Palouse Falls. Anchor Activities.
Northwest Return Travelog #14
Palouse Falls State Park, WA - Sun, 1 Aug 2021. 1pm.
I generally plan trips around "anchor" activities. I find one or two things I really want to do. They form the basis of the trip; they anchor it place. Then I plan other activities around them. Sometimes I trust that I'll find other activities once I get there. For example, we've enjoyed hking Bassi Falls in California several times. It's not a full day activity, though, so each time we go we combine it with other activities in the area. The first time we went we weren't even sure what was in the area; we merely trusted that there'd be other fun things to do there. (There were.)
For this trip Palouse Falls in remote western Washington was our first anchor. "What's it near?" we asked, looking to combine it with at least one anchor to make the long trip worthwhile. Nothing, it turns out. Then I spotted an awesome loop hike of waterfalls in Idaho- Elk Creek Falls- and figured out we could stay in Lewiston/Clarkston halfway between them. Together those anchored the trip. With a location locked in I searched for other activities nearby and quickly found the Wallowa Lake Tramway to the top of Mt. Howard as another awesome activity. Then I found an awesome (if misnamed) hike called Oregon Butte in Washington. Four awesome activities in 4 days = awesome trip.
So, what's so awesome about Palouse Falls? Let me start with 1,000 words worth in the form of a picture:
Palouse Falls drops 200 feet over a cliff into a deep canyon. It has been designated the Official State Waterfall of Washington. That's quite something considering the many amazing falls on the western side of the Cascade Mountains.
The geology of this area is interesting. Signs near the main lookout points (atop the plateau in the upper right of the picture above) explain it. First, layers of basalt rock up to thousands of feet thick were created by volcanic action. Plate tectonics pushed these layers of rock upward. During the Ice Age large glaciers formed atop these rocks. When glaciers melted or moved they unleashed massive floods. Rivers sometimes multiple miles wide carved channels across the rock. That's how the huge canyons of the Snake River, the Columbia Gorge, and others were created. That's how these relatively calm rivers flow at the bottom of absolutely massive gorges.
Palouse River isn't even that big of a river, BTW. It's no Snake River and certainly no Columbia River. In fact this gorge is a natural accident. The Palouse River used to flow to the west of here. During one of those Ice Age floods it overflowed its course and carved a new route through a fissure in the basalt. The flood carved the fissure fast enough that it became the new route. That fissure is now this canyon.
Coming back around to the topic of anchor activities... I mentioned it here not only to explain my general approach to trip planning and how I conceived this particular trip but also to set up two additional points. One point is that sometimes an activity, even an anchor activity, fizzles. Palouse Falls is kind of a fizzle today because of the combination of weather (it's cloudy all day and starting to rain now) plus heavy smoke in the air. I had hoped to get amazing pictures of the falls and maybe even hike/scramble all the way down to the bottom of the gorge. Neither are in the cards today.
The second point is that sometimes a planned activity is a total loss. Our plans to hike Oregon Butte this weekend went up in smoke. Literally. As in, there's a fire burning there right now. 😳 Because things like that happen- not just massive wildfires but even simpler things like seasonal closures, construction (which thwarted our honeymoon trip years ago!), or protected species of birds nesting (which closed off one of our anchor activities at Acadia National Park two months ago)- it's critical to be flexible with alternatives. For that it helps to have a list of runners-up. We had planned to spend today at Oregon Butte. With it being a no-go we moved up our visit to Palouse Falls to today instead of tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll visit a flower garden in Spokane before we fly home. That's one of our "runner up" activity ideas. Now it's been promoted.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/97266.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
Palouse Falls State Park, WA - Sun, 1 Aug 2021. 1pm.
I generally plan trips around "anchor" activities. I find one or two things I really want to do. They form the basis of the trip; they anchor it place. Then I plan other activities around them. Sometimes I trust that I'll find other activities once I get there. For example, we've enjoyed hking Bassi Falls in California several times. It's not a full day activity, though, so each time we go we combine it with other activities in the area. The first time we went we weren't even sure what was in the area; we merely trusted that there'd be other fun things to do there. (There were.)
For this trip Palouse Falls in remote western Washington was our first anchor. "What's it near?" we asked, looking to combine it with at least one anchor to make the long trip worthwhile. Nothing, it turns out. Then I spotted an awesome loop hike of waterfalls in Idaho- Elk Creek Falls- and figured out we could stay in Lewiston/Clarkston halfway between them. Together those anchored the trip. With a location locked in I searched for other activities nearby and quickly found the Wallowa Lake Tramway to the top of Mt. Howard as another awesome activity. Then I found an awesome (if misnamed) hike called Oregon Butte in Washington. Four awesome activities in 4 days = awesome trip.
So, what's so awesome about Palouse Falls? Let me start with 1,000 words worth in the form of a picture:
Palouse Falls drops 200 feet over a cliff into a deep canyon. It has been designated the Official State Waterfall of Washington. That's quite something considering the many amazing falls on the western side of the Cascade Mountains.
The geology of this area is interesting. Signs near the main lookout points (atop the plateau in the upper right of the picture above) explain it. First, layers of basalt rock up to thousands of feet thick were created by volcanic action. Plate tectonics pushed these layers of rock upward. During the Ice Age large glaciers formed atop these rocks. When glaciers melted or moved they unleashed massive floods. Rivers sometimes multiple miles wide carved channels across the rock. That's how the huge canyons of the Snake River, the Columbia Gorge, and others were created. That's how these relatively calm rivers flow at the bottom of absolutely massive gorges.
Palouse River isn't even that big of a river, BTW. It's no Snake River and certainly no Columbia River. In fact this gorge is a natural accident. The Palouse River used to flow to the west of here. During one of those Ice Age floods it overflowed its course and carved a new route through a fissure in the basalt. The flood carved the fissure fast enough that it became the new route. That fissure is now this canyon.
Coming back around to the topic of anchor activities... I mentioned it here not only to explain my general approach to trip planning and how I conceived this particular trip but also to set up two additional points. One point is that sometimes an activity, even an anchor activity, fizzles. Palouse Falls is kind of a fizzle today because of the combination of weather (it's cloudy all day and starting to rain now) plus heavy smoke in the air. I had hoped to get amazing pictures of the falls and maybe even hike/scramble all the way down to the bottom of the gorge. Neither are in the cards today.
The second point is that sometimes a planned activity is a total loss. Our plans to hike Oregon Butte this weekend went up in smoke. Literally. As in, there's a fire burning there right now. 😳 Because things like that happen- not just massive wildfires but even simpler things like seasonal closures, construction (which thwarted our honeymoon trip years ago!), or protected species of birds nesting (which closed off one of our anchor activities at Acadia National Park two months ago)- it's critical to be flexible with alternatives. For that it helps to have a list of runners-up. We had planned to spend today at Oregon Butte. With it being a no-go we moved up our visit to Palouse Falls to today instead of tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll visit a flower garden in Spokane before we fly home. That's one of our "runner up" activity ideas. Now it's been promoted.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/97266.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]