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?

Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground: The Salish Sea and the Strait of Juan de Fuca

As we reached Port Angeles and boarded the ferry to Vancouver Island on our vagabonding journey along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the landscape underwent a dramatic change. For one, a bunch of it was underwater, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Strait of Georgia, the Puget Sound, bodies of water collectively known as the Salish Sea. 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 are related.

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

The Salish 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, along with 37 species of 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, as described in the previous post, 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.

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. At least when the weather is clear! Once again, I'm resorting to pictures from 2014, as conditions were still cloudy for us on our last passage a few weeks ago.

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).

The air masses off the Pacific Ocean reach land and are forced upwards against the mountains. The water vapor condensed into clouds which billowed into huge cumulus towers that reflected off the water's surface.

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

Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground: The Diverse Landscapes of Olympic National Park

We continued north and east from the Hoh Rainforest on our vagabonding journey through the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Mountains have been raised along the entire convergent boundary, but the ranges on the Olympic Peninsula are in a class by themselves. They are high enough to support glaciers, which means that Olympic National Park is one of the few parks in the country where one can explore a glacier, a rainforest, lakes, and ocean shorelines. The diversity of the landscape is incredible.

Lake Crescent is a beautiful body of water on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula. Lakes are not a common feature of Olympic National Park. Aside from Crescent, there are a few small glacial lakes in the alpine zone, but not much else. Lake Crescent stands out, both for size and depth, and also for low elevation. It's eleven miles long, more than two miles wide, and 600-700 feet in depth, one of the deepest lakes in Washington. We had a few moments to stop along the lakeshore to look around.

The lake is glacial in origin, filling a hollow where the ice scooped out softer rock. The lake once drained to the east into Indian Creek, but a gigantic landslide about 8,000 years ago split the lake (Lake Sutherland is the other part). As Lake Crescent filled deeper and deeper, the water spilled over into a different drainage, the Lyre River, which flows northwest. Isolation of the lake by Lyre Falls has resulted in the evolution of two subspecies of fish, the Beardslee Trout, and the Crescenti Cutthroat Trout.

The Olympic Mountains are extraordinary. They are an anomaly, both in their height, and in their geography. On the map they look like a gigantic horseshoe.

A geologic sketch map reveals the basic structure of the range. The "horseshoe" of basalt and sedimentary rocks (the Peripheral Rocks, or Crescent Formation) partially surrounds the "Core Rocks", an assemblage of slightly altered sandstone and shale layers. The Core Rocks accumulated from underwater landslides ("turbidity currents") within the trench and accretionary wedge of the subduction zone. The fact that these rocks are now thousands of feet above sea level is the interesting puzzle. This happened because bits and pieces of continents and island arcs randomly arrived at the subduction zone, mucking up the subduction process the way too many sheets of paper at once can muck up a paper-shredder. In the case of the Olympics, there was a mass of land north (Vancouver Island) and an accreted terrane to the south (the North Cascades), and a bend in the subduction zone itself. In essence, too much material was being stuffed into the subduction zone, so the excess material went the only way it could, which was up (I discussed this in a bit more detail last year in this post).

Not that it was any great surprise, but the weather was overcast and drizzly when we arrived at Port Angeles. We had given a bit of thought to heading up to Hurricane Ridge, but it was apparent that nothing would be visible, so we got onto the ferry to Vancouver Island instead. I couldn't pass up the chance to show a few shots from our visit to the ridge last year. The view is simply stunning, at least when conditions are clear!

I'm pretty sure there was a great deal less snow on the high peaks this year. As noted in the previous post on the Hoh Rainforest, the snowpack last winter was in the 10% range or less, and the peak runoff was in February. Many of the rivers are getting their main flows from glacial melt rather than snowmelt, and that's not good for the rivers or the glaciers.

The glaciers of Olympic National Park are especially sensitive to climate change. The climate is not as cold as areas farther inland, so the glaciers have to depend on intense levels of precipitation to maintain the levels of ice. They have been shrinking precipitously over the last century, and dozens have melted completely. Rivers that used to flow throughout the year might dry up in the summer or fall as more ice disappears, which will be bad news for aquatic life in those areas.

