Travels in Cascadia: Sitting Woman Falls. She's Sitting on Geological Pillows.

There are so many charming little corners to be found on Vancouver Island. We were well underway on our two-week field course on the geology and anthropology of British Columbia, and on this day we had already explored the Sooke Potholes and the base of the ocean crust at East Sooke Park (along with a couple of interesting petroglyphs). It was getting late in the afternoon and the crew was getting pretty tired, but I had heard that there was another site of interest at the end of a short trail, so we made one more stop. It was a place called Witty's Lagoon, which sounds like a theme park or something, but it actually is a geologically interesting section of coastline along the Salish Sea.

This area (and indeed all of Vancouver Island) was covered by glacial ice as recently as 13,000 years ago. When the ice melted, sea level rose to cover some of the previously exposed lands forming a series of bays and coves. Witty's Lagoon is a nice example of one of these, and it is largely unaffected by urban development. Metchosin Creek flows over a ledge of basalt to form Sitting Woman Falls at the upper end of the cove (above).

The basalt, part of what is called the Crescent Terrane, has an interesting story to tell. The basalt erupted on the floor of the Pacific Ocean around 50 million years ago at a divergent plate boundary. It originally melted because of the release of pressure at the mid-ocean ridge, and accumulated in plutons several miles beneath the ocean floor. As the crust spread apart, fractures formed and the basalt followed the breaks all the way up to the sea floor where it erupted out. When basalt erupts in water, it forms odd looking lumps about the size of old-fashioned down pillows, around two or three feet across. These pillows accumulated in layers hundreds of feet deep.

The sequence of gabbro plutons, sheet dikes (the filled fractures), and pillow basalts constitute an ophiolite sequence that in this area is called the Metchosin Igneous Complex. In our previous post we had a chance to see the gabbro as it was exposed on the shoreline of East Sooke and Becher Bay. We didn't get to see any good examples of the dikes, but the cliff at Sitting Woman Falls was composed of pillow basalts. I've zeroed in on the section of the cliff to the right of the falls in the picture above. The pillows are not really well exposed, so I've cheated by adding some pictures below of pillow basalts that we've seen elsewhere in Washington and California.

The picture above shows pillows exposed in the cliffs at Cape Disappointment at the mouth of the Columbia River in Washington. Below we can see some pillow basalts exposed near Nicasio on the Marin Headlands in California.

It's incredible to think of the forces involved in taking the oceanic crust from the bottom of the sea, and mashing it into the edge of the North American continent where it ended up being exposed at Witty's Lagoon, and indeed throughout the region, including the high peaks of the Olympic Peninsula across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Travels in Cascadia: Victoria B.C., the City of Mutton Rocks

The next stop in our recent travels through Cascadia was the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. We got there by way of a ferry from Port Angeles, Washington, as described in the last post. Victoria is an attractive city, one of the most temperate in Canada, given its location on the Pacific shoreline (the adjacent ocean moderates the seasonal temperature extremes). It is also unique in another respect. The city is partially constructed on bedrock (the solid rock that underlies surface soils and sediments), and the land was under a vast 1,000 meter thick ice sheet only 14,000 years ago.

This geologically unique combination means that Victoria is sort of a city of mutton rocks.

I imagine that sentence needs explanation...

The term roche moutonnée describes an asymmetrical glacially scoured rock outcrop that has a smooth slope on the side facing the flowing ice, and a steep cliff on the side where the glacier pulled away from the outcrop ("stoss and lee structure" is a related term). The scale can range from a few meters to many hundreds. They are common features in regions of bedrock that have been scoured by massive continental ice sheets, such as happened in Victoria. One of the tallest hills within the city, Mt. Tolmie (below), is an excellent example. In the picture one can see the gently sloping forested flank on the left side of the hill, and the steeper plucked side to the right.

