of saddle mountains flow down crab creek beverly hang a left and then follow the columbia to the ocean and here we are today i don't know how you feel about these maps but we're going to make another run at it and put some lava in i want to make sure the credit goes to steve rydell a geologist who spent almost 50 years on foot putting this story together and his colleagues we talked about him last week as well so you do this the salt lava study and these river cobble studies pretty much all at the same set of projects and you'll see why momentarily and again i've got copies of both of these up on the stage if you want to take a peek steve has compiled a bunch of his newspaper columns from the tri-city herald which of course are written for a general audience and you might enjoy those okay back to the story here's all our flood lavas you see what i mean we kind of kick the river west when we get to the northern edge of the syrup that has been spilled over eastern washington here's that german chocolate cake more than three miles thick beneath pasco here's the map that we looked at last week the thickest part of this volcanic stack is in the middle and that's where the lavas are thickest and that's where the rivers are eventually trying to get to the columbia basin is a basin for a reason that's the low spot now if you go to the grand round river one of my favorite new areas of washington you can see many of these lava layers stacked one on top of another and that grand ronde river is phonogenic and there's hardly anybody down there and it's extreme southeast corner of washington i highly suggest you can drive down all this spot some of this is dirt roads but you don't need a fancy vehicle at all now if we start 17 million years ago the lavas in oregon are not a part of our story tonight so let's skip it let's skip it we're spilling syrup the lavas are coming over we don't care we don't care we don't care we don't care oh but we care here this is the main phase when 90 percent of the lavas came out of the ground here are the cracks that the lava came out of and look at how much of the northwest is buried in thick lava that's the time that we pushed the columbia to the margin of this field this is dark but hopefully you can see some orange lava coming up during the main phase when that orange lava gets to the surface it flows laterally in sheets of orange lava and eventually this cools and becomes one of the many of the 300 separate basalt layers this is overlooking in a helicopter active eruptions of fissure-style basalt in iceland just a few years ago this is what it looked like near ritzville this is what it looked like on outside of collotus oh you take your favorite little remote town in eastern washington and this was the scene at some time in the past that's what's recorded in these giant lava flows these great lava flows of the west and every time we have an eruption the heat goes away the lava cools off we have a featureless lunar-like landscape we wait maybe thousands of years maybe even tens of thousands of years before the next eruption but those eruptions are important because they're going to start to detour and make the kinks in the rivers that i was talking about earlier so here's the eruption of the ginkgo lava here's the eruption out of the crack for the rosa flow flowing down to the dalles here's the priest rapids flow and now please notice oh boy we're getting down we're getting pretty narrow we're getting really narrow it's a narrow orange worm a lava-filled valley here's the vista house this is the priest wrap it's lava flow this is exactly underneath this parking lot is where the columbia river was 14.8 million years ago a lava-filled valley this is the columbia river today it's that direct it's that specific and when you look at these cliffs some of them are these lava-filled valleys this is a geologic diagram from portland and we have three different orange worms three different canyons that were filled with lava so we can put the columbia at three specific places at three specific times that's the level of the detail we're getting to now this looks like a generic spot you hike someplace in a coulee and you see a bunch of lava but does this lava look different to you than this it does to me this is a valley this is a paleo valley this is lava that came down this little valley this is a lava-filled valley compared to this which is just regular flat lava flows and this one as well a lava-filled valley notice this is the thing that's standing higher than the surrounding area but remember this whole thing was the empty space originally that the lava flowed down through so when you see these maps of individual flows we're almost done with the maps if you hate tonight's not your lecture if you hate maps by the way look at how skinny these guys are they're following the salmon river at 13.3 at 13.2 that's the source over by rondo idaho floods finds the salmon spreads out finds another valley this is the columbia valley it's that precise this is the best place in washington to see intra canyon or in other words valley uh it's filled with lava this is in devil's canyon just south of colotus near this present-day snake river we have three separate worms of orange lava so this was a valley that received three different batches of lava at three different times and they've all been mapped out and worked by steve and his friends that's you can drive right by it i forget the route but you're leaving from one of those dams on the snake up to collodus great over by lewiston another lava fell valley this is swallows nest rock this is the elephant mountain flow that was confined to that valley i think we've got enough of this oh we're going to combine the two very quickly i'm going to shut up now and just let you look we've got lava and the rivers both in the same maps can you pick out the blue ribbons may be difficult to see from where you're sitting but these orange waning phase eruptions are roadblocks they're detouring these rivers this way and that they're putting the kinks into these rivers and remember the evidence we have for this it's not just the lava-filled valleys what's the main evidence our spuds right our spuds and that's coming so there's snapshots that steve rydell has put together in south central washington for each of these areas they're very detailed maps and they're beautiful but we've tried to take that level of detail and broaden the scope out to show much of washington at this time god the time that went into these maps by jennifer hackett amazing five million years we still