Camassia and the Missoula Ice Age Floods - Glacial Lake Missoula Flood Features on Waymarking.com

This place was once covered by more than 100 foot of water. During the end the last ice age, between 12,8000 and 15,000 years ago, a continental ice sheet (glacier) dammed the Clark Fork River near the Idaho-Montana border creating a vast lake. Periodically, the lake broke through the ice dam resulting in colossal floods known as the Bretz or Missoula Ice Age Floods. During the floods, more water coursed across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge than is found in all the rivers of the world today. The water was 1,000 feet deep when entering the Gorge, and shot out at velocities as high as 90 mph. The water was constricted at the Kalama Narrows and backed up into the Willamette Valley flooding it to a depth of 400 feet.

The force of these floods scoured the more resistant basalt bedrock of Camassia creating its shallow-soiled plateaus, and carved away softer bedrock creating low areas that are now seasonal ponds -- kolk lakes. Icebergs carried by the flood waters brought granite boulders called "erratics" from as far away as Canada. When the icebergs melted, the erratics sank. One such ice-rafted granite erratic can be seen in the quarry near Camassia.

-- words from signboard at Camassia natural area

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Date Logged Log User Rating   10/11/2021 TrekkingTurtles visited it