Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground: Controversial Stone People, Fire and Ice, and an Olympic Legacy

A stone person stands on an outcrop up in Callaghan Creek a few kilometers west of Whistler in British Columbia. It has been called an inuksuk, although inunnguaq may be the more proper name (it's the difference between "something which acts for or performs the function of a person" and "imitation of a person"). The far north can be a featureless landscape with little in the way of landmarks, so the First Nation people like the Inuit used stone cairns for navigation and travel routes, and as signs for fishing sites, camps, hunting grounds, or places of spiritual importance. It is unclear if the human forms, the inunnguat (the plural form of the word), were used much prior to European colonization.

We were in Whistler, British Columbia, on our recent vagabonding adventure through the lands influenced by the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a place you may remember as the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Reminders were all over the place, including the rings and stage in the center of town. The slopes are covered with ski runs, and the highway from the coast, which we mentioned in a previous post, was widened and straightened, despite the ongoing threat of mass wasting.

The inunnguaq stood at the entrance to the Olympic venue in Callaghan Creek where the ski jump and biathlon events were held, and indeed, an inunnguaq was used as the symbol for the games in general. Now, I've loved the symbolism of the inunnguaq, and lots of my souvenirs of Canada include the image. But I've come to understand that it was of some concern to the First Nations people of Canada. It could be considered a sign of respect for the original people of Canada, but it could also be interpreted as a bit of cultural appropriation.

Some noted that the actual historical inuksuit (plural) rarely if ever took a human form. That practice may have not begun, as noted above, until European colonization. Others argued that the inuksuit were used by arctic First Nation peoples, whose lands were hundreds, even thousands of miles away from the Olympics site. I can see this as being the same as using a tepee as a symbol for the Los Angeles Olympics even though tepees were used by nations on the Great Plains, a thousand miles or more away. It's conceivable that a better symbol might have been a Thunderbird, a cultural icon of the Coast Salish people, especially since two prominent volcanic peaks in the Whistler area were seen as the perch for the animal (the Black Tusk, and Mt. Cayley, discussed below). Now, I'm no sociologist or anthropologist, and I certainly don't live in the region, so I'd love to hear some perspectives from those who are close to the issue.

But I loved seeing the ski jump! I've never seen one before in person, and I can say without any doubt whatsoever that you will never see me wearing skis on something like this. It is steeper than it looks, and I grew up watching that iconic crash from ABC's Wide World of Sports (the "agony of defeat"). It's still in use for training, but obviously not this time of year.

I would love to say that I fully research the landscapes that I explore beforehand, but this was vagabonding. I didn't know, other than a vague goal of reaching Canada, that we would make it as far as Whistler, and so I didn't look into the geology of Callaghan Creek where the Olympic venue was located. It turns out that the reach of Cascadia is more than I realized. There are several lesser-known, but potentially active volcanic centers to the north of Garibaldi. These include the Bridge River Cones, Mt. Meager, possible the Silverthrone Caldera, and across the valley from me at that moment, the Mt. Cayley Volcanic Field.

Source: "Garibaldi Volcanic Belt-en" by © Sémhur / Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under FAL via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Garibaldi_Volcanic_Belt-en.svg#/media/File:Garibaldi_Volcanic_Belt-en.svg

The main peaks of the volcanic field were hidden in the clouds (now there's a Pacific Northwest surprise), but we could see some of the glaciers that have formed on the flanks. The Mt. Cayley field has not erupted in some time, maybe 200,000 years, but hot springs and earthquake activity indicate the presence of magma beneath the complex. The Mt. Meagher field to the north erupted just 2,400 years ago.

The glacier between Metal Dome and Brandywine Mountain shows the state of the drought conditions this year and the ongoing loss of glacial ice in general from global warming. It was July, a time when a fair amount of snow should still cling to the peaks, but most of the ice visible is a dirty gray color. The gray is the old glacier ice, no longer hidden and protected by an insulating blanket of white snow. So the melting that is taking place is from the glacier itself, and these glaciers have been receding at an accelerating pace for decades now.

There weren't a lot of flowers out and about, but there were some beautiful ones here and there. No, I don't know many flower names. I'm a geologist, after all. They cover rocks.

There are a number of wonderful waterfalls in the area, the delightful results of volcanism and glaciation. Alexander Falls are just off the road in the Callaghan Valley downstream of the Olympic park.

Brandywine Falls are on the main Sea to Sky highway at Brandywine Falls Provincial Park. The 70 meter (200 foot) waterfall flows over the lip of a basalt lava outcrop. The falls are migrating upstream. The rock beneath the lip of the falls is softer and more easily eroded, so it is constantly wearing away and undercutting the cliff. Niagara Falls is migrating in the same manner.

We continued down the Sea to Sky Highway (Sky to Sea?), and saw some more incredible geology. It's coming in the next post...