don't have hell's canyon the snake is going ontario south of le grand and shooting to the dalles but as soon as we get that ice age uplift the snake river captures the salmon river and it's the snake now and we've got salmon that can swim from the pacific and get all the way to yellowstone hypothetically for the first time in the last three million years okay enough maps even though i'm showing you a map we go to ellensburg we are sitting right here in the hal home center right and a commercial time out here so we have new programs we're airing on the seattle pbs station and uh the fellow i'm working with is chris smart who's here tonight and chris and i are going out and making little five-minute episodes we've completed six of them and the seventh one is under construction and it's on our topic tonight so i asked chris last week if he could just slap together a couple of rough little pieces that we filmed last summer this is up on the saddle mountains where i found those rocks with the with the guys in the rock club and uh this will be a nice change of pace that will get us off the maps and it will also visually hopefully confirm what we've been talking about to this point tonight this is the columbia river from canada water flowing through the deserts of eastern washington there's a geologic history of this river it hasn't always been here and rocks like these here found 1500 feet above the river have a story to tell there are the clues to prove that the columbia river has a long illustrious history this is the yakima river been diving for rocks here there's another one this is what yakima river rocks look like they're round they're smooth they're pleasing baked potatoes but they're dark colored the geology upstream the bedrock in the cascades where this river is coming from are these kinds of rocks dark volcanic rocks and dark metamorphic rocks the point is these rocks are a geologic fingerprint for the yakima river this is 55 miles down river from where we were on the yakima river that's the yakima back there in the green but these rocks look very different don't they these aren't the dark colored brunette rocks we had in the yakima these are blonde mostly blonde colored river rocks in fact some of these guys have been sitting next to each other for eight million years until this morning these are quartzites from the rocky mountains the columbia river brought these in there can be no other way these rivers get rocks got here columbia river long ago yakima river today you notice it's not just a couple of rocks it's a pretty pretty impressive thick pile of these spuds depending on where you are and this is the yakima river uh you can picture this can't you we're looking north the uplifted ridge and that's to come before we quit tonight so this is from my kitchen that's an actual potato these are actual potatoes and these are columbia river rocks yakima river dark not particularly photogenic and i didn't know how to use my iphone very well this is in focus and this is not but you get the idea the yakima river coming from the cascades and flowing down to the tri-cities this is the river that carries the dark spuds the dark spuds why because the geology the bedrock upstream from here is dark bedrock that the river's going to pick up and tumble here's chris in the river at ringer loop here are those dark yakima river rocks if we go downstream like we just did in the video clip now we're down by granger where dinosaurs roam don't get me started thoroughly confusing there's nothing to do with dinosaurs down there that's a whole other topic okay so we're near granger emerald road if you know the area where along the yakima river the yakima river and yet you now know what the significance is don't you these are not yakima river rocks we were just there in video and now we're here with stills the columbia river came through here we're close to sunnyside the couple at the beginning of the lecture yes i can say now i wish i could find them yes the columbia river did go through the sunnyside area i know now why blonde river cobbles and a wind gap the sunny side wind gap up here in northeastern washington north of spokane that's where we're going to find our what kind of rock quartzite this is where the quartzite is going to be coming from the blonde river rocks have to come from somewhere the columbia is coming from northeastern washington so here's i haven't been to chihuila ever i found these this morning on the internet quartzite mountain above shawila and the quartzite brewing company beautiful rocks in chris smart's front yard so many quartzites so little time says the t-shirt this was on a geology field trip uh we're at benton city yakima river today quartzite say that the columbia river used to go through benton city at one point up on the saddle mountains with a group of you guys a few falls ago it was a cold afternoon looking down on the columbia but again up here on top the columbia river gravels now you might be curious how did so how did the river rock get up this high remember the river is older than the ridges so these river rocks are up here with us but they were down at river level and the saddle mountains have grown 1500 feet tall since the time that those river rocks were deposited i'll say it a different way the columbia used to come right through where we're standing when the area was flat and then the ridges lifted those rocks here you go top of saddle mountains i thought we were looking for petrified wood we eventually did but they showed with kind of a smart alky attitude the quartzite river cobbles yeah they they played it well they had a good laugh and i i can laugh now it was painful at the time all right great we'll lula gap not that spring day with foster but a little bit later on a sun sunny hot day we're up high the columbia river is 800 feet low we got lava this is 8.5 million year old lava the ice harbor lava flow remember that that's going to help us in just a second this is what that lava flow looks like it's the last one it's the guy that's really piddly comes out of one crack where the snake river today crosses and the lava flow up on top of wallula gap looks like this how old 8.5 million year old lava why are we hammering that 8.5 million year old lava that flowed over what that flowed over red red spuds so now we can put a time on it red rocks oh this is the salmon 8.5 million year old lava sitting directly on top the salmon was here at least 8.5 million years ago maybe a touch older do you see how this works not only we can put the salmon river in a place we can also put it at