Mt. Tolmie, a roche moutonnée in Victoria

The problem with roche moutonnée as a geological term is that we geologists can only barely agree on its meaning. It's derived from French, and the "roche" part isn't a problem. It means "rock". But "moutonnée" is the tricky aspect. It can be translated loosely as "sheep" (think "mutton""), but not exactly (French: "mouton"). Moutonnée (with the extra e's) translates to "frizzy", and is taken as a reference to sheep's wool. The term originated in the 1700s with a naturalist named Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (it would be decades before the term "geologist" was coined) who noted that the rocks looked like a type of wig apparently well-known at the time whose locks were held in place with mutton grease. Except that there seem to be few or no references to wigs that were actually called that (the closest version was a tête de mouton).

So we teachers are left with trying to define the term as meaning "rock sheep" based on the nebulous idea that the rocks look like sheep grazing in meadows. Which they really don't. But it's still easier than trying to describe obscure French wigs from the 1700s and mutton grease.

There are consequences to building on such rocky landscapes. There are plenty of large patches of glacial till that are easy to plane off with a bulldozer for building construction, but when the rock crops out, allowances have to be made. Perhaps it might involve blasting to construct a flat foundation. The rock is pretty tough stuff, gabbro, diorite, and greenstone of the Wrangellia terrane, dating back to the era of dinosaurs.

There are problems in this kind of situation. When the Empress Hotel (see the picture above) was constructed in 1904-1905 it was placed partly on solid rock and partly on mud-rich sediments. Complications quickly ensued. The south part of the building subsided several centimeters within the first year and ultimately sank about a meter. It's a real headache for those who must maintain the building.

Still, Victoria is a truly beautiful city, and the city has a unique personality. The city has miles of coastline, and there are dozens of scenic shoreline parks. We pulled up at Cattle Point to look at smaller roches moutonnée along with glacial scour marks and striations. Strangely enough, there was a piano sitting on the bluff. It was brightly painted, there was a bench, and the piano was in tune! I wondered what was going to happen to it if it rained, but then noticed a waterproof cover. We later found that there are five such pianos in the parks, and we were actually treated to a tune by a passing jogger, followed by a song by one of our students!

If you ever have a chance to visit Victoria, enjoy the city, but be sure to follow the shoreline drive to see the glacial heritage of the landscape (as well as seeing some dramatic coastal scenery). But the other thing you should do is to hike or drive to the summit of the mutton rocks of the city. Mt. Tolmie is a good choice within the city limits, or you can go just north of the city to the much higher summit of Mt. Douglas. It's a short hike from the parking lot to a summit with a 360 degree view of the region. The Olympic Mountains are visible across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the south beyond the city, and the many islands of the Strait of Georgia and Saanich Inlet are visible to the north and east. Glacial polish, striations and grooves are present underfoot.

On the day we were there, I saw some unusual looking clouds far to the southeast. I took a few highly zoomed shots and forget about them until weeks later. I started working with the contrast and exposure of the picture and realized I had captured an image of Mt. Rainier across the Puget Sound. The volcano is more than 130 miles away (below)!

I had three main resources for the geology in and around the city:
The Geology of Southern Vancouver Island by Chris Yorath
Roadside Geology of Southern British Columbia by Bill Mathews and Jim Monger
Geology of British Columbia, A Journey Through Time by Sydney Cannings, JoAnne Nelson, and Richard Cannings.

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.

A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground, an Exploration of Cascadia

In 2015 I wrote a blog series about driving through the "Most Dangerous Plate Boundary" in the world, but it was actually about driving through a fossil subduction zone that is exposed in the Coast Ranges, Great Valley and Sierra Nevada of Central California. In the summer of 2015, Mrs. Geotripper and I took a long journey along the entire length of a real "dangerous plate boundary", the Cascadia subduction zone, that extends from Northern California to British Columbia. The trip coincided with a media explosion over the very real possibility of a magnitude 9 earthquake along the Pacific Northwest coastline. This resulted in another blog series, Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground. Here is a compilation of the journey...

This was posted on September 13, 2015...

I've finished a new blog series on our exploration of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, so I've compiled all the posts in chronological order so you can get the story the correct sequence. Thanks for all the nice comments, responses, and corrections! Click on the orange titles for the post.

On the Road in the Pacific Northwest: The introduction and overview of the new blog series.

