Travels in Cascadia: You Can Have Your Niagara Falls, and I'll Have Mine...Goldstream Provincial Park, B.C.

Our journey through British Columbia last July continued. We were on Vancouver Island and were leaving the city of Victoria to catch the ferry back to the mainland at Nanaimo. But there were still some sights along the way. The town of Victoria was built on the lowlands at the south end of the island, but as we began traveling north the landscape grew more rugged and mountainous. The vast ice sheets of the last ice age covered the entire island, but the ice could not remove the tougher bedrock of the island's interior. Looking south from Malahat Summit (l,155 feet/352 meters) we could see the hills we had just explored, including the delightful Goldstream Provincial Park.

The park hosts a surprising variety of plant and animal life, due to a wide variety of habitats. Part of the value of the park is that it has not been logged, and thus preserves old-growth forests, including 700 year old Cedar trees. It includes an estuary/wetland at the end of the Finlayson Arm of the Strait of Georgia, part of the Salish Sea. The long inlet exists because the glaciers were able to exploit a fault zone that left the rocks weakened and broken. The Leech River Fault, a major terrane boundary, cuts through the park, dividing the Pacific Rim Terrane (the Leech River Complex) from Wrangellia. Wrangellia is made up of igneous intrusive rocks and metamorphic rocks from the Mesozoic Era, the age of the dinosaurs.

Looking south from the Nature Center one can see Mount Finlayson (below), another feature that indicates the presence of glaciers in the past. The rounded form of the mountain identifies it as a roche moutonnée, a larger-scale version of the rounded forms seen at Mt. Douglas and Mt. Tolmie in Victoria.

The title of today's post refers to one of the small delights of the park. The erosive action of the glaciers was oriented mostly north to south, and the ridgelines drop steeply into the valley containing the Finlayson Arm. Small creeks and rivers occasionally form modest waterfalls, including the easily accessed Niagara Falls. Visiting the waterfall, one realizes it was not named for the similarity of its volume to the better-known falls back east, but to the height. At 155 feet, it's just a bit shorter than Niagara's 167 feet (note the people at the bottom of the canyon for scale).

One might wonder why Goldstream Park has the name it has. The rocks of the Leech River Complex were altered by superheated mineralized water, and quartz veins with minor amounts of gold were emplaced in the area. The gold was discovered in 1858, and a minor rush involving perhaps 300 miners ensued a few years later. There was not a great deal of gold to be had, and the boom soon petered out, but the name remained. A few old tunnels and mines can still be seen in the park.

I know this is a geology blog, and most of the time I don't have much patience for trying to get pictures of deer, but as I was walking up the trail to the falls, I broke with tradition. Up ahead of me I could see some kind of four-footed animal, and it turned out to be the cutest little fawn ever. It was happy to share the trail with me for a few moments, until the rest of the crew caught up with me. It then took off into the underbrush.

Goldstream Provincial Park is west and north of Victoria on the Trans-Canada Highway 1. We were there on a holiday weekend and the parking lots filled quickly (we made some people very happy when our four vehicles left all at once). If you have the time and energy, a trail climbs to the summit of Mt. Finlayson.

Travels in Cascadia: Traversing the Salish Sea, and Leaving the USA

Morning in Port Angeles, looking across the Salish Sea

It was the third day of our journey through Cascadia, and after our exploration of the Olympic Peninsula, it was now time to leave the United States. We were in Port Angeles, Washington at the north end of the peninsula, and our route to Canada was by way of ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The landscape was undergoing a dramatic change. First of all we weren't in mountains anymore, we were crossing a sea. That seems an obvious point, but one has to wonder why the mountains abruptly end in a sea, and why similar mountains don't occur across the water. Second, we had reached the southern reach of the vast ice sheets that covered Canada and part of the United States during the Ice Ages that ended only around 12,000 years ago.

These two things, the end of the mountains and the end of the glaciers are related. The Strait we were crossing, along with the Strait of Georgia and the Puget Sound, are collectively known as the Salish Sea. The term was coined in the late 1980s as a way of recognizing the interconnectedness of these bodies of water as a single environmental entity. The name originated with the indigenous people who first colonized the landscape around the sea.