We ran out of U.S. states to explore, but the convergent boundary continued across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We took the ferry into Canada, on our way to Victoria and ultimately to the northernmost volcanoes of the Cascades. Luckily, we remembered our passports!

I Wish I Had Thought of This...

Source: Scienze Geologiche

I immediately fell in love with this mapping concept from Scienze Geologiche that I saw on Facebook this morning. All I can say is "Bravo". I pay homage to a brilliant idea with my own offering on the Western United States according to Geologists. It lacks beer. Sorry!

California needs a map all its own, though.

Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground: Into the Rainforest, Seeing Something Strange...Rain

So, after a Dismal day of Disappointment, the vagabonders hit the road, going north onto the Olympic Peninsula. It was my first time on the west side of the peninsula, and my first foray into the Hoh Rainforest of Olympic National Park. Strangely enough, it was raining the day we arrived, strange because it was the first day of rain in something like two months. And the forest felt like it. It has been a very bad year, drought-wise. The Hoh River at our campsite was a lot smaller than I expected, even for summertime. The lack of water and warm temperatures bode ill for the coming migrations of the salmon and coastal cutthroat trout.

Olympic National Park is one of the most diverse parks in the United States. It encompasses alpine glaciers and high rocky peaks, what is probably the greatest expanse of old-growth temperate rainforest left in the states, and mile after mile of rocky Pacific coastline. And all of this is due to tectonic activity along the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

As the Juan de Fuca plate is pushed beneath the North American continent, the sediments on the ocean floor were essentially scraped off the crust and accreted to the western edge of the continent. One earthquake at a time, a few inches or feet at a time, the mountains were pushed upwards, eventually reaching elevations of nearly 8,000 feet. The wall of sediment and rock forms a barrier to the landward movement of Pacific storms, forcing the air upwards and causing it to precipitate on the western slopes. Precipitation is a weak word for what happens; in an average year, 12.5 feet (380 cm) of rain may fall on these mountains.

The forests are lush and filled with huge Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, Western Red Cedar and Broad-leaf Maple trees. The forests are layered, with something photosynthesizing at every level, from the algae in the creeks, flowers and grasses on the forest floor, to the shrubs, and the mosses that hang from practically every branch. Something is there to collect almost every photon of sunlight that penetrates the seemingly ever-present clouds.

It's been a dry year, at least by some metrics. There was a lot of rain at times during the winter, but because the storms were warm, there was almost no snow, not even 10% of normal in places. The height of the runoff was in February, not the normal late spring or early summer. There were no snowbanks to nourish the rivers through the summer and fall, when rain is usually at the lowest ebb. It has set up a most unusual situation in the rainforests this year: the threat of wildfire.

Fires have been burning all summer throughout the Pacific Northwest. We were lucky in our timing in that we missed the worst of the smoke plumes that obscured the mountains. The fires aren't just in the drier inland areas; the rainforest is burning too. Two canyons south of the Hoh River, on the Queets River, the Paradise Fire has burned about 2,400 acres (almost 4 square miles). That's small by California standards (the Rim Fire last year burned 257,000 acres, or about 400 square miles), but the fire is the largest since the park was established. And it's still going today, after three months. It probably won't be extinguished until the autumn rains come.

In the meantime, we were enjoying the light drizzle and the greenery that persisted despite the dry conditions. We strolled along the Hall of Mosses Trail, which follows a river terrace above the Hoh River. Terraces result when a river starts to cut into its own sediments following regional uplift (such as is happening in the Olympics on a constant basis). Since the river no longer floods across the surface, the ecosystem remains stable on a long-term basis, and the trees are able to grow to immense size.

One section of the trail just floored me. It was a little detour into a grove of Big Leaf Maple Trees. I might as well have stumbled into the Forest of Fangorn, with Ents standing all around us. Thick mats of moss hung from the branches, and the leaves were practically invisible in the canopy above.

The trees were huge...

 And the limbs looked like giant arms reaching out for us.

When in a forest like this, one must never forget to look up.

And also keep an eye out for the wildlife. There is a struggle taking place in the branches of the rainforest. From times long forgotten, the Northern Spotted Owl thrived in these woods. Humans arrived and started to cut down the old-growth forests, and the owl population went into a steep decline. Eventually it was declared an endangered species, and logging was restricted in many areas (there were other factors involved, but the owl took most of the blame for the economic disruptions).

