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| Two distinct forms of basalt make up the Sisters |
Every geoscience geek with the smallest bit of knowledge of Pacific Northwest geology knows of the Glacial Lake Missoula floods and their offspring, the Channeled Scablands. The Wallula Gap, its numerous flood basalt flows, and the Twin Sisters themselves were all shaped by the late Pleistocene floods that ultimately found their outlet down the Columbia River. Akin to the Umtanum anticline mentioned on Day 1, compression of the basalt layers created an anticlinal ridge in the Wallula Gap area. An ancient river, precursor to the modern Columbia, slowly but surely cut a gorge through the layers as the gradient increased. Thus we had another water gap created thanks to the steady pace of uplift matching erosion. Of course, once the Missoula outburst floods began, tremendous volumes of water swept down towards the Gap where they were constricted, and thus erosive power was mostly focused on widening the Gap.
For those not familiar with the Scablands, their features & their origins: During the late Pleistocene, the Cordilleran ice sheet advanced into northern Idaho, Montana, and Washington. Gigantic ice dams were formed behind lobes of the continental glacier, holding back thousands of cubic kilometers of meltwater. When these dams broke, huge amounts of water were unleashed, following the path of least resistance through eastern & central Washington, constricting at the Wallula Gap, then funneling down the Columbia River, creating the Columbia River gorge. The last of the floods, called the Bretz flood, released 1600 km3 of water in a two-day period, inundating nearly the entire Channeled Scablands region, and even extended into the Willamette River valley south of Portland, before exiting into the Pacific near Astoria.
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| Diagram of geographical interaction between Pleistocene ice sheets (blue), Glacial Lake Missoula (yellow), and the full extent of the Channeled Scablands (orange) |
I lingered at the Twin Sisters for quite some time on the quiet weekday morning, and I wandered around looking at various perspectives of the palisade basalt, those exposures of basalt along ridges that make it look as if the area is fortified. Ahead of me was a long drive westward on the Columbia River interstate highway, made longer by tough crosswinds picking on my little Yaris. I didn't get to witness or scrutinize much more in terms of geology on Day 2, but the picturesque drive was superlative, and I did notice an interesting phenomenon about the Columbia river that tweaked my hydrologic bone...
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| Looking west on the Columbia River along I84, just outside of Rufus. Those are whitecaps, not rapids |
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