The Salish Sea (from http://blogs.agu.org/fromaglaciersperspective/2015/06/08/salmon-challenges-from-glaciers-to-the-salish-sea/)

The Salish Sea covers about 17,000 square kilometers (6,600 square miles), and has 7,470 kilometers (2,900 miles) of coastline, along with 419 islands. It is a unique ecosystem, a sea in the Pacific Northwest that is somewhat protected from the worst storm violence and wave action out of the Alaska region. Something like 8 million people call the shoreline home, in a megalopolis that extends from West Vancouver to Olympia. Along with people, there are 37 species of sea mammals, 172 species of birds, 247 species of fish, and over 3000 species of invertebrates.

The western margin of the Salish Sea is formed by the Olympic Peninsula and the mountains of Vancouver Island. The Strait of Juan de Fuca slices between the two landmasses. It was the strait that we were traversing on our way to the city of Victoria. 

The Olympic Peninsula is made up mostly of ocean floor sediments and basaltic rock pushed up as material was stuffed into the trench. Vancouver Island has a different origin. It is a piece of continental crust that traveled across the Pacific (at the feverish rate of a few inches per year) only to collide with the western edge of North America. Such far-traveled landmasses are called exotic terranes.

Source: http://www.deq.idaho.gov/regional-offices-issues/coeur-dalene/rathdrum-prairie-aquifer/geologic-history/

The Salish basin was shaped in large part by the ice sheets that covered essentially all of Canada and a good portion of the northern United States. As recently as 12,000 years ago, a mass of ice a mile (1.6 km) thick pushed south through the basin as far as Tacoma. A lobe of ice also extended west through what would become the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The ferry ride took about 90 minutes to cover the 20 miles of open water between Washington and Vancouver Island. It's a beautiful ride, made all the more interesting as one realizes this entire body of water was once covered by ice. As one gets further out to sea, the higher snow-capped peaks of the Olympic Mountains come into view.

It may be that the water can get pretty choppy, especially during winter storms, but on my four trips across the strait, conditions were very calm. I almost felt like I was on a lake instead of a sea. We were still on dangerous "ground", though. The Strait of Juan de Fuca is not immune to the effects of huge earthquakes, whether in the immediate vicinity (along the Cascadia Subduction Zone), or from those at great distances (such as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan). The problem, of course, will be tsunamis.

Sometimes confined bodies of water can weaken the effect of tsunamis by dispersing the energy of the waves, but in some circumstances they can magnify the energy instead. There is some evidence of ancient tsunamis along the shorelines of some of the interior islands of the Salish Sea. The effects will probably muted compared to the damage along the Pacific Coast, but more developments are located there as well. On a positive note, the cities in the region are recognizing the threat and are talking action to minimize the damage (see an example here).

It was a beautiful cruise. Soon, we pulled into the harbor at Victoria and got ready to disembark. We were in Canada!

This post is part of a series on our field study of the geology and anthropology of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest.

There is Still Time to Join the Geotrippers (but not much)! British Columbia, the Channeled Scablands, the Olympic Peninsula and the North Cascades, June 26-July 10, 2019

What are you going to do this summer? Are there places in the world that you've thought of visiting but never made a plan? Maybe we can be of assistance in fulfilling your dreams! The geology and anthropology departments at Modesto Junior College will be conducting a field course dyad that will explore Washington and British Columbia on June 26-July 10, 2019. Anyone with an interest in geology or anthropology is encouraged to join us (if you want to skip the reading and get to the details, scroll down to the bottom of this post).

Our journey will begin in the Seattle area where we'll get our rental vans (yes, you'll need to find your way to Seattle). We'll then head out to the Olympic Peninsula where we'll explore Olympic National Park (including the iconic view from Hurricane Ridge, above). There will be an opportunity to explore some of the rainforest. Cape Flattery and the Makah Nation will be the anthropology focus on one day.

We'll then take the ferry across the Strait of Georgia to the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island. "Island" barely describes a landmass three hundred miles long. It has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years, and we'll be looking for petroglyphs and other archaeological evidence as we explore the south shore and then work our way north through Duncan to Nanaimo.

From Nanaimo, we'll take a ferry back to the North America mainland at Howe Sound. We will spend several days in the Vancouver area, exploring both the coastal mountains and Fraser River delta, and also the extensive museums in the city.

We'll travel the Sea to the Sky Highway, a spectacular route that leads from Vancouver to Whistler and Pemberton, site of the 2010 Winter Olympics. We'll have a chance to observe active glaciers and potentially active volcanoes, including Mt. Garibaldi and the Black Tusk.

You'll have a chance to figure out how this landscape happened...(below).

