There was me, here 10 minutes from the White Cliffs of Dover in the UK, pining for geology that you have in Washington state. I've been in awe of the channeled scablands, dry falls streamlined islands & plumge pools cut out of sheer bedrock. BUT!!!! I just watched a video on how the UK became an island. It seems that I'm just a few miles from all these features! The ice sheets on one side and the chalk ridge that joined us to Europe on the other collected the water from the Rhine et al plus the meltwater as we entered an interglacial, formed a huge lake at the southern end of the North Sea held back by the chalk. I know that you all see where this is going! Add in a little earthquake (I've experienced these myself in Folkestone) and the chalk gave way... Preserved at the bottom of the English Channel are all the features yhat you guys have above ground. A line of dry falls (that if the sea wasn't there i could view by looking down into them from the White Cliffs between Folkestone & Dover) leading to 150 metre deep plunge pools, channeled scablands, streamlined islands ect. It's a spitting image of everything you've taught me about Nick! Watching the lecture I followed perfectly and had the I benefit of having seen all these features in your videos. I'll edit in the lecture in a bit as I'm on my 'phone but I had to cone and thank you for the grounding in your megafloods do that I can not only understand my own, but "feel" them too! Thanks mate! If we ever meet, the first round's on me! 🍻 It's called "Megaflood: How Britain became an Island" on the Imperial College London's RU-vid channel. Also on the same channel "Britain's Lost Landbridge to Europe" Talk about deja vu!
As a member of the Seattle Glider Council soaring club based in Ephrata every summer, I spent over 25 years and many, many hundreds of hours flying my sailplane all over the Columbia Basin looking down at the beautiful terrain discussed in this lecture and others. Wow, what a treat to now get to understand a little bit of what I was looking at all that time! I often noticed that the land north of Withrow past Mansfield and on up to the Columbia featured those big boulders and areas that looked scraped and gouged. Your explanation crystalizes what my eyes were seeing from a few thousand feet up! Very cool. Thanks for another fascinating field trip!
Thanks Nick. Late as usual here. That's real neat! Took pop's fishing in Feb at Roosevelt and went the back way since I was lost ( 🫣) and I remember??? Must have been the same road. Telling Pa as we topped the rise what those were..all the way to grand. You could see it and with just a little explanation I had a 60 years professional mechanical engineer of highest level looking at me with the encreaduality that I have when I get even a little close to picturing these events. Considering what was going on here probably was happening across the margin to the Atlantic and also northern drainages...Whew !!! Everytime I get a little more information I just shake my head more and realize how ignorant I am!! The ultimate never ending story!! What Fun!!! Blessings all !!
Milk Duds is the perfect analogy for these basalt erratics! I grew up in an area littered with granite erratics. What an eye opener to see basalts instead of granite and yet know that both terrains were affected by ice. Thank you!
Hey Nick, love your videos. They are so interesting. I myself live in an area that is a morane. Everything is flat here (Leipzig/Germany). Great for biking :)
You have the best videos, so personable and well-edited, interesting content. As a flat lander in the war zone named south side Chicago, your videos offer a welcome escape. Someday, someday.
I followed along on Google Maps while watching the video. When I switched to Terrain view, there is a blatant line north of Withrow that marks that boundary. It's no gradual thing. Within a few feet, the geology changes completely. Fascinating!
Very interesting and informative. It felt like I was right there in the car. Whoever first discovered the importance of the haystack rocks must have been thrilled!
This was super fun for us to watch, because we live on Bald Ridge. The old-timers around here called the fields on the edge of the ridge "The Breaks", because it is the line where the vast wheatland ends, giving way to the forest which marches north into Canada. Our house is less than 1/4 mile from the edge of the forest. We have the best of both worlds - open farmland with long territorial views, and also the nearby forest and the amazing pre-historic view to the north across the river... I've often pondered the geology of this area, it does seem so unique.
This was an excellent episode. The way you filmed the scenery was delightful and your commentary was crystal clear. You can do more of these any time. Thank you.
It's nice to know that I'm not the only person who get's excited about driving across that moraine boundary. (I was using the wonderful Wenatchee Chamber of Commerce/Visitor Center Ice Age Floods driving tour map.) Thanks for helping me to understand all of this fascinating geology, Nick! :)
That was really fun, and a pretty day to be out! We used to love riding our m/c's there, but again without knowing and appreciating all the geology. Videoing through the windshield worked well. Thank you for the nice Sunday drive, Nick. ❤
And here I was trying to wrap my head around some Paleozoic bedrock and now I'm looking at patterened ground on LIDAR around Monrovi! I also noticed that the ice margin on the 1961 map was not shown coming down Lake Chelan. Great thought provoking episdoe again Nick!