Meanwhile in the eastern part of the continent, a related species was widening its range. The Barred Owl was able to take advantage of a warming climate and expanding second growth forests across the northern states and Canada to move west, and it arrived in Olympic National Park in 1985. It is a bigger species than the Spotted Owl, and able to survive on a wider variety of prey. It's been displacing the Spotted Owls over most of their range. They reached Muir Woods in California in 2002. Mrs. Geotripper spotted one along the trail and we got quite a few pictures, many of which are posted on my bird blog here. Despite its checkered history as an invasive species, it's a beautiful bird.

The storm was breaking the next morning as we rounded the north side of the Olympic Peninsula. We set out for Lake Crescent. More later...

Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground: Putting on a Happy Face at Dismal Nitch and Cape Disappointment

Waikiki Beach at Cape Disappointment. Yes, the cliffs are basaltic like those in Hawaii, but the spot was named for a Hawaiian sailor who lost his life here in a shipwreck (one of many).

How does a place get a name? Cape Disappointment and especially Dismal Nitch seem to just scream to tourists to "please visit us". Both sites sit on the north peninsula where the Columbia River reaches the Pacific Ocean, and both are steeped in history.

The Astoria Bridge (photo by Mrs. Geotripper)

Imagine it's 1805. You've been walking, riding and floating for more than a year through perilous and unknown lands, and your supplies are dangerously low. The food is almost gone, the trade goods are almost gone, and the clothes are literally rotting off your back. You're within a few miles of the expedition's goal, and you know that a ship bearing supplies, clothing and food is likely to be sailing nearby. And you've got a government credit card...

Well actually, it was an unlimited letter of credit from the president, one named Thomas Jefferson (maybe you've heard of him). The thing is, you are almost there, and a storm begins, the likes of which you haven't experienced before. Heavy rains, hurricane force winds, and it doesn't let up. You take shelter in the best spot you can find, but it is steep and rocky and wet. For six days the storm rages, and finally it's spent. You load the canoes as fast as you can, head the last few miles to the coast...and you've missed the trading ship.

And that's how Dismal Nitch got its name. The party of course was that of Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery. The correct spelling is "niche", but they kept William Clark's version. He had many original spelling versions of a great many words in his journals.

From the top of the Astoria Bridge. Dismal Nitch is on the shoreline to the right, while Cape Disappointment would be on the left, just out of the picture. Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

Here's an example from the middle of their ordeal (from the Washington State Historical Society):

A Tremendious wind from the S. W. about 3 oClock this morning with Lightineng and hard claps of Thunder, and Hail which Continued untill 6 oClock a. m. when it became light for a Short time, then the heavens became Sudenly darkened by a black Cloud from the S. W. and rained with great violence untill 12 oClock, the waves tremendious brakeing with great fury against the rocks and trees on which we were encamped. our Situation is dangerous. we took the advantage of a low tide and moved our camp around a point to a Small wet bottom at the mouth of a Brook, which we had not observed when we Came to this cove; from it being verry thick and obscured by drift trees and thick bushes It would be distressing to See our Situation, all wet and Colde our bedding also wet, (and the robes of the party which Compose half the bedding is rotten and we are not in a Situation (not) to supply their places) in a wet bottom Scercely large enough to contain us, (with) our baggage half a mile from us and Canoes at the mercy of the waves, altho Secured as well as possible, Sunk with emence parcels of Stone to wate them down to prevent their dashing to pieces against the rocks; one got loose last night and was left on a rock a Short distance below, without rciving more dammage than a Split in her bottom— Fortunately for us our men are healthy. men Gibson Bratten & Willard attempted to go aroud the point below in our Indian Canoe, much Such a canoe as the Indians visited us in yesterday, they proceeded to the point from which they were oblige to return, the waves tossing them about at will I walked up the branch and giged 3 Salmon trout. the party killed 13 Salmon to day in a branch about 2 miles above, rain Continued.

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse from Waikiki Beach

I'm happy to say that our arrival at the peninsula on our vagabonding journey along the Cascadia Subduction Zone was a much more positive experience. For one, we didn't need a canoe to cross the Columbia River from Oregon. The four mile long Astoria Bridge worked out just fine. The weather was dry and calm. We had a reservation for a campsite in a pleasant forest on flat ground. And there was a pizza shop just down the road from the campsite.