 We'll return to the United States by way of the Okanogan Valley and we'll then explore one of the strangest landscapes on Earth, the Grand Coulees and Channeled Scablands. The discovery of evidence for the incredible Spokane Floods of the ice ages is one of the great stories of geology.

We'll wrap up the trip by passing over the Cascade Range at North Cascades National Park with a stop along the potentially active Mt. Baker volcano.

This trip is just the latest of MJC’s unique collaboration of field studies in geology and anthropology, taught by anthropology professor Susan Kerr and geology professor Garry Hayes.

When and How? The group will come together in Renton, Washington (near SeaTac Airport and Seattle) on June 26 and will return to SeaTac mid-day on July 10. We will travel in rental vans, and stay in hotels.

Costs: The trip will cost $1,600, which includes transportation, admission fees, accommodations, and teaching materials. Students will be responsible for getting to and from Seattle, and for meals (many of the hotels offer free breakfasts, and some rooms will have microwaves). There will be the tuition costs for six units of semester credit, and the fees for getting or renewing a passport.

Accommodations: We are staying in a variety of motels and hotels. We are assuming double occupancy for married couples, and double to triple occupancy for singles. We will try to accommodate requests for single rooms for a surcharge, but cannot guarantee it. (The earlier your request, the better the chance for getting extra rooms).

Academics: The field courses are worth three semester units each (total of six). Participants will be expected to keep field notes and to complete worksheets and quizzes during the trip.

Contact the professors for more information (hayesg - at - Yosemite.edu or kerrs - at -Yosemite.edu). 

For up-to-date announcements, check out the trip Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1920712791360611/ and the MJC Geology information page at http://hayesg.faculty.mjc.edu/GeologyPacificNorthwest.html

Join the Geotrippers! British Columbia, the Channeled Scablands, the Olympic Peninsula and the North Cascades, June 26-July 10, 2019

(This was posted in January, but is re-posted in preparation for a second organizational meeting on March 19)

What are you going to do this summer? Are there places in the world that you've thought of visiting but never made a plan? Maybe we can be of assistance in fulfilling your dreams! The geology and anthropology departments at Modesto Junior College will be conducting a field course dyad that will explore Washington and British Columbia on June 26-July 10, 2019. Anyone with an interest in geology or anthropology is encouraged to join us (if you want to skip the reading and get to the details, scroll down to the bottom of this post).

Our journey will begin in the Seattle area where we'll get our rental vans (yes, you'll need to find your way to Seattle). We'll then head out to the Olympic Peninsula where we'll explore Olympic National Park (including the iconic view from Hurricane Ridge, above). There will be an opportunity to explore some of the rainforest. Cape Flattery and the Makah Nation will be the anthropology focus on one day.

We'll then take the ferry across the Strait of Georgia to the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island. "Island" barely describes a landmass three hundred miles long. It has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years, and we'll be looking for petroglyphs and other archaeological evidence as we explore the south shore and then work our way north through Duncan to Nanaimo.

From Nanaimo, we'll take a ferry back to the North America mainland at Howe Sound. We will spend several days in the Vancouver area, exploring both the coastal mountains and Fraser River delta, and also the extensive museums in the city.

We'll travel the Sea to the Sky Highway, a spectacular route that leads from Vancouver to Whistler and Pemberton, site of the 2010 Winter Olympics. We'll have a chance to observe active glaciers and potentially active volcanoes, including Mt. Garibaldi and the Black Tusk.

You'll have a chance to figure out how this landscape happened...(below).

 We'll return to the United States by way of the Okanogan Valley and we'll then explore one of the strangest landscapes on Earth, the Grand Coulees and Channeled Scablands. The discovery of evidence for the incredible Spokane Floods of the ice ages is one of the great stories of geology.

We'll wrap up the trip by passing over the Cascade Range at North Cascades National Park with a stop along the potentially active Mt. Baker volcano.

This trip is just the latest of MJC’s unique collaboration of field studies in geology and anthropology, taught by anthropology professor Susan Kerr and geology professor Garry Hayes.

When and How? The group will come together in Renton, Washington (near SeaTac Airport and Seattle) on June 26 and will return to SeaTac mid-day on July 10. We will travel in rental vans, and stay in hotels.

Costs: The trip will cost $1,600, which includes transportation, admission fees, accommodations, and teaching materials. Students will be responsible for getting to and from Seattle, and for meals (many of the hotels offer free breakfasts, and some rooms will have microwaves). There will be the tuition costs for six units of semester credit, and the fees for getting or renewing a passport.