Cool! Have always heard the folk custom of putting bits of volcanic rock in your flower pots and beds helping things to grow better. This is like seeing it in super scale. 😮 Thanks again Nick for another fun geohike folks can actually go on to check this geology out for themselves. I think this dryland stuff really illustrates how folks should be farming, instead of what happened to the Great Plains loess in the dust bowl chapter. But then, now there is some nice loess in the eastern states...😁
Loved getting out and seeing the countryside. Your explanation is excellent. Bringing the geologic history of the area is so much fun. Your passion for this effort is palpable. Thanks for what you do.
You wondered if the farmers collected rocks and piled them together in the Withrow Morraine. Answer is yes and they would do it to preserve their farming equipment from damage. This from my mother-in-law who grew up there in the 1920's through 1930's.
That was a great video. i really liked the drive. you can see the vegetation and topography change. If you stop by a couple of the ''milk duds'', do you happen to see any of them stuck in the soil at an angle? Indicative of getting pushed along by flowing water? Or are they all just plopped down and marooned by ice?
Enjoying this episode while sitting at my house on a back-yard lawn chair, which is on Central Washington loess in the North-Central Willamette Valley, 350 miles SW. Thanks Nick/Harley!
I drove this road a few weeks ago. It wasn't a huge question in my mind about why that huge ridge north of Withrow and beyond was so different than a few miles back, but I'm happy to see the 'why' that was lingering in my head as I drove through the area. I was always curious about those huge boulders sitting in rolling fields east of Ephrata where I live. You've covered that one for me too. Thanks for these videos, Nick, been watching you for a few years now and have enjoyed your careful interpretations for us laymen. Thank you!. Just can't figure out why I get the urge to buy a German chocolate cake once in a great while???
Thank you so much for the fascinating lecture and expose of the Withrow Moraine and the rocks and milk duds. Since I live in Florida and I don’t expect to see this ; you are giving me an excellent look at the evidence of the youngest ice age ice sheet. Washington is truly a beautiful state.
You should also take a drive down highway 291 that goes along the spokane River. Keep your eye on the south and west slopes and you'll see massive amounts of all different types of rock types. When you approach Suncrest, there's a hill called big sand you'll have to drive up. There's a pull off area there. Go down to where the barrier is and climb up. It's just a huge conveyor belt of every different kind of rock imaginable.
Nick you are so great I've loved listening to you and all the videos she put out but theat cute The cute names for stuff gets in the it's almost like you gotta learn next language to learn the geology and and as I get oldor maybe senile Hearing the proper name over and over helps me so much better are they really called haystack rocks cause dumb drops I'm sure itisn't Really love your teaching and wishing you the very best
I live right in that same square on the Spokane river and hike that area frequently. You need to access it from a different direction. I'll take you there anytime, well, when it's cooler that is, 103F today.
A driving video, but absolutely fantastic. One of the top 10. I was watching in anticipation just wondering where the evidence of the ice advance was. Thanks for all you do.
What a delight to get out of South Jersey rain and heat, to ride shotgun with you, there, in the amber waves of grain. Such a delight learning earth physiology, and you know it’s always the professor that makes the class. You are one very optimistic, clear thinker and talker. Thank you for the ride. Great fun!
It depends on the ice sheet! I think older version of the ice advances were erased by the later floods. I think they advanced far further south then we believe.
Whoa Nick! I like your real time windshield-view presentation of the change in terrain at the Withrow Moraine. Excellent illustration. It won't be long and you'll be using an Insta360! Or a drone! I see that Noraly gives lessons on the latter!
As soon as you started driving up the moraine the environment shifted from the wheat to sagebrush. From watching "Crime Pays" I know that's a pretty strong indicator the geology shifted as well. And then once you got to the haystacks, it was just all flowers and grass but no sagebrush. I don't know what it means but it was interesting to me!
That sudden change would be astonishing to anyone passing through who didn't know to expect it. Especially if they were going north - "where did the fertile fields go?" they would wonder.