Following the Cascadia Subduction Zone on Highway 101: This post provided the geological background for understanding the hazards of living in the lands influenced by the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

In This Land of the Sasquatch There are Ancient Giants: The first leg of our journey took us through the range of the California Redwoods and the land of black bears that look suspiciously like walking ape-people.

The End is Coming (of the Cascadia Subduction Zone): The end of Cascadia is a slow process, but the zone is disappearing slowly, being replaced by the San Andreas fault. It's also a look at one of the loneliest beaches in California.

A Geologist Walks Onto a Bar in Cascadia: Exploring the unique baymouth bars along the Humboldt county coast.

Northern California's Tsunami Central: Crescent City has a tragic history of tsunamis, especially the one in 1964 that took a dozen lives and destroyed the marina and downtown areas.

This "Dismal Forest Prison" and other problems exploring the Northwest: The Pacific Northwest was particularly difficult to explore and map, at least if you weren't part of the indigenous culture. Here are some accounts of the discovery of Humboldt Bay by land.

Into the Land of Sand, and Exploding Whales: Between Coos Bay and Florence, Oregon, is the longest stretch of sand beaches and dunes in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, and the whale thing...

Into the Realm of the Devil (and Sea Lions): There are a lot of things named for the devil on the Oregon coast for some reason. And some incredible sea caves occupied by sea lions.

Putting on a Happy Face at Dismal Nitch and Cape Disappointment: We reach the mouth of the Columbia River, where Lewis and Clark reached their goal. It's undergone a great many changes over the years.

Into the Rainforest, Seeing Something Strange...Rain: We explore the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park for the first time, and encounter something strange, at least this year: rain. There was also a fire burning in the rainforest. That's not normal.

The Diverse Landscapes of Olympic National Park: Olympic is one of the most diverse of our national parks, with alpine glaciers, rainforests, and coastlines. It's spectacular.

The Salish Sea and the Strait of Juan de Fuca: Glaciers and tectonics combined to form a seaway east of Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula. It's a unique ecosystem quite distinct from the Pacific Ocean just a few miles away.

Stone Rings, Glaciers, and "Dinosaurs" on the Coast of the Salish Sea: Desecrated burial mounds, avian dinosaurs, and glacial landscapes. Victoria on Vancouver is both a beautiful city and a fascinating place to explore.

Exploring North America's Southernmost Fjord: We take the ferry to the mainland, making landfall inside of the southernmost glacial fjord in North America, Howe Sound in British Columbia (defined here as on the mainland, but connected to the ocean; opinions differ!).

Landing Place of the Thunderbird and the Grimy One, the Volcanoes of British Columbia: Black Tusk and Mt. Garibaldi two of the northernmost volcanoes in the Cascade Range. I missed them last year in the rain, but saw them this time.

Controversial Stone People, Fire and Ice, and an Olympic Legacy: We made it to Whistler and the home of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The stone people were controversial, but the scenery was not. It was spectacular.

Seeing Volcanoes from the Inside Out at Siám' Smánit (Stawamus Chief): Glaciers and granite! Stawamus Chief is a dramatic granitic dome rising high above the end of Howe Sound. It was once the magma chamber of a volcano.

Our Tour of the Greatest National Park I Never Once Set Foot In: North Cascades National Park is a true primeval wilderness. No roads penetrate the park boundaries. But what incredible scenery!

The Geology that Explains Why North Cascades is a Park Divided: The Skagit River may be the most altered water course in the Pacific Northwest, but it provides 20% of Seattle's electricity. It splits a national park in two.

What's East of North (Cascades), A Brief Explore: North Cascades doesn't have all the scenery; the lands to the east are rather spectacular too, and offer some great geology.

Playing Hide and Seek with a Sleeping Monster: Mt. Baker is not the most active volcano in the Cascade Range, but it is capable of great mayhem. It even looked for awhile like it might blow back in 1975.


Danger Follows Us Home (As it does all of us): A Mt. Shasta drive-by (photo) shooting, and a wrap-up of the series. Danger is always with us no matter where we are. It's not to be feared, but respected and prepared for.

