Pateros - Ice Age Boulders & Terraces

hi everybody and welcome to Chalan Washington this is the Chalan airport and this is a field scouting video for potentially a new episode of Nick on the Rock so I'm talking directly to Brady Lawrence the cameraman and no Backcountry Gary today uh so this is a potential spot for us to film Brady for the rest of you hope that you enjoy this short little video brainstorming ideas for potentially a show on something called the great Terrace in central Washington okay there's a cute little Runway here in Chalan at the airport why am I shooting here well there's a reason this is such a flat landscape and the Columbia river is right off that way and there are these beautiful knobs of very old bedrock in this area so I think this is Apple Acres Road and uh as we drive through Apple Acres Road to the north we thread our way through some of these islands of Bedrock but the the concept Brady is that there's this flat landscape not just here at the airport but there's a flat landscape that was once continuous all the way across what is today the Columbia River Valley and the light is wrong it's an overcast Day by the way it's not the prettiest of days here in late April but there are those beautiful Milk Duds across the way and so a potential open to the show a hook to the show or maybe the first part of this episode is asking what in the Chalan area is evidence of an ice sheet being right here one answer are those obvious glacial erratics The Milk Duds and beautiful shots drone shots possibly about those field of Milk Duds another concept is we have Bedrock knobs that are rounded and we'll get a sense of that as we drive through this landscape and film a few places you can even see looking to the east hopefully you can see that there's not only those erratic Boulders but kind of a streamlined or grooved look or fluted landscape that sounds familiar from an Cordis but the real episode guts is talking about these Flats themselves are also a key set of Landscapes that prove that we are near an ice sheet and I think the flat landscape like this was overlooked by anybody walking around or driving around in the Chalan area here in North Central Washington okay Brady Sun's starting to come out it's uh about noon time uh in late April and I found this spot that what's today's date April 24th uh so the idea is that um we might be able to use this area and workshopping ideas now for the episode it's a great Terrace episode but how to portray it and you were concerned about did we have enough visual elements to make this work for you as well as the viewers well I'd say that this area is quite special uh combination of wild flowers and yes incredible Boulders each of these Boulders was moved in here and dropped in here and instead of just a field of Boulders there's a third dimension to it there's a depth to this stack of boulders so if I carefully Zoom peteras is down there in the hole next to the Columbia River but just beyond pateros halfway up is the great Terrace and if I really try to zoom with my iPhone you can see that there's a series of fruit trees Orchards irrig at lands right on top of the great Terrace it makes a convenient flat in fact that's part of the nomenclature up here people talk about this flat and that flat and I was driving on Taylor flat and I went over to Howard Flats so the flats are are are part of the Great Terrace story so maybe Brady as I'm walking here and thinking I'm I'm guessing I'm asking myself as I spin you guys around is this the opening of the episode where you say where I say this area was under ice and what evidence in this landscape tells us that we were under ice to the southeast up on the Waterville plateau and coming down on these slopes towards the Columbia River are these beautiful basaltic Boulders Milk Duds as I call them deposited directly by the ice but come on man we've already done that we did that last fall with that with Marine show show the man the Waterville Plateau show so that's already been done this is not far away but here we can see a grooved look the ice sheet left marks on the Bedrock and with the right light I think this has to be a late L late after afternoon early evening place you're looking East right now so we'd be bathing it with late day sun and if your drone is flying over there capturing those Milk Duds and also capturing that fluted landscape much of it in Basalt great but then we can see carefully that it's not just Basalt Bedrock there's this salt and pepper looking crystal in Bedrock with that far north in Washington we also can see that this Crystal in Bedrock these knobs of Bedrock like we had back in Chalan are rounded another evidence for the ice but then we land on the main point of the episode which is there's an organization no there's a pile of Boulders and sand and cobbles and even silt but here I come come on these aren't necessarily glacial erratics they're big rocks but I think almost everybody in P toine geology has mapped these as flood gravels the mega floods the Missoula floods which some of them came right around the corner yeah water from Montana bringing Boulders around the corner and down the Columbia River Valley heading towards Wula Gap and Beyond but here at peteros and Brewster were also in the neighborhood of the Okanagan Valley so there's another potential source of water major amounts of Ice Age flood water coming down the Okanagan across the border and if we look carefully at the lithologies here many of these granates and metamorphic rocks came from the north but the size of these things is staggering and we're right next to us997 this is not some remote spot so anybody who's driven us997 here and you recognize peteros you hang a left at peteros and you head up towards the North Cross Highway way this is the geology where you're driving through and these levels of The Terraces make sense so Brady maybe this makes you feel a little better maybe working with a landscape like this