Event
LOWER GRAND COULEE AREA FIELD TRIP – KARL LILLQUIST
Fee:
Free.Location: LAT/LONG: 48.000000, -119.000000
Where to meet: Parking lot of Dry Falls Interpretative Center at 10am. You will need a Washington State Parks Discover Pass to park there. From there, we will drive to the other four sites.
Dates & Times
Date:
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Type of Event
Transportation: Car caravan. Bring your automobile. We will be on several gravel roads that worked fine for our Honda CRV
Description
When we drive through the spectacular Lower Grand Coulee, we may think that this was the only Ice Age flood channel in the area. However, floods exited the Hartline Basin through a series of channels, including those south of Coulee City, an area that has drawn relatively little research and field trip interest in the past. This field trip will examine some of those south-of-Coulee City channels via five field trip stops. We will examine basalt and associated interbeds, the far eastern portion of the Yakima Fold Belt, classic eroded “channeled scablands” and huge flood bars, topography impacts on flood pathways, and flood impacts on faulted terrain. Along the way, we will also examine the relationships between Ice Age floods, the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, and agriculture in the area. And with a bit of warm and wet weather between now and then, we should see plenty of wildflowers in the shrub steppe! I hope you can join us!
We will take several short (<0.5 mi) hikes over gentle terrain at two of the stops; 4 stops total.
Facilities along the way: Restrooms at Dry Falls Interpretative Center and Summer Falls Day Use Area. Groceries and fuel are available in Coulee City. A digital field guide can be found at (https://www.cwu.edu/geography/karl-lillquist-field-guides) on or about by about the 23rd of April. You can download and/or print a copy then.
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