Grand Finale - Part 1 - Ice Age Floods and Road to Lolo Pass

Dateline: Tuesday May 21, 2019
I had reservations for 4 nights in the Old Faithful Inn and Nancy had non-redemable airline tickets to Bozeman Montana, so I am off with Black Bart and the Alaskan camper to Yellowstone National Park via the channelized scablands of eastern Washington and Highway 12 over Lolo Pass.

With "On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods - The Northern and Southern Reaches" (Bjornstad and Kiver) sitting on the passenger seat, I headed towards Lewiston/Clarkston in Southeast Washington.
After crossing the Columbia at Vantage, I got off I-90 and headed into the lands sculpted by the Great Missoula Floods from 14000 to 11000 years ago.  The last glacial age blocked off the Clark Fork River near Lake Pend Orielle in northern Idaho.  The lake was 1200 feet deep and backed up well east of Missoula ( a couple of hundred miles away).  Eventually the lake burst the glacial dam and in 3 days the equivalent of 10 times the combined flow of all the rivers on earth raced across eastern Washington.  In about 7 to 10 days the last of the waters drained out into the Pacific ocean.  The waters clawed away the basalt rocks creating huge waterfalls and coulees

, dug out elongated lakes, made ripples 30 feet high and 200 feet apart, carried pebbles the size of Volkswagen Beetlebug cars, and rafted erratic boulders from Montana on icebergs as far as Tom and Claudia's old house in Lake Oswego Oregon.  These glacial dams and floods repeated 40 to 100 times.  After the first few floods they followed the same coulees and ate away at waterfalls that slowed eroded upstream for tens of miles.

The photos are of former Palouse silt hills sculpted into long sandbars over a 200 feet high and 600 feet long, Palouse Falls that started on the banks of the Snake River and migrated 7 miles upstream, and giant ripples on the side of a coulee.

After cruising thru the coulees, I drove thru Clarkston and up the winding Highway 12 along the Clearwater River towards Lolo Pass.  There is a photo of a sign for "winding road next 56 miles".  Actually the first sign was for "winding road next 99 miles."  It was a glorious river road up the valley.  Why did I choose this route?  Two reasons: 25 years ago a friend took a picture of himself next to his Miata and the 99 mile sign.  That was a challenge I have always wanted to take.  Second, "A River Runs Through It" has scenes set at the gambling joint near Lolo Pass.

Next post - Lolo to Hamilton Montana.