Smiles All Around!

The United States had its last tungsten mine shut down in 2015.  Here’s an interesting fact: there is an abandoned tungsten mine above the Kings River near Garnet Dike.

There is a high global demand for tungsten.  This dense metal is used in all kinds of businesses: the defense industry, and in the production of semi-conductors and solar panels.  In our niche sport tungsten is used to make beads, coneheads, and even in the manufacture of sinking lines.  In 2025 the Chinese government implemented strict controls over where, how much, and to which countries tungsten would be exported.

Back of Beyond                                             Stephen Neal
In Wildness is the Preservation of the World - “Henry David Thoreau."

Channel Scablands

The sound reaches you first, faint, but its low rumble soon becomes a roar. As it continues to increase the volume is soon deafening. It freezes you; what do you do with this sound? It has not been heard before. Do you flee, if so, in what direction? Little do you know that you were doomed before you even heard the sound! As the sound hits its crescendo you are blasted by a mass of compressed air that has been propelled by a 500-foot wall of water mere feet away and moving at just under 60 miles per hour. How much force is in the blast wave? Think Mount Saint Helens’ 1980 volcanic eruption force. Everything around you is instantly flattened.  Trees bend back and collapse too fast for your eyes to capture the motion. We are tempted to compare this blast with that of Mt. Saint Helens in 1980, but that eruption was paltry compared to the devastation of the Missoula Floods eighteen thousand years ago.

Our brains comprehend the universe, based upon minute particles from an infinitesimal sampling pool. Our brain’s database entry system gathers information from sight, touch, sound, and smell. From this tiny database, we create a world view. Considering how small we are in comparison to our Planet Earth, let alone our stature in the cosmos, it is little wonder that we have difficulty comprehending geological time and catastrophic events that are 237 lifetimes in our rearview mirror (based upon an average 76-year life span).

This is the story of a cataclysmic earth event and of some of the men who unravel its mystery. From clues they found, they put together the story of the Washington Scablands, Glacial Lake Missoula, and the mega-floods that rocked the accepted geological world to its foundation. 

This field work was done before the advent of aerial mapping. With his students he hiked the land and created their story of the mega-flood from clues which, due to their immense size, hid themselves. Today we are able to see aerial images that allow us to easily identify large water ripple marks, channels, and kolks (pot holes) that form beneath flowing water. Bretz was able to piece together the story from observations of normal rivers and streams and make the connection to what he was seeing wrought upon the land by a flood of unimageable size. Bretz had found evidence of the flood but was unable to locate its water source. Much later Joseph T. Pardee found the water source, Glacial Lake Missoula.

Pardee, a native Montanan, grew up in a mining town. He attended U.C. Berkley from 1889 to 1891, studying chemistry and mining. He then moved back to Montana and opened an assay office. He then sold the assay office, farmed, and operated a placer mine while studying geology books. Pardee passed the civil service exam in 1908 and went to work for the U.S. Geological Service in 1909. His first assignment as a geologist was to investigate Glacial Lake Missoula. In his fieldwork he traced the ancient glacial lake and followed traces of its shoreline down the Clark Fork River to the panhandle of northern Idaho, where it eventually disappeared. Here he found the site of the now vanished ice dam that had once held back the continental ice sheet melt-water that had filled Glacial Lake Missoula. In 1910 he presented his findings on Glacial Lake Missoula.

Doing the leg work and backing his findings with recorded data didn’t guarantee acceptance, however. It took over forty years for the Geological Society to finally acknowledge that Bretz’s field work was correct; his predicted catastrophic events had happen. Gradual erosion was not the primary driver of geological changes. His major detractors were eventually convinced once they visited the “Channel Scablands”. Indeed, many of his colleagues began to call them “Bretz’s Floods” in his honor. Today, however, they are commonly called ”The Missoula Floods.”

Basalt outcropping on butte on the floor of Dry Falls

south, swallowing rocks and creating new ice dams, damming rivers, and recreating massive lakes. In warm periods the ice sheet would retreat. The ensuing water runoff would swell the lakes even further, creating stronger forces on weak structures. This caused them to fail, to the point of failure, thus releasing a new Missoula Flood, that continued to change the landscape of 4 states. These mega-floods happened at least 40 documented times and possibly up to 90. Sixteen thousand square miles (Maryland and Connecticut combined) of Planet Earth were catastrophically altered by water. A beautiful self portrait by water.

Lake Missoula drained in less than three days; it also caused the drainage of Lake Columbia, a second glacial lake just below Lake Missoula’s ice dam. These waters overwhelmed the existing river and stream system, gouging out the old and creating new. Where the deluge met resistance, it went around, over, or through.

In spite of popular belief, the Columbia River never flowed through Grand Coulee or over Dry Falls. The Columbia River channel lies lower in elevation than Grand Coulee. So, while the floodwaters filled the Columbia River the waters were so high that they overtopped a ridge line and created a new path to the lower Columbia, leaving Grand Coulee in its wake.

At restriction points like Wallula Gap, (1.2 miles wide) the waters backed up. This gap restricted the flow of the flood water, allowing only 1/5^th of the water through. As a result, the climbed to 1,247 feet while it also backed up the Snake River. Below the Wallula Gap, the Columbia River channel is constrained by tall canyon walls which slowed the floods flow. This resulted in the John Day and Deschutes River backing upstream hundreds of miles. As it rose it began overtopping its constraining canyon walls and found new-ways to reach a rivers drainage system, and filling valleys. The Willamette Valley was a lake from Portland to Eugene. Virtually I-5 from Portland to Eugene was at the bottom of the lake.

bands of hunter-gatherers. Each band held roughly 15 individuals, likely a multigenerational family group. This would have been an optimum number to lead, manage, and survive with their shared skill sets.

As the ice age ended the benefits of living in the river valleys, took a big hit when the Missoula Flood inundated the habitable land. Whether the flood came in the dark or in the light of day the outcome was the same. If you were asleep the sound of the flood’s approach would awaken you. Daylight would have provided no benefit. Your legs could not carry you fast enough or far enough to evade the sheer size of the flood. Even if you had been at the crest of the flood waters, it would gain you but a few yards in your flight before the water engulfed you. At ground zero, the atomic blast of compressed air would throw you back like a rag doll. In daylight as you flew backwards you might in those last brief seconds get a glimpse of a wall of brown water too tall to comprehend. It would be full of floating ice blocks, which contained immense boulders, car size and larger. With that image and terror in your heart you would cease to exist. Along with your existence the fish, game and the environment of shelter you depended upon for survival would also vanish. Sucked away in a maelstrom of churning madness, the water stripping the land to bare rock.

Author’s note: Besides Bretz and Pardee many other people who were instrumental in revealing the geological history of the Missoula Flood. Work continues to this day, and new discoveries will be made. I hope that my writing about the Missoula Flood motivates you to investigate further.  Fact is, there is too much to cover in this short article! More than three books worth and YouTube and internet research that was prompted by my discovery of the Missoula Floods, and my short but awesome field trip. Thank you for letting me share the awesomeness of our earth.

Three books were my main sources of information for this article: “Cataclysms of the Columbia,” “Glacial Lake Missoula and the Humongous Floods.”, and Bretz’s Flood. There is also a wealth of information on YouTube and the internet. Bretz’s biggest detractors had never visited the Channel Scablands: once they did all their arguments fell away. Go outside and see for yourself.

As always, get outside and embrace our Mother Earth, as she is deserving of your attendance. Please protect her.

A Big Thank You, to Tennis Terrance for his editing suggestions.