a time depending on the age of the layers above and below god this is beautiful work not by me by all these guys over the last hundred years salmon river rocks 800 feet above this columbia river that's oregon on the other side and so if we want to go like i did past summer i went on a week-long field trip with some geologists we spent time in hell's canyon and went up the salmon as well for other reasons i just happen to be interested in this river story this is going up the salmon river and if you get past riggins and climb way way way way way way up above riggins idaho you're in the several devons you're in the seven devils mountains red rhyolite the source of the red rocks so these are red salmon river gravels idaho red potatoes it actually works right yeah right idaho red potatoes in our kitchen these are actual potatoes instead of rocks i have to point that out because you can't even tell right they look so similar the potatoes in the right so the spuds are telling the story uh most powerfully let's finish things out by commenting briefly on hell's canyon even though i'm going to tease you with this and not have much detail remember the main message this is at pittsburgh landing one of the few places you can drive it's a long drive to get into the snake river in the bottom of hell's canyon and there's boating on certain stretches if you're below a certain dam or above a certain dam excuse me and again this is this field trip i was on with a bunch of geologists who i learned a lot from but the point is this is a young canyon this is a younger than three million year old canyon we don't think hell's canyon existed until the ice age and that cutting happened as the snake river cut through the blue mountains as opposed to making the short cut through northeast oregon okay we got enough of the hells canyon maybe we'll do one of those lectures down the road the ridges if you were having a hard time picturing the ridges of central washington remember the wind gaps are also helping us put the river in certain places so here's the concept of a river being older than the ridge the river was here first and this land has been lifting against the river we know the river is older because of its curvy nature meanders only form when an area is flat so you got it the river was here first when air was flat then this land started to lift and these ridges started to grow why yakima river uplifting ridges we know that now we've got a good concept this is from the top of the larsen building in downtown yakima looking uh north this is sila gap water gap right because the yakima river is coming through the gap today as long as the freeway is coming through here's looking the opposite way from the top of the larsen building looking south union gap wind gap or water gap water gap the yakima river is going through that one too so these ridges are uplifting slowly enough to allow the yakima river to keep up in other words the river did not defeat the river but as i mentioned there are two very important wind gaps and you're like well those aren't wind gaps the the river is going through sunny side gap in conewalk paths they were those two places were water gaps the columbia river used to come through sunny side the yakima river used to go through conewalk paths but today this ridge rattlesnake hills ridge lifted too fast and so the columbia said nope i'm going to go around i can't handle that uplift and the conewalk pass story is a little bit less clear to me but the yakima gave up there as well so this is kanawa pass near yakima if you haven't heard of it it's in the south of moxie and this is sunnyside gap this was on november 1st of this past year at 70 degrees seems like a long time ago man on the columbia river advantage and south of vantage can you picture yourself we're going south now beverly we're looking south this is the saddle mountains and a water gap right the columbia river going through sentinel gap this gap is quite large and it's so wide because not only the columbia is a big river but because the ice age floods came through as well and tore out the walls of that gap but it's a water gap it's not a wind gap this is an even bigger water gap wallula gap so foster and i were up here finding the red spuds of the salmon but now we're down low looking at the wallula gap which is famous in ice age floods discussions because this is the gap that stopped all the flood water from montana now that's a water gap the granddaddy of them all will lula gap the columbia river plowing right into the horse heaven hills and making a significant water gap we got that all right to finish up i got just a few more slides back in 1943 geologists were still unclear how far south the ice sheet came from canada this guy hobbs in 43 has a huge ice sheet coming over much of eastern washington and getting i guess to like uh othello and that's for sure not true but was proposed back then in other words this is before the ice age flood story was accepted to explain all these coulees and digging the ice age flood erosional features is part it's a small part but it's part of shifting these rivers around this is the current view we have of how far south the okanagan ice sheet was able to get it gets basically down to coulee city and what i'd like to point out ice sheet what i'd like to point out with the last jennifer hackett map i have for you tonight here's the columbia river coulee dam cooley city moses lake almost to othello over to beverly and then down why did the columbia river get diverted over here way too much ice so this is an ice road block my god we're losing track of all these reasons that this river these rivers are getting pushed all over the place but this is a very recent story just 15 000 years ago and so it's kind of fun to think of the chelan drive to wenatchee and vantage with no water to look at no columbia river it was completely dry but as soon as you melt this ice back the columbia river is restored to its present course which today of course is coming right by chelan and the columbia river today is coming right through sentinel gap and the columbia river today is going right beneath wallula gap let's hear woody guthrie celebrate the columbia river [Music] there's a great and peaceful river in the land [Music] this is wrong as close to heaven as my [Music] travels thanks everybody

Channel: Nick Zentner

Views: 54,942

Keywords: Nick Zentner, Ancient Rivers, Clearwater-Salmon, Columbia River, Columbia River Basalt Group

Id: _Hp64tvgCSE

Length: 57min 17sec (3437 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021