Northern Convergence: The Mystery Photo Explained

Thanks for all of your conjectures about yesterday's mystery photo! The Earth is such a fascinating place, and there are so many different kinds of strange patterns that have different origins. Let's review some of the guesses (and they were very good, by the way):
a. Sinkholes and karst topography
b. Bison wallows
c. Ground squirrel or prairie dog workings
d. Periglacial patterned ground
e. Dried marshes, evaporative processes
f. Pithouses

Take a look at the depressions from ground level. The rocks are gravel and sand, so karst is not likely (sinkholes most often result from the collapse of caverns in areas underlain by limestone). Something like a buffalo wallow makes some sense, but these are very concentrated, and the region is not really good buffalo habitat (too much mountain slope and not enough prairie). Rodents like prairie dogs or gophers tend to produce mounds (so called 'mima mounds') rather than hollows. The location of the site on a high river terrace tends to rule out the idea of swamps or evaporative processes.

Of the natural processes that could make this phenomena, periglacial processes make the most sense. Freezing and thawing of soils often result in rings and polygons that might resemble what we saw in the picture. The region underwent glaciation in the Pleistocene epoch and continues to have extremely cold temperatures in winter. It makes some sense, but then why are the pits filled with so many artifacts?

So yes, these pits are made by humans. We were paying a visit to the lands of the Xwisten people, a First Nations group whose traditional lands were along the Fraser and Bridge Rivers near Lillooet, British Columbia. This river terrace surface contains the remains of dozens of pithouses.

The former village along the Bridge River is the site of ongoing archaeological excavations by researchers and students of the University of Montana as well as local members of the Xwisten tribe.

We were being led on a tour of the archaeological site by several members of the Xwisten Bridge River Band who had been involved in some of the excavations. The setting was dramatic, with high mountain peaks on all sides.

As is the case with most archaeological digs these days, only a small portion of the site is being studied in detail. There is an expectation that future technology will be able to better analyze the site, so much of the village remains undisturbed for the time being. Only one of the pithouses was exposed when we visited.

The village site was abandoned over a century ago, although many Xwisten live in a modern village just a few hundred yards away. Evidence from the site investigations show nearly continuous occupation of the site beginning about 1,800 years ago. Many of the sites were used over and over, with some of the pits containing 12 levels of occupation.

A few years ago the Xwisten decided to build a pithouse on the site using the knowledge of their elders. One of our guides noted that what took their ancestors several weeks to construct took them more like three years even though they had modern tools. Entry was usually through a square hole in the room, although some may have had side entrances. The ladders, as you can see below were notched logs. With well insulated ceilings the pithouse seemed like it would be roomy and warm in winter conditions.

The Xwisten subsisted in part on salmon, and part of the demonstration was the preparation of salmon for eating and preservation. Our tour concluded with a salmon dinner. The sun was getting low, and we had another two hours of highway ahead of us. We drove into the night arriving at our hotel in Kamloops sometime after ten o'clock. It was a long, but fascinating day. We had left the Coastal Belt and were now making our way through the Intermontane Belt. We'll pick up the story in the next post!

To AF, the commenter in the last post who lives in Lillooet, let me know if I got anything wrong! Our visit was very quick, and I'm just a geologist, not an anthropologist!

Northern Convergence: Stories on Trees, the Totems of the Northwestern First Nations

During the flurry of planning for our Northern Convergence journey through Canada and the Pacific Northwest, I was barely keeping up with the geology, and any background information on the anthropology/archaeology of the region fell to my colleague from our anthropology department. There were certainly some intriguing sights related to the First Nations people of  Canada, and the one of these impressed itself on me early in the trip.

We were rushing from one part of Vancouver Island to another, and I was running down the beach cliffs below Beacon Hill Park in Victoria while Mrs. Geotripper went wandering off somewhere.  I was vaguely aware that there was a really tall telephone pole or satellite receiver tower at the edge of the forest, and eventually I noticed that Mrs. Geotripper was motioning me over.

It slowly dawned on me that I was looking at one of the largest totem poles in the world. It was impossibly tall, and I had to go up and touch it to make sure it was made of wood. It was. The plaque at the base notes that the pole honors the First Nation people who fought in the world wars.

The pole was carved from a gigantic Western Cedar tree in 1956 by a team led by Mungo Martin, a Kwakiutl tribal chief. According to the city history, the pole was expected to last no longer than 50 years at which time it would return to the Earth. Major restorations a decade ago added some years, but it may not be there beyond 2020 or so. It stands 40.5 meters (133 feet) high, making it the fifth tallest in the world (or the tallest "free-standing"). The tallest in the world is in the village of Alert Bay on Cormorant Island at the north end of Vancouver Island. It is 53 meters (173 feet) high. We may not see many more poles of this height. There are few monster sized Cedar trees left to carve them from.