Accommodations: We are staying in a variety of motels and hotels. We are assuming double occupancy for married couples, and double to triple occupancy for singles. We will try to accommodate requests for single rooms for a surcharge, but cannot guarantee it. (The earlier your request, the better the chance for getting extra rooms).

Academics: The field courses are worth three semester units each (total of six). Participants will be expected to keep field notes and to complete worksheets and quizzes during the trip.

There will be an informational meeting on Tuesday, March 19 at 5:00 PM in CAT Building 201 on the East Campus of MJC. Contact the professors if you cannot attend (hayesg - at - Yosemite.edu or kerrs - at -Yosemite.edu). If you attended the first organization meeting in January, you don't need to attend the coming meeting.

For up-to-date announcements, check out the trip Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1920712791360611/ and the MJC Geology information page at http://hayesg.faculty.mjc.edu/GeologyPacificNorthwest.html

Join the Geotrippers! British Columbia, the Channeled Scablands, the Olympic Peninsula and the North Cascades, June 26-July 10, 2019

What are you going to do this summer? Are there places in the world that you've thought of visiting but never made a plan? Maybe we can be of assistance in fulfilling your dreams! The geology and anthropology departments at Modesto Junior College will be conducting a field course dyad that will explore Washington and British Columbia on June 26-July 10, 2019. Anyone with an interest in geology or anthropology is encouraged to join us (if you want to skip the reading and get to the details, scroll down to the bottom of this post).

Our journey will begin in the Seattle area where we'll get our rental vans (yes, you'll need to find your way to Seattle). We'll then head out to the Olympic Peninsula where we'll explore Olympic National Park (including the iconic view from Hurricane Ridge, above). There will be an opportunity to explore some of the rainforest. Cape Flattery and the Makah Nation will be the anthropology focus on one day.

We'll then take the ferry across the Strait of Georgia to the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island. "Island" barely describes a landmass three hundred miles long. It has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years, and we'll be looking for petroglyphs and other archaeological evidence as we explore the south shore and then work our way north through Duncan to Nanaimo.

From Nanaimo, we'll take a ferry back to the North America mainland at Howe Sound. We will spend several days in the Vancouver area, exploring both the coastal mountains and Fraser River delta, and also the extensive museums in the city.

We'll travel the Sea to the Sky Highway, a spectacular route that leads from Vancouver to Whistler and Pemberton, site of the 2010 Winter Olympics. We'll have a chance to observe active glaciers and potentially active volcanoes, including Mt. Garibaldi and the Black Tusk.

You'll have a chance to figure out how this landscape happened...(below).

 We'll return to the United States by way of the Okanogan Valley and we'll then explore one of the strangest landscapes on Earth, the Grand Coulees and Channeled Scablands. The discovery of evidence for the incredible Spokane Floods of the ice ages is one of the great stories of geology.

We'll wrap up the trip by passing over the Cascade Range at North Cascades National Park with a stop along the potentially active Mt. Baker volcano.

This trip is just the latest of MJC’s unique collaboration of field studies in geology and anthropology, taught by anthropology professor Susan Kerr and geology professor Garry Hayes.

When and How? The group will come together in Renton, Washington (near SeaTac Airport and Seattle) on June 26 and will return to SeaTac mid-day on July 10. We will travel in rental vans, and stay in hotels.

Costs: The trip will cost $1,600, which includes transportation, admission fees, accommodations, and teaching materials. Students will be responsible for getting to and from Seattle, and for meals (many of the hotels offer free breakfasts, and some rooms will have microwaves). There will be the tuition costs for six units of semester credit, and the fees for getting or renewing a passport.

Accommodations: We are staying in a variety of motels and hotels. We are assuming double occupancy for married couples, and double to triple occupancy for singles. We will try to accommodate requests for single rooms for a surcharge, but cannot guarantee it. (The earlier your request, the better the chance for getting extra rooms).

Academics: The field courses are worth three semester units each (total of six). Participants will be expected to keep field notes and to complete worksheets and quizzes during the trip.

There will be an informational meeting on Wednesday January 23rd at 7:00 PM in Science Community Center 326 on the West Campus of MJC. Contact the professors if you cannot attend (hayesg - at - Yosemite.edu or kerrs - at -Yosemite.edu). 

For up-to-date announcements, check out the trip Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1920712791360611/ and the MJC Geology information page at http://hayesg.faculty.mjc.edu/GeologyPacificNorthwest.html

Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground: Stone Rings, Glaciers, and "Dinosaurs" on the Coast of the Salish Sea

We've got a mixed bag on this post...

