Staircase Rapids

Here's the next installment on my "Hiking the Scablands" series.  Unfortunately, there is very little hiking to be had on this entry.  Maybe 10 ft.

But there is interesting Missoula Floods geology, so I'm posting it. Today's lesson takes place about 6 miles NE of Washtucna, on Hasse Rd. 

This is a blowup of the small square in the first image. Missoula floods, read up in my previous posts, or elsewhere on the web.  In this case, the flood was 2 1/2 miles wide down a series of 20 ft falls a mile or so apart -- at least four steps.  That's right -- a large waterfall in four twenty-foot drops, 2 1/2 miles wide and 4 miles long.

Above I've outlined two of the cliffs (the cliffs are below my line, so I wouldn't obliterate the cliffs on the image).  The arrows show the flow of water.  The X is were I stood when taking the below pictures.  Note the piece of the Palouse still standing in the middle of the second row of falls, splitting the flow.

This is looking to the west (sorry, into the setting sun).  Here is a dry fall 2 1/2 miles long and 20 foot deep.

Looking down flow, to the SW, you can see the one remaining Palouse hill splitting the flow.

And a zoom in the same general direction barely shows the next drop a mile or so downstream.

This land is now all fenced off and used for cattle, but you used to could hike the first ridge from the west end.  Sorry, no hiking today.  I mean to fly down these rapids at low level this summer.  I don't have a go-pro camera, and wouldn't expect it to give the same effect as being in the airplane with all of the peripheral sights necessary to get the full effect anyway.

Next entry: I do have aircraft photos of the Great Dry Falls from an airplane last summer, and steamboat rock.  It's on my todo list to hike what I can of it, and that will be a mighty bit of hiking, assuming it's all accessible.