Totem poles haven't left much of an archaeological record for fairly obvious reasons. Wood disappears fast in this humid environment. They are known from the 1800s, and are known to have been present with some First Nation tribes prior to European contact. They are a beautiful art form, and communicate family histories, legendary stories, and clan status. They were apparently never objects of worship.

On our rainy day with the students on Vancouver Island, we made a stop at the town of Duncan in the Cowichan Valley, a region with a large First Nation presence. The town has embraced the display of totems, with around 80 in the town center. Each was carved by a local First Nation artisan..

It was an interesting area to take a break and learn a bit of local history. The town is also home to the Quw'utsun Cultural and Conference Centre run by the Cowichan tribe, the largest in British Columbia.

The rain continued (the blue skies in these pictures were from our reconnaissance trip a week earlier), and we needed to be in Nanaimo in a few hours to catch the ferry back to mainland. We drove north to Departure Bay. Our story will continue with our journey up the Sea to the Sky Highway.

Northern Convergence: Vancouver Island, the last of the plan that was...

Our tour of Vancouver Island in British Columbia continued. I've spent several posts (here, here, and here) describing places we saw when we scouted the island a few days before the arrival of our students, and they were really fine places to learn geology. But our students never saw them, for a variety of reasons. Today is the last of the lost stops. The next post will be about the places we did get to see, and really, they are pretty neat as well.

We are looking at the rocks exposed on Newcastle Island near the town of Nanaimo, a port on the shoreline of the Strait of Georgia. With an important exception outlined below, I never got a particularly good picture of these sandstones, but the rocks are interesting and exceedingly important in understanding the reason for the existence of Nanaimo. These are sandstones and shales of the Nanaimo Group, a sequence around 4 kilometers thick (a bit over two miles) that was deposited in a basin that paralleled the coast of North America in Cretaceous and early Paleogene time (around the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs). The basin developed as the subduction zone pushed and flexed the crust along the edge of the continent.

The seaway was populated with a variety of marine reptiles, including mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and giant turtles. There were sharks, fish, and coiled ammonites. The sediments were deposited by turbidity currents (underwater landslides) of the edge of coastal deltas. The most important aspect of the deltas and coastal plains is that they were covered with tropical vegetation, swamps, and coastal estuaries.

The vegetation that didn't decay away was compressed into coal, and coal was the economic heart of Nanaimo. From 1848 to as late as the 1950s, coal was mined underground, following seams that sloped towards the bay. Miles and miles of tunnels were carved, reaching depths of 180 meters (nearly 600 feet). Many of the tunnels reached below sea level, and below the docks. Miners were literally working under the bay, able to hear the boats above as they worked. For many years the coal was shipped to San Francisco.

Source: http://www.mmshomes.com/community/history/

The town of Nanaimo was not the first settlement at this location (as usual, the First Nations people get the Columbus treatment). The site was originally home to a Salish people called the Snunéymuxw, from which the name Nanaimo was derived. They built longhouses here, though little trace is left. The most enduring clue of their existence are the petroglyphs that dot the region. A number of petroglyph sites are known, the most accessible of which is preserved at Petroglyph Provincial Park on the south edge of town. That's where our scouting trip took us.

The park is not large, just a few acres, but it is a small island of wilderness in the urban environment. Given my recent hobby of photographing avian species, I was looking up when I first arrived, seeing a new bird (for me), a Spotted Towhee. I understand they live in my neighborhood, but I haven't seen them there yet.

The park has a simple layout. A trail leads past an interpretive center that has some good explanatory panels (although I noticed that the word "indians" has been scratched out; "First Nations" is the preferred term in Canada these days). It also has a number of simulated petroglyphs that can be used for rubbings, since doing them on the actual carvings can damage them (Unfortunately they face many threats, from vandalism or otherwise. Another site nearby was recently destroyed during construction work).

Beyond the interpretive site, the trail climbs to the petroglyphs themselves. Fences are in place to keep people off the artwork. In this near-rainforest environment, it's amazing that the carvings haven't been more severely eroded. We found the rock exposures covered with forest duff and moss.

I was frustrated for a moment that only a few petroglyphs were visible, but it was clear that this is part of what protects the rock art. Sweeping or brushing them would surely damage them within a short period of time. I thought I had seen only one carving, a "seawolf", or sea lion.

When I was processing the pictures this evening, I realized that there were actually two of them. The second can be seen at the bottom of the photo below.

During the actual field trip with our students, we arrived in Nanaimo very late in the day, and we had a ferry to catch. And it was raining. The class was a combined geology/archaeology class, so it would have been a good spot for both classes, but that's life on the road! As will be noted later on, the storm we were in actually caused some real problems farther east.

In the next post, we'll describe what our students actually did get to see. Despite the rain, we had a pretty good day, as it turned out.