you don't have to feel like you have to work as hard to make an interesting episode with some visuals if I can get you up here in the next 3 weeks uh these flowers are going to be on display the orchards are going to be starting to bloom a little bit and it's a handsome time of the year to capture the great Terrace in the Columbia River Valley I mean I'm a big guy and for me to walk around some of these Boulders that everyone agrees is from flood waters I don't know maybe this isn't a great terrrace show maybe this is just a flood Boulder show this is impressive okay just brain just workshopping ideas uh last fall you were filming me Brady walking around the Milk Duds and we were looking at the size of those glacial erratics now those were definitely glacial erratics those were definitely deposited directly by the ice nobody here is saying these are deposited by the ice this is a glaciated landscape but we're part of this Terrace story so how much you love this question how much force is necessary how much energy is necessary what what speeds and depths of water are necessary to bring these Boulders in in and they're all rounded so these things are getting tumbled ass over tea kettle down the Columbia River Valley wow and you know is it true that sometimes Granite Weathers in place and it develops kind of a rounded look exfoliated type stuff yes but that's not what the look of these guys are everyone in geology agrees these are flood transported Boulders that were tumbled in here I'm not even sure more ideas the position of these Boulders most of them are Granite the position of these Granite Boulders are such that we're really not even talking about icebergs here for those that are aware of Boulders that were brought in by the floods I think many visualize accurately that if if you have a massive flood of water and you have icebergs floating in the water and the icebergs kind of work their way to a side Canyon and the iceberg gets parked and then melts and then we leave a an ice rafted erratic that's a thing but I don't think that's the story here I guess I can double check with a few friends who've been mapping up here but there's so many of the these Granite Boulders rounded and the position of them I don't we don't need an iceberg I don't think we're we're literally picking these rocks up from the north and rolling them down here am I am I visualizing accurately that these are flood tumbled Boulders in an incredible field of them and do we have these kinds of Boulders inside of the great Terrace or is this a much later story well I okay so what what's the re so this is not Brady now this is just me thinking geologically what is the relative age can we say anything about the relative age of this field of huge Granite Boulders that are flood tumbled compared to the age of that former great terrrace that presumably went all the way across the valley is this the older bigger story those that have been following my the programs we've been doing this past winter are these flood tumbled Boulders the big and Old Blue story and is the younger and smaller red story recorded by these generally finer sized or smaller sized rocks that make up the great Terrace here and after immediately after the red time did we have a continuous red Terrace across the Valley from side to side completely burying these rocks and then in the last 20,000 years last 15,000 years we've slowly been erasing eroding the fine red cover to reveal these older rocks is that one plausible scenario is another opposite way to visualize this that the great Terrace is the blue story is the old story is the older than 20,000 year old story fill the preglacial valley of of Columbia River Valley itself scoop most of those blue stones out of here and then late in the game are these Missoula flood Boulders and the youngest stuff is the biggest that goes against my t-shirt older bigger younger smaller but is is that scenario testable and maybe you're like I don't know why don't you go ask somebody who's figured it all out well nobody's figured it all out everybody I talked to to who knows floods geology they don't have a definitive story here so this has been a major puzzle flip you around listen the great Terrace at peteros at Brewster tascet all the way up to the Border down as far as Chalan the great Terrace was first noticed 150 years ago before the Civil War even and it's still a mystery mostly because hardly anybody's worked up in here to figure this stuff out so that's a challenge in itself how do you do a little PBS episode on something that is confusing to most everybody I think the answer is you have beautiful photography videography drone video you lay down some basic language describing the scene and then I think you'd throw out ideas ideas that have been rolled around by many possibly an idea or two that are Fresh Off The Dome here after the winter that we've had together and maybe an animation or two is needed for this episode I think I'm going to go up around cross the river try to get over to this country over here by Road and see if there's another beautiful natural area but this one seems to work and it's right next to the highway thank you okay Brady I had some Mexican food in Brewster it was delicious early afternoon now I'm sleepy here's what I did over lunch so yeah great Terrace that was our idea but maybe this is a combo platter in the pateros area pateros Brewster Chalan Granite Boulders and the great Terrace the great Terrace the concept is there's a series of flats topographically flat that extend all through this area all the way up the Okanagan uh there's rich Lush Orchards there's probably some wind blown silt lus that's mantling the tops of the flats to make it productive I need to look into whether there's a slight slope a slight slope to the South but in general they're quite flat the Revelation today is that there are stunning fields of huge Granite Boulders Boulders that I didn't really realize were here in such