Our vagabonding trip along the Cascadia Subduction Zone involved a desire to spend most nights camping, but we now we had reached Canada, our gear was all wet, and we were in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Victoria. We decided to spend a few days in the comfort of a hotel and dry out a bit.

Victoria is an architecturally scenic city, but it is also a city of geology and archaeology. Some of the best parts are found in city parks like Beacon Hill and a series of shoreline green areas (although not so green in this dry year). We spent some time here last year, but I was flabbergasted to find I had missed an obvious link to the past that had been in plain view. It was a group of stone rings on the slope of Beacon Hill above Finlayson Point, right next to Mile Zero of the Trans-Canada Highway.

The stone rings were burial sites of the First Nation Songhees people. When Europeans established the city in the middle 1800s, there were several dozen of these rings on the hill, but the new colonizers were not particularly interested in preserving evidence of the past. They removed most of the stones and used them elsewhere. By the 1980s only four rings remained on the slope below Beacon Hill, hidden from sight by a thick growth of vegetation. In 1986, the parks department removed the vegetation, and then bulldozed the stone rings to facilitate mowing. They didn't realize what they were doing. Archaeologists directed to crews to replace the stones as best as could be remembered, and there were promises to protected the site and to provide interpretive signage. A low fence surrounds the rings, but when we were there, I didn't see any signs explaining the site.

The parks in the city of Victoria are good places to see the only dinosaurs remaining on planet Earth. They are of course the avian dinosaurs, the only members of the dinosaurian clan to survive the great extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period. At Beacon Hill, we saw several large bird species, including a Peacock. Seen only from the knees down, they look terrifying, as scary as any T-rex.

There was also a rookery of Great Blue Herons. A juvenile was hanging out in the low branches of a tree by the pond, and the adults seemed to be patrolling the area from high perches in the tallest trees. Every few minutes they erupted into an other-worldly shrieking, and there was a commotion up in the crowns of the trees. We couldn't see what they were upset about.

After a few minutes the reason became clear. They were at war with raptors. There was a pair of Bald Eagles trying to attack the nestlings and eggs in the rookery. It was a life and death battle going on over our heads (for more pictures of the event, check out my story at Geotripper's California Birds).

We continued along the coast to take in the coastal parks, and to climb one of the highest peaks in the Victoria area. It was a good way to see evidence of the glacial heritage of this landscape.

Direct evidence exists for only two advances of glacial ice across this region, but there were undoubtedly many more. The youngest events tended to erase the deposits of the earlier advances of ice. Soils obscure many of the glacially carved rocks, so the best place to search for glacial features was along the coastline where wave erosion removes the soil cover. 

The coastal drive provided many examples of glacial polish, striations, and grooves. The smoothed off rocks provided clear exposures of the ancient metamorphic rocks that underlie this part of Vancouver Island. The rocks are called the Wark or Colquitz gneiss, and they formed as part of Wrangellia, a terrane that formed hundreds or thousands of miles away across the Pacific. It was accreted to the North American continent about 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. I had a pleasant teaching moment when some older ladies who were enjoying the view wondered why the strange man was taking pictures of the rocks rather than the coastline. They politely said thank you at the end of the long explanation (I get that a lot).

We then drove to the top of Mount Douglas (known by the Saanich people as pq̕áls or PKOLS), a 260 m (853 ft) hill that rises over Victoria, providing a 360 degree view of the region. The mountain provides several different biologic zones, including a Garry Oak woodland around the summit, one of the northernmost exposures of oak trees in North America. The lower slopes are covered by conifer forests.

The view is fantastic. It really is a wonderful spot to gain an appreciation of the regional geography. The Olympic Mountains were visible across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and I'm told that Mt. Rainier is visible on the clearest days (it's over 130 miles away). The entire city of Victoria spreads out to the south.

To the north is the Saanich Peninsula, and the glacially scoured Strait of Georgia, the northern extension of the Salish Sea. The mountains of Vancouver Island recede into the distance. The island is huge, 460 kilometres (290 miles) in length and 80 kilometres (50 miles) in width.

The next day was a layover for us, and we mostly pretended to be tourists, visiting Butchart Gardens (you can read my somewhat heretical review of the place here). The following day we were going to be seafarers once more, crossing the Strait of Georgia onto the Canadian mainland, and the Sea to the Sky Highway. I was anxiously watching the weather, because we traveled there last year, and never saw it because of low overcast conditions. What would we would see?