The Palouse & Snake Rivers
Streaks of pink across the dawn sky greeted the early risers aboard the Sea Lion as we made our way into the narrow channel at the mouth of the Palouse River. Our morning explorations on this sunny day included wonderful journeys by kayak, naturalist guided Zodiac cruises, and a trip to remote Palouse falls by yellow school bus.
Much of today’s interest focused on the dramatic geologic stories of the region – stories that are told in the rocks with beauty and clarity. The Palouse is a small river that ripples around towers of sculpted basalt flows and steep scree slopes. Scattered amongst the lichen-studded basalt columns are immense gravel bars truly out of scale with the stream we are floating on. The story of the catastrophic Missoula floods is brought home in a way that we can literally put our hands on. Near the close of the last ice age, just 12-15,000 years ago, this land was overtopped and scoured forty to one hundred times by water, ice and debris cascading out of Lake Missoula in western Montana. The water was constrained by an ice dam that blocked the Clark River, broke apart, then dammed the river again and again.
After a delightful barbecue lunch on deck (in late October!), we continued the journey westward down the Snake River to the confluence with the mighty Columbia. Around sunset many of us gathered on deck to observe our passage through anchor canyon – a narrowing of the Snake draped in late afternoon light and lit by a rising full moon.
Streaks of pink across the dawn sky greeted the early risers aboard the Sea Lion as we made our way into the narrow channel at the mouth of the Palouse River. Our morning explorations on this sunny day included wonderful journeys by kayak, naturalist guided Zodiac cruises, and a trip to remote Palouse falls by yellow school bus.
Much of today’s interest focused on the dramatic geologic stories of the region – stories that are told in the rocks with beauty and clarity. The Palouse is a small river that ripples around towers of sculpted basalt flows and steep scree slopes. Scattered amongst the lichen-studded basalt columns are immense gravel bars truly out of scale with the stream we are floating on. The story of the catastrophic Missoula floods is brought home in a way that we can literally put our hands on. Near the close of the last ice age, just 12-15,000 years ago, this land was overtopped and scoured forty to one hundred times by water, ice and debris cascading out of Lake Missoula in western Montana. The water was constrained by an ice dam that blocked the Clark River, broke apart, then dammed the river again and again.
After a delightful barbecue lunch on deck (in late October!), we continued the journey westward down the Snake River to the confluence with the mighty Columbia. Around sunset many of us gathered on deck to observe our passage through anchor canyon – a narrowing of the Snake draped in late afternoon light and lit by a rising full moon.