great abundance but now I'm seen them everywhere uh most of them are rounded the interpretation I think it's safe but I'll double check this with my geology friends those Boulders are flood tumbled they are definitely from the Ice Age floods and it's a incredible collection some of them are truck sized most are Granite some are metamorphic rock called nice a few are basaltic and so how to combine these two stories together that that's the question I'll write something up and send it to you I'm currently interested in the relative age between these two things they cannot be the same age they can't be from the same flood and so to finish this little episode let's um I've spent too much time uh crossing the river at Brewster dealing with all sorts of Orchard roads uh but this is little shoulder I was up way too high I was up out of the flood country and into the trees and dealing with a Packwood cemetery and some other things not that reliable but this little spot here uh you can get a sense of the Orchards this I think is all crane family Orchard they've got a lot of property here so you're looking up the Columbia River the little town of Brewster where I had lunches in the trees now you're looking North well the Okanagan Valley heading up towards the border is around the corner there but here's kind of that same landscape I was just showing but now it's a different vantage point we're immediately across the river from pateros and the reason I'm choosing this little spot to finish our scouting episode is to show you what it what this great Terrace looks like so there's uh State Route 153 heading up the Meto but here's maybe a uh a better shot I don't know if it's worth a half an hour of driving to cross the river and get over here but if you like this shot Brady here's how almost artificial looking the great Terrace is and as I've driven up this Terrace which i' had never done before I was surprised at how fine grained much of the sedimentation is almost like it's a series of slack waterer sediments it's a bunch of Lake beds now why would there be Lake beds right here on a major corner of the Columbia River I would think there would be incredibly coarse material surging down this Valley so it's so fine and chalky why is there a lake story here and how much of a role does the meta Valley The Meta River Valley play a part in this little corner so I don't know Brady maybe you want to be up here maybe you don't uh for the geology viewers just watching and they don't give they're like I don't care about this PBS progr just give me some detail geology well okay this is for you this is a nice shot actually so the sun is wrong it's it's 2:00 p.m. um but looking inside of the Terrace here these aren't truck size Boulders but this isn't the fine chalky white lake bed stuff either but I don't know may maybe some sort of drone shot over these blooming Orchards over these blooming fruit trees and then suddenly that falls away uh or maybe I think it's fine if we're taking a drone shot Due West and getting a sense of this Terrace and then how abruptly it drops off and really for the first time I feel like there is kind of a nice spot here to project that Terrace level that Terrace level in the distance and that Terrace level up there so again I was down in the hole looking up here in the previous shot so if we're just asking questions about the great Terrace and we have an eye to develop develop an eye to find it many geologists assume that that much material sat in the Floor of this Columbia River Valley at some point during the Ice Age but the incredible Boulder Field which is the the most exciting part of today and brand new to me was right down in here and why would you have your biggest coarsest truck siiz Boulders down low is that because there was a major Missoula flood that came from Montana came down the Columbia River Valley and the Missoula flood continued down that's the conventional story and I think therefore the conventional story is that those incredible Boulder Fields those truck-sized granates that are rounded and clearly flood tumbled got dumped there as this Missoula water came around the horn and now it's a straight shot south or looking above the town of peteras this is a great shot to see that there's not just one Terrace level there's a series of Terrace levels and this is the metti river coming out of the Cascades the metti river coming out of the Cascades and bringing sediment from the side how much of this Terrace story is coming from the side Canyons how much glacial ice is coming down the side Canyons or a more radical question how much iceberg flooding how much Outburst flooding is coming down the side Canyons is it an accident that the biggest Boulders by far in this area today is at the mouth of the Meta River there are plenty of granates and metamorphics up the metal just like there are plenty of granates and metamorphics to the north all right flip you around and Say Goodbye so thanks everybody for your patience and watching today this is obviously a new wrinkle to combine making geology videos for you all as well as double dipping and trying to think about potential PBS episodes still not sure we're doing it to be honest but the Landscapes are unique and enough in this pateros area to try to work up something and if you have some detailed knowledge about the Ice Age floods or the ice sheet geology or any kind of P toine history in this area that I'm covering today and you want to add some information down below or you want to send me an email I'd be happy to he from you it may be as early as next week that I get Brady up here and we try to do this thing but who knows so spinning around a little doy do to say thank you I love you and goodbye from peteros Washington USA

Channel: Nick Zentner

Views: 17,070

Keywords: Nick Zentner, Pateros Boulder Bar, Nick On The Rocks, Ice Age Floods, Methow River, Great Terrace

Id: B-w82SsswrU

Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024