A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: I toured a marble quarry on Vancouver Island; It's almost as if they didn't want us to see the rocks.

I've been digging through the archives of Geotripper on the occasion of my tenth anniversary of geoblogging, looking for some of my favorites. In 2015 I spent a lot of time in the Pacific Northwest, resulting in several blog series, but a favorite moment was my tour of this "quarry" which some of you may recognize as something else. This blog appeared on July 13, 2015...

So, I'm out on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, enjoying my vacation with Mrs. Geotripper, and we're casting about trying to figure out what to do on this 300-mile long island. I'm doing some reading and find out that there is this place called the Saanich Peninsula Marble Quarry that offers tours. That sounds great to the geologist in me, so I talk Mrs. Geotripper into checking it out. It turns out that when you are touring an island that is mainly rainforest, rock exposures are in short supply.

I figure that a rock quarry isn't going to have a whole lot of visitors on a given day, so imagine my surprise when we reach the end of the road, and find out that the place has a parking lot, and charges admission! It was pretty steep, too, about $30 Canadian for each of us. But hey, it's rocks, and I haven't seen a lot of rocks on this trip. We pay and go on in. I'm astounded by how many people are here for the tour of the quarry.

I did some research on the rocks. The marble of the Saanich Peninsula is part of the Wrangellia terrane, rocks that formed far out in the Pacific Ocean during the Triassic Period. Around 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period the rocks plowed into the west coast of North America and became part of the continent. The rocks were originally limestone that formed in coral reefs and along tropical island beaches. The heat and pressure of the collision with North America caused the rock to recrystallize into marble. Today it is called the Quatsino formation.

So I follow the map, my anticipation rising as we reach the edge of the quarry, and I looked in. I was kind of shocked. There was vegetation everywhere! There was barely any rock to be seen at all! I did notice the smokestack from the smelter almost hidden in the forest beyond the quarry. How could they let this happen? Didn't they care enough to keep the rock exposed for us geologists? 

The hundreds of people around me didn't seem to mind all the vegetation. As far as I could tell, they were actually paying more attention to the flowers and stuff and pretty much ignoring the rock. I was a little confused. But at least the people that run the place have a sense of history. They put up some interpretive signs that showed the raw beauty of the rock before all the vegetation was allowed to grow over it.

The quarry was active from the late 1800s to around 1905 or so. I guess in this temperate rainforest environment the plants can take over pretty quickly. I was kind of surprised by how colorful the flowers and other plants were. I thought that at this latitude, the species diversity was on the low side. I guess not.

I finally found some rock exposures at the lower end of the quarry. The flowers hadn't yet covered everything. Water had filled the lowest part of the quarry, and I guess they were using a fountain to aerate the water or something.

It's almost as if they were ashamed of the rocks. Look at the picture above to see how the plants covered almost every part of the marble. I just didn't get it. In any case, we finished up our tour and found some gelato being sold at a stand in what looked like an old mansion of some sort, so we had a bit of dessert before heading back to Victoria.

So what did I think about the marble quarry tour? I was surprised by how popular and expensive it was, and how easily the visitors were distracted by the vegetation covering all the rocks. The pathways were well done, and there were lots of interpretive signs showing the glory of years past when plants didn't cover every rock, so one got a sense of history, and of loss. On the whole, it wasn't too bad, especially if you like plants and stuff like that. I don't recommend bringing a rock hammer. They got pretty upset when I starting taking rock samples.

If you want to check it out, don't go by the old name of Saanich Peninsula Quarry. They changed it, I guess when it got all overgrown. Nowadays the place is called Butchart Gardens.

The glories of the old days before plants covered everything.

Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground: A Compendium of Posts

I've finished a new blog series on our exploration of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, so I've compiled all the posts in chronological order so you can get the story the correct sequence. Thanks for all the nice comments, responses, and corrections! Click on the gray titles for the post.

On the Road in the Pacific Northwest: The introduction and overview of the new blog series.