Ever since the Bretz 1930 paper from last week I am looking around and trying to see the Wenatchee area through different eyes - Bretz said moraine overprinting a slide here in Malaga and moraine in East Wenatchee, yet right above East Wenatchee there are the deep loess dry land wheat fields of Badger mountain and the Waterville plateau. Hmmmm........ Things are getting more complicated rather than clearer, LOL. Given the sheer expanse of time for things to be altered over and over again by advancing and retreating ice sheets I think a lot more careful field work might be the only thing to clarify things here in the Wenatchee Valley. I think there is more to learn before it is "settled". Bretz was certainly an experienced field geologist specializing in glacial features, so I think his evaluation of the area has to be given credence or at least a second look. Thank you as always for taking us on these field trips and letting us see the features through your eyes, and giving us new things to ponder!
That question from the beginning... Considering I am from Connecticut, I don't have the most detailed mental image of Washington (the closest I have ever even been to Washington is Illinois), my answer was pretty close to that line on the map, though I was thinking a little further south (and with way less detail of course). Being from where I am, that basic question about how far the ice advanced, immediately and always makes me look east in my mind. Directly at Cape Cod. Which is one of the reasons I love Nick's videos. They are all focused on the other side of the nation. It is not that I would ignore the west otherwise, it is simply that stuff that is local or I can drive to in a couple of hours or have been to previously are a bit easier to learn about since I know the basics of the area already. I imagine his videos would be interesting regardless of where he was describing though.
Wow! The transition from homogenous farm land. then up the huge moraine. then scattered rocks as big as houses just laying there unmoved since the ice sheet melted brings home compelling evidence this was where the ice sheet boundary was
Nicely done, Nick! I have driven a similar road to the east, and the transformation at the terminal moraine is striking, as are the large number of large boulders on the north side. Also, as I noted before to you, your post filming skills continue to improve. Great job on using stabilization and digitally zooming the driving portion.
Professor, I'm going to reinterpret your question: How much damage did the ice sheets do during the Weichselian glaciation? Well, my country was nearly scraped clean. We have so little of the sedimentary rocks remaining here in Sweden. What we have are pockets of old uplifted limestone (Öland and Gotland) and sandstone here and there (Gävle, Ekerö, Scania, southwest of Gotland), together with ancient wackes in various states of metamorphism. The rest is crystalline, igneous stuff and some real old shales in the south west. I'm told they have found dinosaur remains in the extreme south of Sweden, which is Scania, so I guess that's a thing. Of course, the mountains ("Fjällen") that were erected during the Caledonian orogeny brought up all sorts of rocks to the surface and not all of that was wiped out. Some of that stuff even made its way south as glacial erratics.
Watching in replay. If it helps, I take photos through the windshield when I'm traveling more often than I like to admit. The Haystack Rocks really ARE distinctive. I didn't have time to probe this area in 2022 when I was out there, but we'll see what you come up with by the end of the winter quarter in 2024. Maybe I'll add this area to my list of places to see when I'm out there next summer - IF I get out there next summer. Anyway, thanks, Nick. Yeah, it was an unusual episode, but interesting.
Nick I really enjoy your video talks , there is so much to learn and you do a great job feeding us the information. I was wondering if you might consider a trip to BC and to the Trail area of BC , north of Spokane and where the Columbia enters Washington. There is some wonderful , I call them cut bank moraines and aparently very nearly the oldest rock in the world ,which crosses the Columbia as a dyke. The Univercity of Alberta as in years past held classes there . If there where Ice ages periods which did not cross the border it might be something to look into. I believe there where more ice ages than we currently think. I have ice age eggs ( boulders the size of VW Beatles ) poking up all over. The Beaver Valley is actually part of a hanging valley with waterfall. Maybe you could have a look see sometime.
One thing I notice is the haystack rocks seems to occupy the tops or be embedded inside mini-drumlins. The drumlin-like features could easily be the remnants of sub-glacial outwash tunnels.
Thanks for another very fine video, Nick! I have to wonder if LIDAR imagery would show subtle elevation changes sufficient to define Bretz's horseshoe elevated area. It seems odd to me that an advancing, massive glacier would somehow diverge around a low topographic feature, rather than override it. Still working on the first cup of coffee this morning, so maybe I'm not thinking clearly...
I don't know if Washington farmers do, but Minnesota farmers will pick rocks out of the fields and drop them in piles on the edge of fields. Looks like I grew up in a moraine.
Living in Port Townsend I've wondered about this exact question... And btw Nick, if you ever find yourself on this side of the mountains, look me up, there's so much geology here that I'd love to show you...