The pizza shop had the audacity to close at like 8:00 pm, so we took our dinner out to Waikiki Beach on Cape Disappointment. It turns out that we were enjoying our evening repast on the very spot where the Lewis and Clark crew reached the Pacific Ocean on November 18, 1805, just a few days after leaving their "little dismal nitch". Strangely enough, Cape Disappointment was not named by Lewis and Clark. The cape already carried that moniker, although only for the previous 17 years. The Native Americans of the region knew the point as "Kah-eese".

The cape was first charted by the Spaniard Bruno Heceta as Cabo de San Rougue in 1775. He suspected a major river was present in the sandy shoals to the south, but his crew was more or less wiped out by scurvy, so he retreated south without further exploration. Twelve years later in 1788, a ship captained by John Meares sighted the cape, but couldn't confirm the presence of a major river, and so named the headland Cape Disappointment. The Columbia River was "discovered" and named in 1792 by an American captain, Robert Gray, and explored by a crew under the leadership of George Vancouver. When Lewis and Clark approached the Pacific Ocean in 1805, they had a reasonably accurate map of the lowermost 100 miles of the Columbia.

The North Jetty of the Columbia River. The forested area beyond the jetty was once open water.

The mouth of the Columbia has changed in many ways since the arrival of the Europeans and Americans. The shoals at the mouth of the river were deadly to ships, so two lighthouses were built on the cape in the 1800s, Cape Disappointment in 1856, and North Head in 1898. Nearly ten miles of jetties (rocky breakwaters lining the navigation channel) were constructed between 1885 and 1939. Sand started to accumulate on the north side of the jetty immediately, and within decades the entire coast was changed.

View south from North Head Lighthouse

The picture above is the scene from the North Head Lighthouse, and all the flatlands in the view are lands added since the jetty was constructed.

Beard's Hollow, a former water-filled cove

Beard's Hollow, just north of North Head Lighthouse, was once a cove along the coast, under water. Since construction of the jetty, a baymouth bar closed it off, and the cove filled with sediment. Within a few decades it has become a freshwater wetland with a growing forest.

Walking in Beard's Hollow

Cape Disappointment was an important landmark for sailing ships because it stood out so high along a relatively low-lying coastal zone. The cliffs are there because they are composed of basalt, which can be quite resistant to erosion. Given that the Cascades are a volcanic mountain range, it might seem to make sense that these are lava flows from the interior. Some lava flows from eastern Washington have reached the region, but these are probably not related. Part of the reason for thinking this way is a strange structure seen in close-ups.

Waves once crashed against the base of Cape Disappointment. The construction of the Columbia River jetties has caused the sand to back up and form wide beaches.

The pillow-sized lumps of basalt are called (surprise!) basalt pillows. This kind of shape occurs when basalt is erupted into water, such as at divergent boundaries on the ocean floor, or on seamounts. These rocks quite probably were scraped off the sinking slab of the Cascadia Subduction Zone and accreted to the edge of the continent. The subduction zone that has many people in the Pacific Northwest up in arms has been changing and altering the landscape for many millions of years.

The geologic map of the cape shows the basalts (Tc), and sand beaches (Qb) which have grown out since the construction of the jetties. Without the jetties, there would be no campground or pizza parlor at the park. Point of reference, though: if the big earthquake occurs, the sand flats will not be a very good place to be. The roads will probably severely disrupted by liquefaction, and the tsunami that will likely follow the earthquake will completely inundate the lowlands. It's a wonderful campground in good weather, but if you are there in an earthquake, don't hesitate. Drive for high ground, and if the roads are blocked, run for high ground.

Source: Northwest Geology Field Trips

The final note for this little exploration concerns the famous weather at the state park. Why are there not one, but two lighthouses? Cape Disappointment has been described as the foggiest place in the nation, with an average of 2,550 hours of fog every year: 106 days of poor visibility! Both times I've been there, I've spent afternoons and evenings in fine weather and woken up in the morning to rain. Just imagine! If you are there and the rain is pouring down, be sure to shelter in the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in the park. It's excellent.

We were looking forward to our next day. In all my travels, I've never been up the western side of the Olympic Peninsula, or into the Olympic Rainforest.