Following the Cascadia Subduction Zone on Highway 101: This post provided the geological background for understanding the hazards of living in the lands influenced by the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

In This Land of the Sasquatch There are Ancient Giants: The first leg of our journey took us through the range of the California Redwoods and the land of black bears that look suspiciously like walking ape-people.

The End is Coming (of the Cascadia Subduction Zone): The end of Cascadia is a slow process, but the zone is disappearing slowly, being replaced by the San Andreas fault. It's also a look at one of the loneliest beaches in California.

A Geologist Walks Onto a Bar in Cascadia: Exploring the unique baymouth bars along the Humboldt county coast.

Northern California's Tsunami Central: Crescent City has a tragic history of tsunamis, especially the one in 1964 that took a dozen lives and destroyed the marina and downtown areas.

This "Dismal Forest Prison" and other problems exploring the Northwest: The Pacific Northwest was particularly difficult to explore and map, at least if you weren't part of the indigenous culture. Here are some accounts of the discovery of Humboldt Bay by land.

Into the Land of Sand, and Exploding Whales: Between Coos Bay and Florence, Oregon, is the longest stretch of sand beaches and dunes in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, and the whale thing...

Into the Realm of the Devil (and Sea Lions): There are a lot of things named for the devil on the Oregon coast for some reason. And some incredible sea caves occupied by sea lions.

Putting on a Happy Face at Dismal Nitch and Cape Disappointment: We reach the mouth of the Columbia River, where Lewis and Clark reached their goal. It's undergone a great many changes over the years.

Into the Rainforest, Seeing Something Strange...Rain: We explore the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park for the first time, and encounter something strange, at least this year: rain. There was also a fire burning in the rainforest. That's not normal.

The Diverse Landscapes of Olympic National Park: Olympic is one of the most diverse of our national parks, with alpine glaciers, rainforests, and coastlines. It's spectacular.

The Salish Sea and the Strait of Juan de Fuca: Glaciers and tectonics combined to form a seaway east of Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula. It's a unique ecosystem quite distinct from the Pacific Ocean just a few miles away.

Stone Rings, Glaciers, and "Dinosaurs" on the Coast of the Salish Sea: Desecrated burial mounds, avian dinosaurs, and glacial landscapes. Victoria on Vancouver is both a beautiful city and a fascinating place to explore.

Exploring North America's Southernmost Fjord: We take the ferry to the mainland, making landfall inside of the southernmost glacial fjord in North America, Howe Sound in British Columbia (defined here as on the mainland, but connected to the ocean; opinions differ!).

Landing Place of the Thunderbird and the Grimy One, the Volcanoes of British Columbia: Black Tusk and Mt. Garibaldi two of the northernmost volcanoes in the Cascade Range. I missed them last year in the rain, but saw them this time.

Controversial Stone People, Fire and Ice, and an Olympic Legacy: We made it to Whistler and the home of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The stone people were controversial, but the scenery was not. It was spectacular.

Seeing Volcanoes from the Inside Out at Siám' Smánit (Stawamus Chief): Glaciers and granite! Stawamus Chief is a dramatic granitic dome rising high above the end of Howe Sound. It was once the magma chamber of a volcano.

Our Tour of the Greatest National Park I Never Once Set Foot In: North Cascades National Park is a true primeval wilderness. No roads penetrate the park boundaries. But what incredible scenery!

The Geology that Explains Why North Cascades is a Park Divided: The Skagit River may be the most altered water course in the Pacific Northwest, but it provides 20% of Seattle's electricity. It splits a national park in two.

What's East of North (Cascades), A Brief Explore: North Cascades doesn't have all the scenery; the lands to the east are rather spectacular too, and offer some great geology.

Playing Hide and Seek with a Sleeping Monster: Mt. Baker is not the most active volcano in the Cascade Range, but it is capable of great mayhem. It even looked for awhile like it might blow back in 1975.


Danger Follows Us Home (As it does all of us): A Mt. Shasta drive-by (photo) shooting, and a wrap-up of the series. Danger is always with us no matter where we are. It's not to be feared, but respected and prepared for.

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?