On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A Geological Field Guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin

By Bruce Bjornstad

During the last great Ice Age that ended some 15,000 years ago, the Pacific Northwest was repeatedly decimated by cataclysmic floods unlike anything of modern times. Giant ancient lakes such as... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1879628279
• ISBN13: 9781879628274
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Keokee Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Ice Age Floods

This book is an excellent companion to the book "Bretz's Flood". On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods tells you how you can follow the path of the great floods that occured in the Pacific Northwest near the end of the most recent Ice Age. If you use this book in conjunction with a good road atlas you can actually follow the trail of the great ice age floods that occured when the ice dam creating Glacial Lake Missoula failed catastrophically. These floods created many of the geological features now seen in Eastern Washington State including dry "coulees", which are dry river beds eroded by the flood waters, series of rolling hills that are, in fact, gigantic ripple marks created by the flood waters moving over them, and many other features as well. Recently a National Geological Trail has been established to follow these floods and this book is a "must have" to travel this geological trail and learn about a fascinating aspect of our geological history.

Just right for seeing it on the ground

I grew up near the area treated by this guidebook, and later as an adult lived in the middle of it for a decade. I have read and enjoyed other flood books, including Alt's "Glacial Lake Missoula and its Humongous Floods", which I also recommend. But only now, going back there on a visit with this guidebook in hand, did I really begin to understand many details of the land I had been looking at all the time. After an excellent introduction to the various types of ice-age floods, the various marks that they left, and some geological background to help interpret those marks, the author locates and describes dozens of specific sites. Each description includes how to get there, land ownership and access issues, cautionary information (no water, steep trail, etc.), a description of the feature usually including a picture, and a geological interpretation. Separate chapters then present trails through interesting areas, auto trips organized to access many sites efficiently in a day, and even a few routes for touring by small aircraft. In limiting his treatment to a circumscribed area that he has studied, the author has kept the book manageable, both for him and for the reader. This does, however, leave out the most famous of the flood features; Dry Falls is mentioned, but it lies North of the area covered in detail. One wishes for more books like it to treat other portions of the floods' paths. I have now read most of the sections, have done one easy trail with my grandchildren on a visit last weekend, and look forward to doing many more.

Excellence as far as it goes

Concise,full of pertinent details. Full of selected references to other books websites groups and organizations. If you flippped through this little tome at your local bookstore you might ask why the almost slavish attention to detail.The washed out halftone pictures that accompany the text might further hasten your rush to judgement. In detailing the distances between such precise geology of the mid columbia, he leaves you free to do the ooohing and aaahing should you find yourself the visitor to this unbelievable place. Nothing prepares you for the sheer visual scale of the floodlands. Normally I am bored with an authors academic attention to such detail, but the elementality of the place, made purchase of this book compelling. One star is missing.... The strength of the guide is its own weakness.To me, a studio-bound clay artist having a brief vacation, the mid columbia basin is Central Washinton.As one is on the trail of the ice age floods north into the fantastic Moses and Grand coulee system that to me seems to stretch ever North and east towards Spokane, one realizes with a start that we have half a book here.Bjornstad has sort of drawn a line in the basalt from roughly Wenatchee to Lewiston, north of which his guide is just is not there.. . Back when I was a young buck and got critical in a review, some kind soul would point out to me publicly,how wrong I was. Is there an Ice Age Floods part 2 ?Please tell me there is!

Quantim change

Perfect book for a road trip to the scablands. Maps, trails and tours.

A terriffic guide to some of the most astounding geography in the United States

When you fly from the Northeast or MidWest to Portland, Seattle or Spokaneand passed the Rocky Mountains, you may have looked down at what appears to be an almost lunar landscape. These are the scablands. Desolate landscape with deep coolees, buttes seemingly rising up from the middle of nowhere, what appear to be evenly space rolling ridges rising from the land. In large part, this eery landscape is the result of single flood that took place about 13,000 - 15,000 years ago. Glacial Lake Missoula covered 3,000 square miles of present day Montana and was up to 2,000 feet deep. On occasion, the lake was dammed by glacier ice. And more than once, the waters of the lake overcame the ice and flooded into what is now called the Mid-Columbia Basin, creating the Channeled Scablands. What floods these were. A wall of water hundreds of feet high. It is estimated that you could hear the flood waters 30 minutes away . . . that's a noise so loud and powerful that it could travel 350 miles in advance of the event. Water is estimated to have flowed at 1.7 million cubic meters per second or about 10 times the flow of all the rivers in the world combined. Owing to the unique geography of eastern Washington and Oregon, deep channels were plowed in a matter of hours or days. Islands of basalt (volcanic rock) might remain standing. Boulders weighing hundreds of tons were swept along by the force of the water and deposited hundreds of miles from their origins. Bruce Bjornstad is an excellent guide to this country. The first part of the book is about the history of the floods and its artifacts. The second half is a series of walking, bicycle, horse and auto tours of the region. He even includes one suggested aerial tour. Bjornstad obviously loves this country and his narrative is very well informed, but never condescending or overly-technical. The book is well-illustrated, though color photos would have been a welcome addition. For the tourist, this book is invaluable. Bjornstad's suggested tours make sure you will see every kind of different feature left behind by these floods. For the scientist, I suspect it will be useful. The general student of nature and the armchair will also find this book thoroughly enjoyable. Jerry