Washington's Channeled Scablands
The beauty of Drumheller Channels.
The Mountaineers Books, Seattle.
This book is now available!
In the 1990s, a career change and move brought me to the Spokane area where I soon learned that I now lived on “the dry side of the state,” a region that conflicted with most peoples’ perceptions of Washington as a collection of fern-filled gullies, silvery waterfalls, snow-capped mountains and big men in overalls tossing salmon around.
Little by little, I began to develop a new-found interest in my fresh surroundings. And, as I began to look around the region, I learned about its dramatic geological past, its one-of-a-kind scabland terrain, and its curiously desert-like environment (even though the region is technically not a desert but a scrub-steppe plateau region.)
This is an area of dramatic geology and features such as massive coulees, abandoned waterfalls, narrow canyons, deep potholes, striking basalt buttes and incredibly large boulders dramatically perched in the unlikeliest of places. Unlike many popular national destinations where one prominent natural feature is located within a fairly small area—such as a mountain, a canyon, or a lake—the scablands consist of a variety of attractions and are spread out over a region nearly two thousand square miles in size.
Fortunately, the scabland tracts in Washington can be logically divided into five regions for ease of exploration. These areas are primarily defined by their geographic locations, but also reflect differences in climate, vegetation, and the types of scabland features found there.
This guide will cover each of these five regions in depth, describing the overall environment of each, the features to be found there, modes of transportation to be employed, and some suggestions as to routes you might take, as well as time guidelines—how many hours you should plan to spend visiting an area and exploring the various geologic and other attractions in the scablands.
To read a great review of the book by News Tribune writer Craig Hill, go here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/05/13/2143268/take-a-geological-journey.html
This book is now available!
In the 1990s, a career change and move brought me to the Spokane area where I soon learned that I now lived on “the dry side of the state,” a region that conflicted with most peoples’ perceptions of Washington as a collection of fern-filled gullies, silvery waterfalls, snow-capped mountains and big men in overalls tossing salmon around.
Little by little, I began to develop a new-found interest in my fresh surroundings. And, as I began to look around the region, I learned about its dramatic geological past, its one-of-a-kind scabland terrain, and its curiously desert-like environment (even though the region is technically not a desert but a scrub-steppe plateau region.)
This is an area of dramatic geology and features such as massive coulees, abandoned waterfalls, narrow canyons, deep potholes, striking basalt buttes and incredibly large boulders dramatically perched in the unlikeliest of places. Unlike many popular national destinations where one prominent natural feature is located within a fairly small area—such as a mountain, a canyon, or a lake—the scablands consist of a variety of attractions and are spread out over a region nearly two thousand square miles in size.
Fortunately, the scabland tracts in Washington can be logically divided into five regions for ease of exploration. These areas are primarily defined by their geographic locations, but also reflect differences in climate, vegetation, and the types of scabland features found there.
This guide will cover each of these five regions in depth, describing the overall environment of each, the features to be found there, modes of transportation to be employed, and some suggestions as to routes you might take, as well as time guidelines—how many hours you should plan to spend visiting an area and exploring the various geologic and other attractions in the scablands.
To read a great review of the book by News Tribune writer Craig Hill, go here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/05/13/2143268/take-a-geological-journey.html